In honour of the first snowfall

[james_davis_nicoll]

I am staying indoors where I will relatively safe from Ontario drivers who will no doubt be just as surprised that it snowed as they have been each year since the automobile was first invented.

[Update: As far as I can tell, the plows and salt trucks stayed in their garages]

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Maine drivers are equally surprised.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

*laugh* They never learn, do they? Last night, in the near-freezing rain, they were doing 110kph on the very crowded 401. Today, all the buses were canceled. :p It's ridiculous.

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

570 News is saying the police have reported more than 200 accidents this morning.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

They cancelled the buses?

I hope they're getting more than the barely-an-inch I have here to merit that.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

We had snow over ice over water here this morning. The city buses were skating, and apparently the school boards was worried that conditions might deteriorate according to the morning weather warnings and the bus company would pull services in the afternoon, so they canceled the services today.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Ahh. I think I'll wear the good boots to class tonight, then.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I'm not complaining too much. My boss called me this morning and told me to work from home.

The good side: more places to go for lunch.
The bad side: I don't have a huge-ass monitor here at home and it's a pain to try to see everything I'm used to seeing at once in my development environment.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Pajamas!

All work that can be done in pajamas is superior work.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I would respond to this, but it would, no doubt, be considered TMI.

[daev.livejournal.com]

"The faster I drive, the less time I'll be on the icy road, so it's safer, right?!"

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

I have no such luxury I have to bike to work, though I could always cab it.

I think though that drivers have always been surprised by the first snowfall since they had things to drive and where in a climate to have snow. Actually I have to wonder if in times past the Inuit had the same response to the first snowfall when driving dog sleds.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

Had a first snow in Vancouver (well, not at sea level, but up at my university on top of a smallish mountain) a few days ago. Similar reaction, accidents went way up.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

One of the Matt Helm books makes a similar comment (though about drivers from New Mexico, I believe). I wonder if the sudden appearance of snow everywhere has that effect, or whether there is a short enough summer to counteract it?

For instance, it would be interesting to see the number of accidents on the first snowfall in, oh, Calgary, Edmonton, Whitehorse, and Anchorage.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

My parents used to live in Edmonton, and I'm pretty sure my mom said they forget how to drive in snow over what passes for the summer there too.

Personally, I think the phenomenon is probably a bit like any other skill you don't use for a while -- the first couple of times you do it after you pick up doing it again, you're going to be rusty. We acknowledge "rustiness" in just about every other field of endeavour; why are people shocked, shocked! that it happens with driving, too? (I know I'd be a problem on the roads if I tried to drive again, even assuming I had a license, as I haven't driven in any weather for almost ten years now.)

Ask any elementary school teacher how even commonly-used skills can get rusty after a relatively short amount of time, like summer vacation or even Spring Break...

[kraig.livejournal.com]

I don't think anybody is shocked at all that it happens.

Why that doesn't translate to "snowed last night, better leave earlier and go slow" is beyond me.

[zeborah]

Presumably people don't voluntarily get up a half hour earlier just to find out if it snowed or not so they can leave earlier if it did? I get up ridiculously early so I can sate my internet addiction before work every morning, but most people I know get up exactly when they have to in order to leave when they ordinarily leave and not a minute before.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

Presumably they also don't pay any attention to the forecasts the day before either, and feel no guilt in rushing so as to make their lack of proper planning somebody else's potential emergency. Most people I know do the same, but that doesn't make it right.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Generally speaking, checking the weather forecast the night before (whether newspaper, Internet, TV, or radio) will provide adequate warning that snow is on the way. It's not that hard to do…

[zeborah]

I don't casually watch tv, almost never listen to the radio, only sometimes skim part of the paper at work (usually a day after it's news), and am generally not interested enough in the weather to check a forecast on the internet. Of course I live in an excessively temperate country; were we regularly subject to snow I might have different habits.

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

In my experience, Ontario drivers tend to be *more* reckless when it gets icy, snowy, or rainy. Almost as if the weather is so miserable that they welcome death on the road as a sweet release.

[drcuriosity]

I've heard that Los Angelean drivers are quite similar with respect to rain. The thought of water suddenly coming out of the sky, rather than being in the ocean or coming out of bottles is apparently quite a mystery to them.

[(Anonymous)]

They can`t be more surprised than the drivers in Kobe.

Andreas Morlok

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Saskatoon drivers tend to act wonky the first major snow of the season as well. I think it was last winter where we had horrible conditions one day, and I saw some idiot driving on the slippery and rutty streets with a dog in her lap and only one hand on the wheel.

[velochicdunord.livejournal.com]

Even more fun that driving in it all (I was indoors writing a driving related knowledge test) during fall was skating over unsalted portions of it the next day in a very large bus.