Come on Metro, you can’t handle a little snow?
What is it about a modest fall of snow that causes the collective driving IQ of the South Coast to drop with the temperature to somewhere around freezing?
That would be about one degree above zero.
It’s not as though snow is completely alien here. You can’t go outside on a clear day without seeing it shining on Mount Seymour. And, on average, snow falls here every year, typically in December and through to late February or early March.
On average, we get a dusting or more on about nine days every winter. So, the expectation is for snow about 10 per cent of the time in winter.
Yet every year it’s like snowmageddon with lamentations more suitable to the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rather than um, the same old, same old.
Thus, here we are, another winter, another round of headlines: “Second snowstorm causes traffic trouble in Metro,” “Snow causing closures and traffic incidents,” “Snow falls on Lower Mainland again disrupting morning commute.”
Come on, it doesn’t have to be an annual demolition derby on the roads. Just apply the common sense that drivers in most of the rest of British Columbia and Canada apply to winter travel.
You know, folks like those who live in the Interior mountains where some average 17 metres of snowfall. Or Tahtsa Lake where on a bad day the snowfall can be 145 centimetres — yes, that’s for one day.
When I called Shelley Bird, the cheery voice of Glacier National Park, where at the highest weather station they get an average — please note that is an average — seasonal snowfall of 1,433 centimetres and expressed Metro’s 10-centimetre snow woes, she laughed. Not in a snarky way, just kind of bemused.
“Uh, in Roger’s Pass we have 134 avalanche slopes near the highway,” she noted.
How many avalanches do they have to deal with in a typical year? She thought a bit. “Off the top of my head I can’t say exactly,” she said. “Quite a few.”
Meanwhile, here in the bubble of South Coast self-absorption, we deal poorly with a few centimetres while simultaneously driving like it was a dry track at the Indy 500 rather than slippery commuter roads.
In 45 minutes of observing Monday, I tallied every one of the follies that safety authorities tell us are the leading contributors to winter traffic accidents: following too closely, driving too fast for the conditions, abruptly changing lanes, braking hard and sliding, hitting the gas on slippery hills instead of easing off.
Sheesh, we know it’s going to snow every winter and that when it’s not snowing it’s going to rain and that temperatures are going to fall.
So, go get some winter tires, already. Even inexpensive ones will vastly improve handling and stopping on ice, snow, slush — and even when there’s no snow on winter’s cold, wet roads — compared to those supposedly all-season tires the marketing folks assure us are all we will ever need.
Hey, the all-seasons are great for summer, but just about every driving expert will tell you that, snow or no snow, changing to winter tires when temperatures drop is the wise decision because they are constructed differently and with different materials.
Then, when you’ve got the right tires, refresh your memory of the basic instructions about driving in winter conditions, particularly the new fallen snow you will encounter just about every winter at some point.
They would be: Wait until the windows and mirrors defog; don’t just brush the snow off your windshield, get it off the roof, too, so it doesn’t blow off and plop in the windshield of the following driver; the speed limit is a maximum, not a minimum, so slow down in the snow and slush; lay off the brakes; lay off the accelerator; all-wheel drive doesn’t give you an automatic dispensation from the laws of momentum, it might get you through deep snow better but it won’t help you stop any faster.
But there you go, we only have snow an average of nine days every year so why bother to be sensible when complaining will suffice.