Indeed. And are you allowed studs and chains while driving down narrow one way streets with cars parked on both sides?
Hell yeah. You non-Chicagoans should keep in mind that there is a damn good reason that the issue of road salting has literally won and lost mayoral elections here. (In his later years, Michael Bilandic used to be a member of the health club where my ex-boyfriend worked, and whenever there was a heavy snow, he used to walk around the club chuckling softly to himself.)
A lot of the streets in and near downtown are barely wide enough to be two way when there are no cars parked. When there are cars parked, drivers must pull into a vacant space to allow others to go buy. Many are, for all intents and purposes, one way streets. I’m sure we’re allowed studs and chains, but nobody ever uses them in town because we only usually get one bad storm a year, where it will take the city about two weeks to get all the side roads cleared. There’s also usually about two storms a year that will take the city about a week to get the side roads cleared, so about a month of snow packed and icy. The main roads are admittedly pretty clear except for a few days of the year (i.e. this morning).
There is a race every year in the town I grew up in called the Mt. Taylor Winter Quadrathlon, which is 13 miles of biking, 5 miles of running, two miles of cross country skiing, and a mile of snowshoeing up an 11,300 foot mountain. Then they come back down in reverse order. We used to drive up there all the time in the winter in rear wheel drive pickups to go sledding, shooting, and camping. There’s also the Zuni mountains, which we used to drive up to all the time to go shooting and camping (not enough slopes for sledding). Even if there wasn’t snow and ice in town, we’d go out of our way to find it, because it was fun. I’ll readily admit that it’s much more fun and forgiving to drive in the mountains as opposed to on narrow roads with cars on both sides. Unless there’s a cliff off to the side, and you’re halfway through a 360. That’s not nearly as fun.
I don’t know if Santo Rugger is a stud who wear chains or not. If he’s a flanker, there’s a good chance.
I know nothing of studs (well not what you’re discussing) or chains (again, not what you mean).
I just confirmed the weather in Santa Fe, and announced that my ignorance of the weather there had been fought. I’ve never been there and didn’t know.
Are you trying to pick a fight with me since this is the Pit?
No, I’m trying to address, piecemeal though it is, the flurry (pun intended) of people who seem to have opinions about our streets without having been on them. Unless y’all have the same weather, same restrictions, same street width and parking and same situation with no salting, then no, you don’t know what it’s like here, now, in our city, and any opinion you have of the where the “fault” lies is worthless.
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t paid any attentional at all to which username is saying what, and if I’ve been snippy with you more than once, it’s because of what you’ve said each time, not you as a person or poster. I apologize for not having a better, more coherent approach to the situation.
I **am **angry, very angry, lividly angry, in fact, but it’s not your fault, I get that. peers suspiciously Unless your name begins with a “D” and ends with an “aley”…
I beg to differ. When I’m talking to somebody about rugby, for example, you’re right that somebody who’s never played before won’t get the same level of attention paid to their opinion as somebody who has a few test caps (a cap [hat] is awarded to members of the national team for an international match [test]). However, if it’s somebody that played in England since they were 4, I’m not going to discount their opinion just because they’ve never played on the hard pitches in New Mexico and had to wear molded cleats instead of boots with removable studs because our fields aren’t like sponges here.
I understand how you might feel frustrated by someone from somewhere else telling you what you need to do.
I’m a former New Yorker (40 years) so I know a little about driving in bad winter weather.
Ice storms were the worst for me - I remember crying one day - I couldn’t stop and get out - I couldn’t go back - I had to go home. I made it, but I swear it was the longest ride of my life.
(for those who would have stayed at a rest stop - I had a toddler to get to - I had no choice. I got off work at 7am and needed to get home so that the spouse could go to work and no, our employers didn’t accept bad weather as a reason to call out)
I think it’s criminal to not salt the roads. Criminal.
Okay, one more time and then I’m giving up.
Driving on snow: I can do that.
Driving on ice: I can do that.
Driving without salt: I can do that.
Driving on narrow streets: I can do that.
Driving with parked cars on either side: I can do that.
Driving without snow assistance tires, like studs or chains: I can do that.
None of this stuff in isolation is the problem. Put three or four of them together, and it’s still not a problem. But it’s the whole shebang that’s the problem. The total package. The complete issue. So if you don’t have the whole problem, you don’t have OUR problem. You have your problem, and that’s perfectly problematic and you have my sympathy, but it’s still not the same as OUR problem.
[Whine]All we need is our fucking salt back! Is that really to much to ask?[/whine]
I broke my ice scraper on my windows this morning simply by trying to scrape the ice off. Then I had to walk to Walgreens, buy two more (just in case), walk back, and scrape/heat the car for 25 minutes. I finally got off roughly 50% of the ice - just enough to see. I would have gone for 75-100% but I had to be into work before midnight.
Yes. We have all of those things, all at the same time. I’m not saying your problem doesn’t suck, because it does. But I know exactly what you’re going through.
Maybe she’d seen too many movies where a car bursts into flames after a minor collision.
You want some fun, try moving a vehicle that’s parked on a solid sheet of ice at an incline. We broke at least one ice scraper, probably more, and an old desk shelf (we wound up getting creative after a while) trying to move our truck back out. The damn parking lot looked like it hadn’t seen any ice treatment for days. And then there was the time Owls managed to pull the wheel off of his truck thanks to the ice…
WhyNot, you have my sympathies. It sounds like you’d be better served by ice skates than a car at this point.
Look, I live (and drive, and park outside) in Chicago. Yes, it’s an ice skating rink out there right now. Yeah, it sucks that the city has cut back on salting. And yeah, I just about fell on my ass six times on my way to work this morning (walking).
That said, the bitching and moaning about it being the city’s fault that the OP rear-ended someone are ridiculous. If you can’t stop in time to not hit the car in front of you, you were either going too fast, following too close, or both. If you rear end someone, it’s just about always your fault unless it was a pretty unusual situation. From the description of the accident, it was definitely your fault. Just suck it up–you were driving too fast on the ice and couldn’t stop in time.
Hey, I’ve done it too. Fortunately I haven’t hit anyone, but I’ve certainly blown right through stop signs because I was going too fast and braked too late. But it’s no one’s fault but my own when I did that.
It’s hard to stop on ice, and I have a lot of sympathy for people who lose control on black ice that you can’t see. But that’s not the case here. Everyone who has lived in Chicago for any amount of time knows that it’s cold and snowy and icy for about four months of the year. Right now it’s ridiculously icy out there–but that just means you have to be even more careful than usual. And if you can’t control a car on it, don’t drive. Take public transit or something.
I think the city has made a mistake by cutting down on the salt, but it’s not the city’s fault that the OP plowed into someone. That said, I’m sure accidents will be way up this year because there will be a lot of drivers like the OP who either won’t or don’t know how to adjust to the conditions. Maybe the city will raise enough money in accident-related tickets to be able to salt the streets again.
Plus, I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that Chicago doesn’t shut down over a little snow and ice like a lot of cities do. We suck it up, we adjust, and we keep on working. It’s one of the little things that makes Chicago great.
Somebody had to mention parking lots. I just had a horrible flashback. The parking lot at work was on a 20% grade. Sometimes the people at the bottom had to move first because all vehicles would slide sideways when leaving their space. A couple times cars were all over the parking lot, having slid around while people were at work. You came out and thought who the hell parked in the middle of the lot. The next thought was damn where’s the sand barrel. You didn’t touch your car until the sand was spread, because you didn’t want to be the car that slid into everybody.
You don’t think this was a “pretty unusual situation”? And do you agree that no matter how slow you go, sometimes you can’t stop at all?
No and no.
It’s certainly not an unusual situation for the roads to be icy in December in Chicago. And no matter how slow you’re going, even on ice you will eventually come to a stop. It’s not magic–the coefficient of friction is reduced, not gone.
If you’re going to get behind the wheel, you have to take the conditions into account. If you feel it’s too slick for you to be able to drive safely, then don’t drive.
Is this true going down hill? I’m sure you’d stop at the bottom of the hill but what if you need to stop before then?
Of course, that’s a good point. However, since the OP is talking about Chicago, hills aren’t really at issue. This place is flat as a pancake.
Actually, chains are not illegal in Illinois. I wrote the Secretary of State’s office, since this seems to be the common wisdom in Illinois, and asking them to settle it for me once and for all, and they pointed me to this:
There is a restriction on pneumatic metal-studded tires, but I’m going to have to dig that up again.
Perhaps local jurisdictions have additional restrictions, because I know I’ve never seen tire chains in Chicago, but I don’t feel like looking that up at the moment.