This stems from events on Sunday evening, but it’s taken me a bit to figure out the best way to phrase things. Early drafts sounded pompous, middle ones were whiny, late drafts had an annoying patronizing tone.
Then I figured, what the heck… I’ll see if I can be all three.
Sunday night we were driving back from my Fiancee’s sister’s place when it started to snow. It was wet, heavy stuff, and the conditions were great for it to pack down quickly and get very slippery, very fast. I slowed down as carefully as I could, sometimes dropping down to under 30 MPH.
A lot of people didn’t.
We passed at least half a dozen cars off the road, and saw tracks left by some people who had managed to go off and then get back on. There were even a couple of times where we could see the tail lights of cars ahead of us going off the road. One place had three cars in the ditch, one of them was an SUV lying on its roof.
The thing that I found annoying was the number of people who, when I slowed down, went zipping past me. Big trucks and SUVs were the worst offenders. Size and four-wheel-drive gives some people an unwarranted sense of invulnerability. All size does is guarantee that there will be more car on top of you when you flip over. All four wheel drive does is help you get out of the ditch once you slide in. It’s not a substitute for good driving.
I guess all I’m trying to say is that if the conditions are poor, you should drive slower than the speed limit. If you see someone slowing down, trust that they know what they’re doing.
That’s it for now. I’ll probably post some pictures of interesting houseplants tomorrow morning to try and apologize for this little rant. 🙂
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