It seems to finally be consistently below freezing in southern Wisconsin. We had some snow in November that made me hopeful but yet another year with little snow until the new year
I spent the week after Christmas at the top of Michigan’s upper peninsula. I was close enough to get Welcome to Canada messages on my phone but I don’t have a current passport so I couldn’t visit. Which is bullshit by the way, I’ve been there with just my DL many times.
But there was no snow. It rained several days. WTF?!
Bro if I’m late, I just have to accept it. I tell my work people that I’ll be late and they’re usually fine with it as long as I say something and show up.
I know that not all work places are as understanding as this, but don’t be stupid if you’re late. You’ll still get there, just not on time.
Just this morning I was an hour late. I spend most of my weekends helping my parents a few hours away, so have a 4am alarm set for Monday mornings to get up, shower, and head to work.
Because of the Holiday, my first day of work this week was a Tuesday, so my 4am alarm didn’t go off and I got up at 5.
I got up, showered, sent a text to the team that I’d screwed up, and went to work.
Yeah, I could’ve driven 100mph on country roads and blown through a few red lights in the middle of nowhere near my parents’ place. But I also could’ve died trying that shit. Instead I just drove normal, got to work late, and it wasn’t a big deal.
I get that not everyone works in an environment where getting in late isn’t a big deal. But a lot more people do than realize it. Most workplaces can be flexible, and will be when it matters. If they’re assholes about it when they don’t need to be - look for somewhere better.
One morning around 2014 I got up early, scrapped the ice off my windshield, ran the defrost so I could see clearly out of the window (this was not the norm for me back then) and promptly slid down a 2-3 ft hill (I’m using hill VERY loosely here) less than 200 yards from my front door into a small fence going like maybe 2 miles per hour because the apartment complex hadn’t had the parking lot salted the night before or plowed that morning. Still got to work on time though, though the body shop bill was about $350 for the repairs.
For YEARS my dream was to own a home mainly for the garage so I’d never have to scape my windshield again.
Haha. Yeah you’re like a lot of my neighbors. Fill your garage with shit you don’t need so it looks tacky as fuck and park your car in the street to make sure you’re in other people’s way.
I’m so used to the car being warmed up (auto start) I forget how long it used to take when I did it the old fashioned way. A lot more elbow grease involved without the warm air circulating inside.
The problem is not snow, it’s the ice that forms on the windscreen during the night, because of the sub-zero temperatures. It takes time to scrape it off, and if you’re late, you do the bare minimum to see where you are going, hoping your car will heat up and melt the rest before you crash!
Until everyone is also driving the 6,000 lb death machine. Now you need to get the 9,000 lb death machine to compensate and thus the cycle restarts until everyone commutes to work in literal tanks because “it’s safer”.
Statistically, you absolutely are. There’s good data to back it up: even when looking at the same vehicle category, the risk of death is smaller in a bigger vehicle.
Which is of course exactly what you’d expect. It’s basic physics after all. And there’s simply more metal between you and the thing that you hit / hits you.
Still, the inverse also applies: driving a larger vehicle is more dangerous for everyone else on the road, so drivers should be extra careful. Everyone wants to get home safe.
It takes only an extra minute or so to get from this point of scraped off to a safe amount of the windshield scraped off. And honestly the couple of times I was lazy about it I ended up saving no time because I spent longer at stops plus was late anyways.
I did this once just to drive 2 blocks on totally empty streets. After 30 seconds, I had my passenger open the window and see if I was good on their side. Shit was terrifying. I can’t imagine doing it on a legit commute. You gotta convince yourself you’ve got 8-inch solid unobtainium plot armor to do that.
You have to convince yourself its ok to murder a pedestrian, my friends grandpa hit someone at a crosswalk that way, luckily they were ok and kept on walking but its always better to let your car get up to temp and defrost the windows and wipe down the side windows and mirrors
Every winter, I’m reminded of what driver vantage points some people think are optional. Half the windscreen and none of the other windows cleared? Good to go. It really explains what we see on the roads the rest of the year.
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