To be fair, we've had a good dumping of snow in the North Highlands, about two feet here.
And yes, some roads are impassable right now and smaller side roads and villages need a certain level of common sense.
But, we have one main 60mph road. It's clear, gritted and perfectly safe. But there are still so many drivers who won't go over 15mph, tap their brakes like they're tapping along to music and don't clear more than a tiny porthole of snow on the windscreen!
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Tbf, I lived in Ottawa for 11 years and absolutely wouldn't want to drive on most of the tyres I see here in snow...
A van just crashed into my kids school bus. All fine but they slid on the ice apparently.
Well at least they started school later to avoid the ice....
Plus this is cornwall. The garden is green.
Yup, been living in northern BC for the last few years. The thought of not having winter tires on terrifies me.
Frozen windscreen washer bottles, salt spray from wet roads, and low angled bright sunlight means that even on clear roads you can go round a bend and suddenly end up driving with very reduced visibility. Every layby on my commute yesterday was filled with people who'd pulled over to try to wash the grit off their windscreen with handfuls of snow
This was me yesterday after driving 10 minutes thw grit formed a film across the windscreen doing 50 in the left hand lane frantically squeezing the windscreen wash so I could actually see took another 5 for them to start working and no safe spot to pull over.
I ended up holding down the washer button and broke the pump the other day. I thought it was just the nozzles on the end that was frozen, not the entire system.
Put some vodka in the washer bottle to beef up the screenwash.
This is actually good advice. Also kills of any algae growth the can build up and block all the pipes
Oh god, same here! It's never happened to me before and it was terrifying.
Screenwash here is crap, why does the -10 stuff freeze at -1
"bright sunlight" - ah yes, I remember that stuff. Not seen it since last year though.
How are windscreen washer bottles freezing? Aren't they meant to have anti freeze in them?
Even with antifreeze in the washer fluid it won't stop ice covering the nozzles or washer pipes freezing when the alcohol evaporates from left over fluid
My screen wash is meant to be good down to -10.
The lowest my car recorded today on my commute was -7.
My washer bottle was not frozen (I guess because it's next to the engine which chucks out a bunch of heat) but the screen wash was freezing the instant it hit my windscreen...
Theres different types, and if you dilute the concentrate with water it raises the freezing point. And then there are some people that just use water because they're cheap or lazy
Well if you're too cheap or lazy to actually use anti freeze when you're driving in snow in the Highlands, you just might be the sort of person with two brain cells both fighting for third place!
I don't think people are emptying out their washer bottles to put entirely fresh stuff in the day before it snows.
Happened to me actually, I still had the yellow summer screenwash in the tank so when I sprayed it just froze on the windshield. I went into Asda and bought their pink winter screenwash, sprayed out the old stuff and filled it up
You can buy winter concentrated screen wash even in summer, cut it with water during the summer and then gradually switch to more concentrated liquid as winter approaches. We had several years in a row when the min temp in mid December can get to about -5, people should've learned.
My old car would get ice in the nozzles where the water comes out completely blocking them.
I had this on Monday, the washer nozzles are mounted to the wiper arms… they froze solid at -6 and never got warm enough to defrost while driving… fuming
It is safe until it isn't I suppose. The roads I usually take to work at 60mph are gritted but I have been doing 45mph at the most over the past couple of days. There was a van on its side on a gritted, straight road yesterday which had traffic backed up both ways.
I get your point and people can be dickheads but you can also go too far the other way. I have no issue with people taking it easy when it has been -5 for a few days
I thought their point was, scrape your car.
I'm encountering the opposite problem. Staying in East Sussex with my daughter but live in Lancashire. The drivers here seemingly make no concession for the lack of grip. Which may go some way to explaining why they are currently trying to extricate cars from hedges, ditches, walls and in one case, a bus.
i make sure to take it all off before i start, having it slip forward and blind you at random is not so fun
ive seen people driving about with just a small window cut into the snow on the windscreen whole rest of the car covered -- fotunately they mostly get pulled over
Where I live it's mostly suv drivers who fear the snow in some ways it's nice as they stay home and the roads are some what safer
But it's the ones who go out I fear
Anyone driving an SUV is a threat to me. Sheep can't drive very well, not around where I live anyway.
For me it's land rover drivers I've had too many near misses the last year as all the ones near me speed and deive like mad especially at the school run
We've had a few local shops close early the last few days so I get that some people have to go out.
But if you're that scared of the snow and driving, is 8:00am, over an hour before sunrise, really the best time? Is it that important you're at the supermarket the second the doors open?
Roads are probably at their best around then especially just after they've been gritted or plowed
But for the most part if possible just walk to the shop it'll be way safer
I don't understand. Most of the UK gets very little snow but Scotland? Surely expected for at least a couple of weeks? What happened to common sense?
Common sense has gone out the window in the last decade or so
Pretty sure if you had the definitive answer to that, you'd be a very rich person! High demand and short supply.
It hasn't reliablely snowed in Scotland for decades. I've never once driven in the snow after 6 years.
Common sense is not a flower that grows in every garden.
Three years ago, I was driving along at about 30 mph on a 50 mph main road. It had just snowed, but the main roads were clear. Out of a side road, a Land Rover drives straight out into the main road and into me, T-boning me from the right, and totalling my vehicle. "Ooh, I didn't see you! Weeeeeeh..."
If I'd been driving at 50 mph, it would not just have been material damage.
If you drive like you're the best driver on the road, the worst drivers out there will put you in your place. "Adapt your speed to the conditions" = "assume other road drivers are on drugs/not paying attention".
You can get T-boned in any weather at any speed. Are you also driving at 30 on a 50 on a clear, dry day too?
You are aware that likelihood increases with adverse weather right?
Brits’ inability to deal with snow never ceases to amaze me
It is mostly down to car tyres. chuck a pair of decent allseasons like the Cross Climates on any car and they will be fine in the snow, but at the same time summer tyres or ditch finders will just spin with no grip
It’s just too infrequent (and seems to be getting less frequent) for most people to have a good understanding of how to handle it. Why waste money on winter tyres in the south when you’ll probably only need them for 3 days a year. Why would councils buy expensive gritters / snow ploughs when they will barely be used.
I’m from the north east of Scotland so I know how to keep safe in snow and ice. But living in the south west of England now, people down here either panic at the slightest bit of frost, or take literally no precautions at all. They just havent got enough experience or been taught what to do
I have a GR yaris currently on crossclimate tyres.
I still avoid driving in the snow if I can help it, difficult to control for of drivers sliding around on their summer tyres driving too fast for the conditions.
I sat in my car for 20 minutes yesterday morning with the heater on full blast before I began the 2 mile journey to attend a dentist appointment. I'd already poured 2 kettles of warm water over the windshield. That pesky frozen hail was a bugger to shift.
Ah Brits and the snow. Rare enough that few bothers to learn to deal with it, common enough that it's a traditional moan this time of year. Between people not being able to afford tyres when they need them, to not buying winter tyres at all (like I genuinely know no one outside of Europeans and off road guys that have a set of winters for the vehicle in the UK), as well as people who can be assed to clear snow and ice, and the people who forget how to drive when they see white, it's always chaos this time of year
As a European in the UK, I haven't used winter tyres since I moved here. I've only used summer tyres, mostly for the superior performance on the wet. Most winters are too mild and it doesn't snow enough to have a separate set of winter tyres. I think the UK is the perfect country for all season tyres.
Summer tyres work for me because I know what their limits are and I have snow chains ready if necessary.