Terrible scene. Atlanta snow then instant ice rink.

In reply to Anti-stance:

Sometimes there's not a lot you can do. I got caught in a similar situation near work a few years ago. A hill with a light at the top iced up and nobody could get up it. Cars started sliding out of control. I was lucky and was able to turn off onto another street and go a different way.

It's easy to watch videos like that an play arm-chair driver and say, "I'd do this or that..." but in the real world, it's not always so easy. The only thing I can say is if you constantly look ahead you'll have a better chance at avoiding the situation. If I crest a hill and see cars everywhere, I would hope I'd be able to get over to the side of the road before physics took over.

When I knew there was ice on the hills near my house after I got home, I kept my non-ice drivin ass at the house. I'm not wrecking my car to go back to work.

In reply to Anti-stance:

Which is the sensible thing to do.

In my ripe old age of 43, I've decided I really don't care about being a bad-ass anymore and getting to work at oh-effing-dark early like I usually do when it snows. If it's snowing when I go to bed and a significant amount is predicted, I don't even set my alarm. I wake up, have some breakfast, wait until the sun comes up, clear the driveway and sidewalk (if I'm lucky, the car is in the garage), then casually drive into work whenever and take a 1/2 a vacation day. I did this for the last two snow falls and enjoyed a calm, pleasant drive in on mostly empty roads. It was nice. I'm nowhere near so important that being a few hours late will matter to anyone.

A friend of mine is a hospital nurse. She sort-of is important. So if she has to work during a snow storm, she goes in many hours early.

Anti-stance wrote: I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea how to drive in this crap right here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ft097tgr0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6249iHSJsKo I've got the snow down, but I am willing to get some pointers on driving on hills covered in ice from people other than these northerners in this video.

Half the cars in this sort of video are genuinely screwed, be it conditions or tires, the other half they seem to freak at the first hint of sideways and just randomly play with the controls, sometimes you'll even hear them get on the throttle, hook up and ram things.

DrBoost wrote: every car with less than 500 hp is delivered with all seasons.

just for the sake of argument....my 2009 WRX (and all others) was delivered with summer UHP tires. Mazdaspeed3 as well, and a few others I can think of.

I actually love it, since in this area most people seem to take them off and buy all-seasons, thereby giving me a cheap source of low-miles, cheap takeoff summer tires in the size I want (I run performance winters in the winter).

Anti-stance wrote: I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea how to drive in this crap right here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ft097tgr0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6249iHSJsKo I've got the snow down, but I am willing to get some pointers on driving on hills covered in ice from people other than these northerners in this video.

The common thread with the bazillion youtube vids on cars sliding around icy roads seems to be: 1. the people doing the crashing are overwhelmingly going far faster than they should be in the first place. 2. the people doing the crashing are doing something stupid, like trying to drive up or down a steep hill that is covered in ice (what, there was no ice on the flat roads before you got to the hill??). 3. good chance that most of them have tires not suited to winter conditions.

Driving in snow and ice isn't hard if you actually THINK about what you're doing, concentrate every moment, put your damn cell phone down, and drive slow enough to suit conditions. And don't drive at all if your car doesn't have the right tires.

Winter driving has little to do with how great a driver you are, and almost everything to do with using your brain to determine what your car and abilities will allow you to safely do. Period. If you're putting your car into a ditch on an icy road, it's almost always YOUR fault for one of the three reasons above.

^^ in regard to that statement, it isn't limited to southerners, or tweeners (like here in DC) or people in the north. I've lived in all places, and all places have their share of stupid shiny happy people who don't THINK before the drive (in the snow, or in general). SO don't take that as me saying that people in the south are stupid because they can't drive in the snow. That's not what I meant ;)

I don't know, maybe I'm defective, but I dropped the top on my S2000 on this snow day and drove it sideways to the store to make a booze run for all my friends with AWD cars that couldn't go anywhere. This was with halfway-bald Star Specs. Apparently these tires are good in heat, rain, AND ice :P

Atlanta isn't flat, I grew up in Maine and Connecticut which also aren't flat, and even there, when hills were bad even with treatment and studded snow tires I'd have problems. When we start talking about this storm its really not the drivers or the tires, its the topography mixed with gridlock that prevented people from driving their mostly 2wd cars up and down untreated icy hills from a standing start. There really arent a lot of alternative flat routes one can take around the city or burbs.

Everyone else in the country seems more upset than anyone whose lived here for more than a decade. Once you do a few of these you learn to help others stay safe and otherwise get a good story about SnowJam 82, 93, 01, 11, 13...

lnlogauge wrote: There was a ridiculous amount of 18 wheelers that were dumber than you. They were most of the ones getting stuck. I saw on the news, a ford f350 pulling 18wheelers up a hill. If Ford doesn't latch on to that video, they are missing out on some serious marketing.

I'd love to see Ford use this video, but sadly, they won't. Some weasel with a law degree will tell them "we can't use that. If we do we're telling everyone who owned an F350 or even a 2WD Ranger that they can pull tractor-trailers up hills. We can't afford to replace transmissions, frames, and stuff. We can't even put a disclaimer in the ad that it was a professional driver, or a closed course. In fact, maybe we should show that video as a PSA and tell the public that this was a rogue driver and what he did was NOT approved by Ford Motor Company."

DrBoost wrote:

lnlogauge wrote: There was a ridiculous amount of 18 wheelers that were dumber than you. They were most of the ones getting stuck. I saw on the news, a ford f350 pulling 18wheelers up a hill. If Ford doesn't latch on to that video, they are missing out on some serious marketing.

I'd love to see Ford use this video, but sadly, they won't. Some weasel with a law degree will tell them "we can't use that. If we do we're telling everyone who owned an F350 or even a 2WD Ranger that they can pull tractor-trailers up hills. We can't afford to replace transmissions, frames, and stuff. We can't even put a disclaimer in the ad that it was a professional driver, or a closed course. In fact, maybe we should show that video as a PSA and tell the public that this was a rogue driver and what he did was NOT approved by Ford Motor Company."

This was already done on Goldrush when they used an F350 to pull a loaded heavy equipment rig when it got stuck in the mud going up a hill

DrBoost wrote:

lnlogauge wrote: There was a ridiculous amount of 18 wheelers that were dumber than you. They were most of the ones getting stuck. I saw on the news, a ford f350 pulling 18wheelers up a hill. If Ford doesn't latch on to that video, they are missing out on some serious marketing.

I'd love to see Ford use this video, but sadly, they won't. Some weasel with a law degree will tell them "we can't use that. If we do we're telling everyone who owned an F350 or even a 2WD Ranger that they can pull tractor-trailers up hills. We can't afford to replace transmissions, frames, and stuff. We can't even put a disclaimer in the ad that it was a professional driver, or a closed course. In fact, maybe we should show that video as a PSA and tell the public that this was a rogue driver and what he did was NOT approved by Ford Motor Company."

wonder "how the OMG the lawyers won't let us use that" squares with the Tundra towing the Space Shuttle ?

Anti-stance wrote: I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea how to drive in this crap right here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ft097tgr0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6249iHSJsKo I've got the snow down, but I am willing to get some pointers on driving on hills covered in ice from people other than these northerners in this video.

ok 2 points that are very important here.

seattle is not "northerners" - they are northwest $8 coffee drinking pot smoking sweater wearing hippies.

they're stupid in pittsburgh.

the best way to avoid that is not drive on it. common sense destroys all driving skill, experience, and tires when it comes to driving on ice. we had an overnight ice storm at the beginning of november. i made it to the home depot pulling my trailer, said forget this there is no way i'm killing myself or someone else with 10k lbs of truck, trailer, and tools, and went home.

the best way to get home if you're out and that crap happens, is pick a backroads route where you can stick your right side tires on the grass/gravel/dirt/snow at the edge of the road if at all possible. i understand that's not possible in the cities with a curb. and pittsburgh is just screwed because there is not one flat stretch of road in the whole county.

Datsun1500 wrote: In reply to wbjones: It's tough to find a space shuttle to try and recreate it though. I'd love to see a lawsuit like that though just to hear "so exactly where did you get this shuttle sir?"

what I meant was, how does Toyota get away with using an ad showing a Tundra doing something that it "obviously" wasn't intended to do ( F350's pulling tractor trailers would be piece of cake compared to shuttle) and Ford can't … and don't get me wrong … I agree with Dr. Boost about the lawyers thing ….

patgizz wrote:

Anti-stance wrote: I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea how to drive in this crap right here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ft097tgr0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6249iHSJsKo I've got the snow down, but I am willing to get some pointers on driving on hills covered in ice from people other than these northerners in this video.

ok 2 points that are very important here. seattle is not "northerners" - they are northwest $8 coffee drinking pot smoking sweater wearing hippies. they're stupid in pittsburgh. the best way to avoid that is not drive on it. common sense destroys all driving skill, experience, and tires when it comes to driving on ice. we had an overnight ice storm at the beginning of november. i made it to the home depot pulling my trailer, said forget this there is no way i'm killing myself or someone else with 10k lbs of truck, trailer, and tools, and went home. the best way to get home if you're out and that crap happens, is pick a backroads route where you can stick your right side tires on the grass/gravel/dirt/snow at the edge of the road if at all possible. i understand that's not possible in the cities with a curb. and pittsburgh is just screwed because there is not one flat stretch of road in the whole county.

as far as the Atlanta thing .. .keep in mind, that from the traffic pics. it was a matter of a few min. and even the surface/side roads were gridlocked

in this case it changed from a "bit" of snow to ice VERY quickly.

thousands of cars, school busses hit the roads with in mins. of each other …

the city/county did a peepoor job of anticipating the upcoming problems …

the drivers panicked … most don't have much/any experience in any weather worse than rain (how quickly they forget from yr to yr … even up north)

most don't have anything better than no season tires … and once it becomes gridlocked, it doesn't matter how GREAT a driver someone is … they are just as stuck as the clueless ones

I read on another forum where two people left work 10 min. apart going the same direction home … both had drives of about 10 mi. the first made it home in a little over 2 hrs. the second was still stuck in gridlocked traffic 10 hrs later

lnlogauge wrote: There was a ridiculous amount of 18 wheelers that were dumber than you. They were most of the ones getting stuck.

I'm not trying to defend all truck drivers that were in all this mess with this response as I'm sure some of them could have avoided this, but a lot of people (probably most) that do not drive 18 wheelers don't fully understand a lot of aspects of driving these things. I know I didn't before I started driving them. First off, the ratio of cars to trucks was pretty great. There were definitely much more cars than trucks out there. They were causing many more problems than the trucks. Some of these four wheelers even help cause problems that the trucks can't avoid, thus causing more problems where it looks like the truck initiated (such as a car cutting off a truck and the truck has to slam on brakes and then slides and the initial car gets on down the road making it look like the trucker effed up). Secondly, trucks can't just hop off the roads at any given point like four wheelers can. Four wheelers can jump off any exit and pull into whatever parking lot and get to a safe place whereas 18 wheelers are very much restricted. There are only 3 truck stops all the way around I-285 and they are pretty small for the amount of truck traffic that comes around Atlanta. And lastly, this storm jumped in and got messy really quick. The people in cars had a choice. They could have stayed at the office or wherever they were (I know I wouldn't have wanted to, either) while truck drivers really didn't have that kind of choice (the OTR truckers, that is). And when all hell broke loose, it all broke loose at the same time and everyone jammed the roads all at once. The trucks were pretty much innocent bystanders. They just got caught up in all the hubbub of everyone trying to get home.

Again, I'm not trying to take all blame off all truck drivers, but am trying to shed some light from the perspective of someone sitting a little higher up than most others.

DeadSkunk wrote: In reply to qdseeker: Are they just totally inappropriate for packed snow or ice?

It doesn't take much to make wheels spin. I have to get at the right angle and a little extra throttle just to get out of my driveway (on a dry day) or my tires will spin. I have a sloping away from the road driveway and at the bottom is flat. This is where my tractor sits. I couldn't leave the house for 2 days because I couldn't get over a patch of ice that my Odyssey drove right over. Having the added weight of a trailer doesn't always help. Sometimes, it just makes it worse.

irish44j wrote: 1. the people doing the crashing are overwhelmingly going far faster than they should be in the first place.

That is the number one issue. In my efforts to get home on Tuesday, I saw so many four wheelers flying past me I just knew I was going to see them up ahead on the side of the freeway. So many people are oblivious to their surroundings and what is going on. They think that just because everything is fine right where they are that it will be the same up ahead.

Tsk. Tsk.

Raze wrote: When we start talking about this storm its really not the drivers or the tires....

It actually is the drivers. It's the ignorance to what is going on around them. Topography does have an effect on what happens, but if you have a driver of a car that is unfazed by his/her surroundings, then it doesn't matter if you're going up hill, down hill or straight ahead. The people I saw flying past me Tuesday morning were on straight flat surfaces. Topography is a secondary issue to a drivers smarts to a situation.

I should have wrote something on Wed or Thurs but, oh well. Anyway, on Wed, in Eastern NC, we had about 3-4 inches of snow and it snows here about every 2-3 years. We had very little ice but we had hard packed snow. I was impressed at how people were driving very well in the snow and a heavy majority of people weren't on the roads. I didn't realize it until Thurs but due to my all season tires that are low on tread and don't have grip anymore I had trouble driving on the snow. I was trying to drift on the snow(91 Camaro) and it was difficult due to the rarity of a big snowstorm here. (I lived in Colorado for a couple of years.) It was also very comical that I got stuck on the slightest of inclines due to the condition of my tires. The next day I drove my 99 Sable with front all season tires in above average condition and I had way more traction on the packed snow. FWD helped but the tires were worlds better. I also for once wished I had a 4-wheeler since a few people in my neighborhood had some and they seemed to be having a fun time driving on a 45 mph road in the snow.

Staying home with the kids because of snow