A few weeks ago, I was driving to work a day after a bit of a snowstorm. As we were on a stretch of road where the speed was 50ish mph, the car ahead of me launched an enormous sheet of snow and ice. It was quite a sight as it went airborne. Unfortunately, it decided to re-enter the atmosphere just as my car was passing into its trajectory. Damn nearly destroyed my windshield. I can still hear that loud
WHUMP
from when it hit my car.
To the driver of the Toyota Land Yacht just in front of me, I hope I scared the HELL out of you when I popped up to your car at the next traffic light to let you know how nearly you came to trashing my car and killing me. I was quite polite and nonthreatening and I hope to OG you learn better the next time. I doubt it though.
Your soulmates this week have chosen to risk others’ lives for the sake of saving themselves 5 minutes of brushing/scraping. I barely avoided a similar incident yesterday on the beltway - because I was able to change lanes suddenly without killing myself or anyone else. If it had happened today, I wouldn’t be alive to type this rant :mad: :mad: :mad:
FUCK FUCKITY FUCKING LAZY THOUGHTLESS DRIVERS. Oh, and FUCK.
What’s the problem? I was talking to someone just yesterday who had their windshield blown in and was nearly killed because some selfish fuckwit couldn’t be bothered to brush the snow and ice off of the top of their car. Coffee ain’t gonna help. People like that should be crucified at the side of the road as a warning to others.
I’ve seen windhields destroyed by clumps of snow/ice flying off of them, and I’ve seen cars drive off the road by drivers trying to avoid having a flying iceberg hit them.
It’s not that hard folks, and it’s a little safer for everyone.
It doesn’t need to be spotless, just make an effort, ya know?
But it can be dangerous, and it doesn’t have to be a problem at all. Please tell be a justification for NOT sweeping off your car besides “I can’t be arsed” or “Boo hoo, I might scratch my precious paint job, which is more important than the safety of other people.”
That happened to me a few weeks ago. The day after an ice storm, going 80 down the highway, a Saturn Vue shaped sheet of ice flew straight at me. I managed, with some creative maneuvering to manage to get it to smash into my trunk instead of my windshield, but I would rather not have been forced to do such maneuvers at that speed.
I really do wish the Police would start issuing tickets to these lazy idiots. It is not just SUVs either. Plenty of people with cars that are easy to clean off never think to do so.
I was bitching about this today as sheet of icy snow came flying toward my car off a Suburban.
Very good rant Mama Zappa. What was your point **Lizard ** with your first post? People are required by law in my state at least to clean off their cars. Most people are capable of this simple act. Why is it some morons just do not care?
Not really. It’s attempted murder by laziness. The punishment should be moderately severe. Like crucifixion. It’s not like I want them sautéed in their own bile, like people who make u-turns without looking on a green left-arrow, oblivious to the fact that right-turners on the cross street have a green arrow and right of way.
Now step aside and make room for some fuckwit attorney, who will post to correct me that it isn’t murder, manslaughter, or any crime at all, as long as the fuckwit thought it was reasonably safe to drive around with 50lbs of loose debris on their car.
This is true, although it is more of an issue with SUVs, as the wide flat roof ends itself to perfect ice sails that fly straight backwards into trailing cars.
(I had to get to work at 5am this morning, and there was frost on my windshield! It went away after 10 minutes of driving and windshield wiping and defrosting, but still…frost! In Florida!!!)
Yeah my MIL was complaining about it being in the 30’s for Mardi Gra. It can’t be in the 30’s for Mardi Gra.
I felt sorry for her, but my driveway was still half Icy snow and I had flying assault ice sheets attacking my family this morning. I was happy it hit 39° so my driveway would melt and my solar panels would clear off.
I especially love the ‘snow tank’ people. They do nothing to clean off their car. They start it up and turn on the windshield wipers. Just leave the snow on the hood and back window and drive along with only the tiny area the wipers made so they can see out.
In MA if someone fails to clean the snow off there car and it does damage to someone elses car there isn’t even laws in place to ticket them.
I don’t really care about the high top(vans large suvs) vehicles that fail to clean their snow off. That I can understand at least the difficulty for some to do. The regular passenger cars and such its just laziness to the extreeme.
For those of you getting hit by flying snow. Maybe when you are following some moron with snow on top of their car you should stay back a little further from them.
I’m sure some physics person can come through here and give some data on how far from a moving vehicle the snow can actualy travel. My WAG would be less then the recomended distance between moving vehicles. Which to my understanding is 1 car length for every ten milles and hour.
As I said, it’s the high top vehicles that are the problem. They’re the ones that send off huge sheets of ice that stay in one piece and float. That’s the problem–the floating. It’s not that the ice travels that far, it’s that it stays up in the air waiting for you to drive under it.
It’s also not that easy for me to tell from my Civic whether the SUV in front of me has snow on top. Especially if I’m concentrating on other things like the semi bearing down on me from behind. And forgive me if, in that situation, I don’t keep the “recommended” distance behind the car in front. Sometimes you just have to compromise.
You don’t need to be a physics person. Skipping the math, which isn’t all that special, a free falling chunk of snow will drop from a sedan moving at 55mph about 2.5 car lengths behind it, about ½ sec after falling. That is just a sedan.
The problem is that the snow doesn’t always freefall. It often catches some air, with enough lift to stay in the air well over that half second. During each second, a vehicle moving at 55mph will cover over 80 feet, or 5 car lengths. Reaction time, stopping distance, etc. are all something greater than instantaneous.
