Ah, yes, it’s wintertime, time for frost-covered car windows in the morning. Nothing I like better than seeing some shithead driving down the street, with a little 3-inch by 3-inch patch scraped off to look through.
SCRAPE THE WHOLE THING, YOU SHITHEAD! AND THE SIDE WINDOWS, TOO!
Spend .98 cents and buy a freaking scraper!
Spend $1.00 and get an extra car key made, so you can let the car warm up and still lock it up!
Scrape the ENTIRE windshield, and the side windows!
No, running the wipers and squirting washer fluid DOES NOT work. The washer fluid just freezes up and makes it worse. You are ruining your wipers, too.
Anyone who is too stupid to scrape their car windows deserves to get broadsided!
Oh, and when there’s been some snowfall, and there’s an inch or more of snow on your car, scrape it off the roof, the back windshield, and the bumper, dammit! I don’t need that crap flying onto MY windshield on the highway!!
Driving on a public road after scraping just an itty bitty patch is actually against the law here. Even saw some idiot get caught once. Ahhhh. Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind it if I knew they’d end up with their cars hugging telephone poles. Unfortunately they may hit somebody with a functioning brain instead. Messes up the gene pool.
Of course, we haven’t had to scrape the windshields yet this year, because the frost can’t settle until it stops RAINING… phhhhhhhhbt
To be honest, I think it’s my completely ineffective way of rebelling against the cold. [“But I shouldn’t HAVE to scrape! This sucks! Why can’t it be June?!?!”]
It’s also my passive aggressive way of registering my disgust that our garage is so full of my husband’s woodworking tools that I can’t park in there anymore. ["That’s right! I’m going to risk my life and the lives of others with this improperly cleared windshield. Screw visibility! THAT’ll make him sorry, and he’ll move that damned Delta unisaw!’]
Aren’t you glad you don’t drive on my commuting route? LOL
One night in college, we were sitting in my apartment (on acid, BTW) and there was a loud commotion outside. This was at 4 or 5 in the morning, so we all piled around the window to see what was going on.
There are these 2 biker type guys getting into a car, and a girl is yelling at them: “Clean your fucking windshield, you can’t drive like that” (It was about 10 degrees and there was a solid inch of ice on everything). Biker guy: “Shutup, bitch, I’m only going around the corner, I can make it, I’m not stupid, blah blah blah…” so they keep going back and forth, he jumps into the car and takes off.
He gets about three-quarters of the way up the driveway (it was a big hill), makes a left turn on what I guess he thought was the street at the top of the hill. It wasn’t. He plows through this fence and then goes down about a huge set of concrete steps (40 or 50 steps high!). He gets out and just curses up a storm, kicking his car, etc. He had to have bent both of his axles and he had at least 2 flat tires.
We laughed for an hour straight. I suppose the acid made it funnier, but it would have still been good without it.
When I was in high school, I was in a car accident because the other person didn’t clear their windshield. I pulled up to a stop sign on my route to school one Saturday morning (I was on my way to board the bus to go to the last Quiz Bowl tournament of the year. I had to miss it, which made me even more pissed off). I looked both ways, noticed there was a car parked in front of the house on the corner that was running, but it was parked, so I proceeded. All of a sudden, boom, this guy must have floored it, because he hit me hard enough to spin my car 180 degrees.
I got out of the car and noted that the moron’s windshield was completely frosted over. I walked to a nearby house and called the cops. Of course, he left his engine running, so by the time the policeman arrived, his windshield was all clear, so I had no proof. And of course, he claimed he was driving through the intersection and wasn’t parked, therefore it was all my fault because I “failed to yield.”
So, he took me to court, the judge found in his favor, and I ended up shelling out 700 dollars to fix his car. (I had let my insurance lapse, what can I say…I was an irresponsible kid.)
I found out later that he had hit a deer with this car a few weeks prior to the accident with me. My dad’s theory is that he was lying in wait for someone to drive through that intersection so he could smash into them and get his car fixed for free. So, I figure it was either that, or the windshield issue (he did have a small square cleared off so, unless he’s blind as a bat, he could see me). I was thankful, though, that the judge didn’t give him the full amount he was asking for. He brought in only one estimate, and the price included using brand new parts to fix his '86 Camaro, it was like 1200 dollars, and the judge thought that was unreasonable. So, it could have been worse.
My father has always followed the following procedure in winter.
10 minutes before departure, put a kettle of water on the stove.
Go out, start car, and set heating/aircon to a cosy temperature.
Go back in, take a crap.
Wash hands.
Put on coat and whatnot.
Take kettle, which is BOILING by now.
Walk outside towards car.
POUR BOILING WATER OVER ICED UP WINDSHIELD.
Put kettle back inside.
Drive off, playing a Simon & Garfunkel CD.
I’ve warned him at least 200 times that one day, he’s gonna shatter a windshield doing this. He has been doing this FOREVER, and it NEVER happened. Not even a small crack. NOTHING. And oh boy, I WANT it to happen.
Darn near got taken out by the snow/ice peeling off the top of a transport trailer. It came down hard enough to spider-web my windshield. Had to clear it off with a shovel. The scary part was coming to a stop with no visibility what-so-ever – just trusting that I was still between the ditches.
Well, crap, I forgot about the snow on the car roof. Yes, for Pete’s sake, clear that off, too, you morons!
We don’t get a lot of snow here in Baltimore, but I always see people with the snow flying off their roof into the car behind them.
flodnak, I would like to think that it would be illegal everywhere. Your vision is blocked, you can’t see out any windows, of course it should be illegal!
When I lived in Utah a few years ago, some moron was driving without having adequately scraped his windshield after a snowstorm. He came barrelling through a school zone at about 55 mph (the SCHOOL ZONE 25 MPH signs were flashing, but of course he couldn’t see them) didn’t see the crossing guard with the bright orange jumper and flag (because of course he had only scraped a tiny hole so he could see straight ahead.) He hit the crossing guard and three kids who were crossing. Killed the guard and one of the kids, hospitalized the others.
So he committed double murder because he couldn’t be bothered to take the time and effort to scrape the ice off his windshield.
My pappy used to do the same thing (hot water on the windshield), and I always wondered why his windshield didn’t crack. He did it in western Michigan, where it can get pretty durn cold, but never had a crack in his windshield.
One thing I learned was to get the snow off the car before shoveling out the driveway. I always kicked myself when I did it the other way around, seeing as it was annoying to shovel out 12 inches of snow then end up pushing the snow from the roof and hood of the car onto my clean driveway.
Required articles to carry in car in winter in western Michigan: broom to clean off car, ice scraper, and a good shovel. And if it’s rear wheel drive, about 300 pounds of kitty litter in the trunk.
With the advent of chemical de-icer, even laziness is no excuse for not scraping. $2 will buy you a can that you can spray to instantly melt the ice, or $5 will buy you a gallon of de-icing windshield washer fluid that won’t freeze on the windshield or in the fluid lines.
I agree with Mr2001 (yes, you read that right!)
I keep a can of Prestone glass de-icer in my car (we get it at the dollar store around here, so there’s no excuse not to have it). That stuff is great for getting off that really thick ice we get.
And he’ll gladly call you up while you’re having dinner to sell you some!
I had a Porsche 924 when I lived in the Mojave Desert. It can get pretty cold there during the winter (down to about 10º). One morning I started the car, turned on the defroster, then went inside for a little while, while it warmed up. I heard what sounded like someone firing a .22 or a car backfiring. When I went out to go to work, I found that my windshield had a huge grack in it about where the hot air from the vents hit it. I would definitely not pour hot water on a windshield!
I finally figured out that you don’t have to scrape ice off of a windshield if there is no ice on it. Since the garage was occupied, I started putting a sheet over the windshield when I parked the car at night. In the morning, I’d simply pull off the icy sheet and toss it into the garage. There’s be no ice on the windshield.
