I know you like vans. I know you like trucks. I know that it snows. Sometimes a lot. Like this last weekend. I know that sometimes it’s a pain in the patootie to reach up and brush the snow from off the top of your van or truck or other instrument of personal destruction.
Do it anyway, ya moron.
Do you know what happens when you don’t? And you drive down interstate 95 in western Rhode Island at 70 miles an hour. Yes, that’s right. The mound of snow you’ve neglected to brush from the top of your van or truck or IOPD come sliding off of the top of your car. If you’re lucky … who am I kidding, you don’t care. If the person behind you is lucky it won’t get blown off into the windshield of the car behind you.
Unfortunately this afternoon, the car in front of me wasn’t lucky. And because of that almost caused his car to go out of control and take me with him. Or her. Or it.
Yeah! I call this effect “your own private snowstorm.” (Well, I guess the effect is the snow all blowing off so the people behind them are driving in a blizzard rather than it coming off in a sheet.)
And in other snow on the roof news, Calgary’s soccer dome roof collapses from snow ice.
And if it’s frozen, warm up the vehicle to melt it then clear it off. Otherwise it’ll just melt while you’re driving and likely slide off in a solid sheet. How would you feel to be the driver with a 4’ long sheet of ice flying your way?
They need to come up with some kind of extension snow/ice removal tool for 18 wheeler trailers. I swear, there’s been numerous times driving on the interstates in winter where gigantic ice sheets come flying off the roof of those things right at you.
My husband and I both hate this, and we like to point on the road and go “There’s a douchebag…and there’s another douchebag!” at all the people who do this. I hate it.
I saw a great version the other day, a VW rabbit (tiny car, btw, a child could remove all the snow from the roof) with the top cleared off on both sides except for a strip down the center about 5 inches tall.
We have this argument every year. I have a garage, so I very rarely have snow on my vehicle. If I do, it’s because it snowed while I was at work , or whatever. If you suck at driving so badly that you can’t handle a little blowing snow off the back of my car, or a small pile of it falling on the road, then you need to stay the fuck off the road during the winter.
Ice I can understand, large shards of ice can be like daggers and do serious damaage, but I just read someone suggesting that a van driver wait until the cabin warms up so they they can smoosh the snow off the top…wait till the SDMB Environmentalist club gets ahold of that one. Especially big cargo vans, like empty metal caverns, take forever to heat up inside.
So next time it snows, do us all a favor and just stay home, eh?
And every year we point out that we’re not behind you, we’re beside you. Passing you, getting passed by you, whatever. Snow doesn’t just blow off in a direct line behind you.
Hell, I was at a stoplight last year, and just as the light turned green, a big gust of wind blew enough snow onto my windshield from the car beside me that it completely blocked my view. No harm done, but a bit inopportune, yes?
Perhaps. But no moreso than when passing a semi truck on a slushy road. It’s a part of winter, and I just deal with it.
Every year I also point out that I paid 20K for my vehicle, and it has nice shiny paint. I am sure as hell not going to scar up the nice shiny paint by using a snow-brush on it. Or, god forbid, an ice-scraper.
Trust me, that sheet of ice on top of our car is going nowhere we aren’t.
Generally, I’m with the ‘get the snow off you moron!’ crowd, but when it’s hovering around 0F and there’s a solid sheet from the base of the windshield up, over, and down the back end, I’m going to take my chances. Since we mostly just drive in town anyways, by the time the car warms up enough that the ice is starting to melt, we’re already there.
(Back in Nova Scotia I always cleaned the whole car, but it was warmer and always just snow. I don’t even want to think about how long it took Owls just to get the windshield clean enough to drive. I’m thinking I might bug him about renting a garage.)
Who’s safety are you willing to wager on that? Basically, you’re just saying that it’s too much of a pain to do sometimes, and you’ll take your chances. But you’re not taking the chance. You’re passing the risk to someone else.
I work in the insurance industry, so I see A LOT of claims (including flying ice claims). Basically, there is only one way to keep ice and snow from your car causing damage or injury to someone else.
Unless you’re the idiot in a minivan I saw at the train station today. We had a lot of snow last night, and it’s mild and raining now. The result is very heavy snow, that is not attached to the roof. She stopped at a stop sign, and sure enough, it all slid down her windshield. Thing is, the wipers couldn’t move it. I think one of them broke, because it went over her hood. It was funny to see in context (it made me immediately think of this thread), but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be funny at any kind of speed if she had to hit her brakes for some reason and still needed to see.
I hit a giant mound of ice from a semi, and it broke the cowling under the bumper on the front of my car. I have thought for a long time that us Canadians really should have a word for those ice and dirt lumps - car boogers, maybe?
If you’re worried about a snow brush marring the paint on your expensive automobile, you need to live someplace where you never get snow on it - if you get snow on a vehicle, it has to be cleaned off. Cars are tools, and I don’t support the insurance and autobody industry idea that cars must never get scratches or dings on them.
And when the big scary truck with the ice on top is coming towards me in the opposite direction on an undivided road, you would recommend that I…?
The whole “you’re following too close” argument assumes that all streets are single-lane, one-way. Most people’s daily commute includes rather few of those.