Holy crap - snow driving fail video! If you live someplace that gets icy streets in winter, you’ll enjoy this.
I have driven all my life in places that have slippery winter streets, and I have never seen a street as bad as this. Cars just don’t slide sideways down the street unless it is sheer ice - I’m guessing this must be the aftermath of an ice storm (possibly ice covered with a light snow layer). One time last winter I was going down a hill and I saw the cars at the light at the bottom of it sliding into each other - I put my wheel slowly into the curb to stop, and did a u-turn and crept back up the hill and got the hell out of there. I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it - hills and ice are the worst combination ever.
So, Seattle doesn’t normally get winter conditions, does it? We had an ice storm here once; after I slid down the sidewalk to my car, I decided that there would be no driving today at all.
Seattle doesn’t get much in the way of snow and ice, so when they do, it’s a major emergency. I’m assuming the same goes for Portland. I sure as heck wouldn’t drive around Seattle if there was anything in the way of snow on the ground.
Fortunately while I live where we get serious winter, there is also a medium-sized army of snow removal people with large amounts of plows and whatnot.
I have seen this before. Do these people not have all season tires? Hell winter tires are encouraged here, but even all seasons should be good enough to prevent that kind of haphazard sliding.
Not if there’s sheer ice under the snow. I guess if you inch along it might help keep the car under control (they did seem to be going too fast for the conditions).
My heart is beating faster now after watching that, thinking of similar less destructive incidents I’ve had.
It was Portland, and it was sheer ice. It got that way about an hour before sunrise and nobody knew it was going to happen. I remember that day - I walked outside to my car, slipped on stair #1 and did the total Yard Sale wipeout, got up, turned around and went back inside.
It’s the Pacific North West! People use the same tires year-round, year after year, until they wear out. This is why Vancouver shuts down for 3 days after 1 cm of snow…
But like I said we have tons of snow removal equipment and supplies here, being in the mountains and all. I got through the whole winter in my Saturn without any major problems. Granted, we didn’t get any ice storms (I don’t know if that happens here much) but there was a lot of ice around anyway. It would have to be an epic storm to shut the towns here down for more than a day or so.
I’ve lived in New England all my life. Some days the conditions are just right that the world becomes a skating rink and there’s nothing you can do about it. In the mountains in particular, the combination of elevation and exposure can mean that you go from wet road to sheer ice in a matter of 100 yards.
I remember once going over Jay in northern VT after a day of skiing. It was snowing lightly at the ski area and the pass, then about 300’ vertical below the pass all I saw was brake and headlights in all directions in front of me; cars were spinning (slowly) like tops. I slowed down then at around 2 MPH all 4 wheels locked up and I slowly, ever so slowly, continued drifting down the hill until I bumped another car and stopped in the snow bank. With some wheel spin and luck I got two wheels in the snow on the soft shoulder and managed to slowly drive down to Montgomery Center without further incident.
And people wonder what San Francisco would be like if we had actual winter weather… There would be a convoy of trucks hauling smashed cars to the junkyards.
