248 Thoughts about Driving in Winter

It’s been something of a wild ride for us in Omaha as winter has gotten under way.  We are still in a drought, so our problem hasn’t been excessive snow or rain, but the temperature has been widely variable from unusually warm to about as cold as we’ve experienced since we moved here in 2014.  I’m having no trouble believing in the reality of a changing climate.

Anyway, thinking about winter got me to thinking about driving in winter, which has been an annoyance of mine for as long as I’ve been driving.  I DID have a minor mishap when I was a teenager by taking a corner a bit faster that I should have (I guess) on a city street about a block from my folks’ house and sliding into the front bumper of a neighbor’s car.  This did no real damage to either vehicle, but was a bit scary for me as I’ve probably never felt so completely helpless behind the wheel before, or since.  Still, while I do make a serious effort to be extra careful while driving during the winter, I have to wonder why so many people don’t seem to take winter driving more seriously.  

So, I thought I’d take a look through my files and see if I could come up with a blog post related to driving in the winter which might be fun and, perhaps, a bit thought-provoking.  Here’s what I came up with.

 There ARE some ways one can spot a driver who MIGHT be of concern during bad weather.  This cartoon suggests some of the things to watch out for:

Of course, the local authorities do (generally) try to make an effort to warn drivers of potentially hazardous conditions when they are likely to occur.  Such warnings can be useful, but only when they make sense.  (NOTE: this COULD be taken as a reference to the educational attainments of the people hired by the DOT, but that might be construed as overly negative commentary.)  I THINK this is a spelling error, but I could be incorrect.

On the other hand, people do often get upset when their car is muddied or splattered by road conditions.  However, it would seem possible that that things COULD be worse…

It’s also true, of course, that there are times when even our cars appear to wish that we would just leave them alone to deal with the weather, etc., as best they can, without our making demands on them which they’d just as soon ignore.  Case in point…

There are some people, of course, who try to insist that there’s really never anything wrong with THEIR vehicle, or, at least nothing which they aren’t well qualified to deal with in their own garage, or driveway.  My suspicions have always been that there are fewer of these people and they are harder to find than many would like to admit.  Still, the “auto” shown below would appear to be an example of “home”  automobile repair taken to a bit of an extreme…

I suspect that even the most ardent home mechanic will probably have to accept the idea that, at some point, repairing his “beauty” may be beyond his ability.  My suspicion is that this picture may well be an example of such an circumstance.

Some people just instinctively seem to know how to deal with any driving situation, however.  Take this example from Zits.

I’ll see ya down the road in a couple of weeks.

🖖🏼 LLAP,

Dr. B

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”  
​                                                                                                  — Nelson Mandela

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic; capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”                                                                        ― Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows