Your thoughts on the snow?
I personally enjoy the snow, except for the fact that my driveway's about 500 feet long, and when we had the foot of snow around Christmas it was a bit of a challenge getting my little Saturn sedan through that.
Once I got out to the street it was pretty easy going. But I also live in a pretty flat part of Kenmore, close to a major arterial (522), so I don't have to deal with hills and local municipalities' complete inadequacy in clearing them.
Once I got out to the street it was pretty easy going. But I also live in a pretty flat part of Kenmore, close to a major arterial (522), so I don't have to deal with hills and local municipalities' complete inadequacy in clearing them.
Comments
I like rain. I don't like snow. Snow, go away!
In Seattle, its amusing when we get a couple inches and it shuts down the city for a day or two (holiday from work, taking it easy).
This year was just insane, however. And my car can't handle 6" of snow, it gets high centered and my traction is lousy. I drove to family christmas eve dinner and it was pretty stressful, even though I actually know how to drive on snow (usually I can drive up to stevens or snoqualmie pass in my car, even under a traction tires advisory because they plow those roads and i'm not an complete idiot).
I need to buy a small pickup and get some good rain/traction tires for it.
Questions:
- Why do people here not give you more space behind you when following you downhill in snow? (especially the minivan with no chains tailgating me down pike)
- Why do people spin their tires all the way up hills?
- Why do people go slow up hills?
- Why do pedestrians still aggressively cross the street like you're going to be able to stop for them?
1 part unfamiliarity, 2-99 parts stupidity.
Pedestrian behavior is especially amusing to me. I realize it's impossible to turn off the iPod and actually acknowledge one's surroundings, but in my hours of waiting for buses I saw plenty of people walk across hill side roads without ever looking up the hill to see if a vehicle was coming down. I realize that you have "right of way" but that doesn't do a lot of good when you're impaled on someone's bumper.
Most of the traffic situations are more unfamiliarity with how cars behave in snow than anything else. In college I lived on the top of a fairly steep hill (probably comparable to going up Seneca from 1st to 5th, give or take) and several people that visited me over the years mentioned that the stop signs had been knocked down. I had to explain that you don't stop going up the hill in snow, even if there IS a stop sign, because you most likely will never get going again. So the roads had 3 ways stops, though all the locals acknowledged that the stop on the downslope was more a suggestion. But then it snowed every day there, and you learned quickly - or learned the hard way.
Forgot - small pickups, generally speaking, are lousy in the snow even with 4wd.