Snow Day

A heavy snow sets off a predictable flurry of activities, some universal, some peculiar to myself. I like snow very much. It can be a pain but I like watching it fall and I like seeing it on the ground. I also like to venture forth into the snow, as I always put it, either on foot (there's always a trip to the grocery store on the agenda) or by car.

Last night, one of my kids said they wanted to sleep over at a friends's house about a 20 minute drive from here and could I pick her up in the morning. I said okay knowing what I was getting into. This morning, I cleared off the car and ventured out into the white. I did a lot of my early driving when I was in college in upstate New York, so I'm a pretty skilled driver in these kinds of conditions and I kind of enjoy it.

Driving in the snow is all about friction. Actually, all of driving is about friction, though friction is boring and so nobody ever talks about it. I think one of the reasons people drive too fast is they don't really think about the massive force that's necessary to bring a one ton object moving at 60 miles per hour to a stop. And all of that force is provided by friction between the tires and the road. Fortunately, most tires and most roads are designed to maximize the coefficient of friction between them. In the snow, however, you've still got the tires but the road surface is missing and 4 wheel drive or even 40 wheel drive if there was such a thing is going to change that.

It's a little unnerving if you haven't done it much, but the key to driving in the snow is to not expect the tires to grab the road. This is a pretty foreign idea, and it means driving as if you can't stop and you can't turn. So when I drive in the snow I go at a speed such that I can stop without skidding and control both my speed and angle of approach to a turn to minimize the skid. I also try to keep breaking and accelerating to a minimum. Rolling with my foot off the accelerator pedal is best.

Skidding is bad, but you can (usually) live with it if you know what you're doing. The key is that you can only control the car when your wheels are turning and in contact with the road. This means that if you skid, you must turn in the direction you're skidding. Most spins happen when people try to straighten the car out by turning against the skid, but that only makes it worse. If you have a car with antilock breaks you can keep your foot on the break. If not, you have to take your foot off immediately because it's the breaking that's causing you to skid.

And however hard you try, you will occasionally lose control of the car, and while it's perfectly appropriate to react with a succinct "I'm f#@&ed.," sometimes you have to sit back, enjoy the ride, and hope the car behind you doesn't do the same thing.

Besides skidding, the other dangerous thing about driving in the snow is other drivers. There are few things scarier than driving along in the snow and encountering someone who does not know what they're doing- the back of their car swinging wildly back and forth. This is the main argument against recreationally driving in the snow. I've had terrifying experiences on the Turnpike when people who assume 4-wheel drive makes you perfectly safe start changing lanes suddenly at high speed only to lose control halfway in between.

OK. Time to light a fire and fall asleep on the couch.