I had one of those big-ass snow scrapers, but it broke. No, really. I was scraping ice off the windshield, and the plastic “blade” cracked right off. It’s a very sturdy blade, too. Or was.
They don’t need lots of rules and regulations. They only need one, really: don’t be a tool. Well, in legalese, call it “reckless endangerment.”
Driving with a little tunnel of visibility right in front of your face is obviously dangerous. It pisses me off no end when people do that. I would support “zero tolerance” for being a tool. You do one incredibly dumb, selfish, assholish thing and that’s it. You never drive again. No license suspension, no fines, but you’re done as a driver. That would reduce the amount of traffic accidents, and save lives. It would also be good for the environment, since all the tools would have to turn to public transportation.
Oh, and if you get caught driving WITHOUT a license, or insurance, there would be mandatory prison time. 18 months or so. People need to be taught that driving like a tool is not permissable.
I have known two people killed in their youth because of pinhead drivers, including one of my best friends from grade school. I have no sense of humor about this shit.
The really wide scraper blades, like on the “mother of all snow brushes”, are no damn good. On heavy ice, you need a narrow sturdy scraper blade, with a rake on the back, like this one.
My VW Bug has heated mirrors on the outside. I assume when January comes and we get a frost, that will be useful.
Obviously. Lighten (or light) up. You wanna save more kids lives? Tell em to stay out of the street.
I don’t know the circumstances of the tragedies you have 1st hand knowledge of, but unless a driver was (1)drunk, (2)driving way over the limit, (3)cutting a light/stop sign or (4)driving up on the sidewalk/off road, they usually aren’t to blame. From the near misses I’ve witnessed in my life (including my own & that of my 5 year old daughter this summer) it’s always been the kid who darted out unexpectedly who’s at fault.
Neither were children, but young adults (late teens, early 20s).
“Lighten up!” indeed. A car is a deadly weapon. Driving like an asshole is nothing to laugh about. I stand by my previous post. Drive like a tool, you lose your license. No second chances.
I don’t think those are really wide scraper blades. That one looks kinda like mine: Brush on one side, squeegee on the other, scraper at the end of the handle.
Mine isn’t extendable, but I don’t need it. I set the squeegee end on my roof and push like a plow. There is no greater sense of accomplishment than to push a huge row of snow, as wide as your roof, off all in ONE piece!
Well, peeling the lint out of the dryer screen in one, pristine, single sheet, is prety cool too…
I agree. We got about 7-8 inches of snow here over the weekend, and I saw lots of people driving like morons. Driving with 7 inches of snow on top of your car is dangerous. It’s like a whirling vortex behind you. The drivers behind you can’t see a thing. Chunks fly off and hit the cars behind you.
As your car and the sun heat up the snow, it slides back and down, covering the back window, so you can’t see out.
And it’s not just the roof of your car you need to clean off, you need to clean off your trunk! Clean off the whole car!
I also always see people too lazy to completely scrape the ice off their windshields; they just scrape a little “hole” to look out of and think it’s okay. IT’S NOT.
That’s really dangerous. You can’t see anything.
You have to scrape the entire windshield off. Why is that so hard for people to understand? (not directed at anyone here, of course, just in general…)
I’ve had ones like the pictured one that was a pushbroom style brush on one side, and plastic scraper on the other. Like dantheman’s it looked really sturdy in the store, you think “damn, I’m gonna go to town with this sumbitch.” Then you get a thick sheet of ice and it sucks.
A squeegee would be AWESOME on one of those! I’d keep it handy all year long for condensation.
Cool. The Bug sure has come a long way. My first car was a 1972 Bug and had no defrosters. I had sternos duct taped to the dash board. Technology is wonderful.
and when some dickhead cop decides to make trouble for someone who was not a tool but pissed him off?
Go ahead, Homebrew, rub it in. You’ll be sorry. When I win the lottery and deliver you, all tied up, to swampbear’s door, I’m gonna ask him to promise me he’ll spank you good. 
I dated a guy that my family liked a lot. They weren’t aware of a lot of the problems that led to us breaking up and kept hinting for months that I was being harsh I should give him another chance, etc. Finally I said, “Mom, he doesn’t brush the snow off the roof of his car.” She never said another word about him.
That sounds more like a treat than a threat, sperfur.
[No shit, there I was…]
We moved to Southern Alabama (L.A. = Lower Alabama in the local parlance). We rented a house temporarily while our new house’s construction was being completed. The landlord send a high-school kid to our house to fertilize the lawn. He came out of the garage bearing a foreign object and asked my sister (who hung out nearby as the kid as cute), “What’s this?”.
Yes, indeed, it was our bright orange, flat-bladed snow shovel.
[/NSTIW]
Friend of my father’s threatened to tie his snow-blower to his roof and drive south until somebody asked him what it was.
We get the ice storms and freezing rain where I live. Snow brushes would be a joke. A nice 2" thick sheet of solid ice covering the whole car. Fortunately I’ve developed this quasi-karate/WWF wrestling thing I do with my elbow. Imagine an elbow drop from the top rope… onto a Dodge. It breaks about half of it off, if that fails I really need a small jackhammer or I’m not going anywhere for hours.
This winter I plan on experimenting with alternate technologies. You know, spraying the whole car with WD-40 before the sleet starts or maybe a quick thaw from a half gallon of gas and a match. Yeah, thats it…
hey, yall wachis!! (BOOM)
I like to think I’m not a tool, but I remember a sheet of ice sliding from the top of my car to cover my windshield. Considering I was going 60 mph on the interstate, it was a very interesting experience.
Poetic justice.
What is this thing snow of which you people talk about?
MG, from the Caribbean
Arkansas? I thought it just rained chitterlings and kudzu down there.
Oh wait, AK = Alaska. Never mind.
A little trick that will improve your own quality of life, your car’s operation and probable longevity, and be kind to ythose with whom you share the road as well:
Pull on your winter wear about 15 minutes before it’s time to leave. Go out. Start thecar. Turn on the heater, the window defroster, and any other heat-throwing devices your car has. Put the heater on window-defroster mode.
Now go back in and have another cup of coffee, tell the kids to get ready, and whatever else you need to do before leaving. When you go back out, the ice that is so hard to scrape off will be largely melted, and come free in large sheets that slide right off. The hood will likely be bare. The snow on the side and rear windows and the roof will be either gone or slushy and easy to remove.
If it’s not the first snowfall of the season, take a little of it and clean off your headlights – all that dirt and slush thrown up by other drivers has dimmed them. Brush off your other running lights.
Now get in the car. Nice and warm, isn’t it? And look – you can see all around you, just like in warm weather.
And because your engine isn’t trying to do full work while still cold, it’s going to behave much better, and probably survive longer.
There is a cost, of course – you’ll probably use a gallon, more or less, of gas per week doing this, depending on how your idle is set and your engine size. But IMHO it’s worth it.
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Not apropos this thread topic, but a good reminder at the beginning of winter: Whenever you come to ice on the road, pretend you’re paraplegic. Your feet should be off all pedals. Your car is moving straight; it’s quite capable of continuing to do so – provided something doesn’t make it do something else. Tires on ice have much less traction than tires on road. If you brake, downshift, accelerate, or anything else, you’re applying force unequally, because one tire is capable of less traction than the other on that axle. The net result will be a skid. But if you’re coasting across the glare ice at steady speed, no force is being applied, and you will continue straight.
If you start skidding anyway, steer into the skid.