JosephH Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 After 22 years it still amazes me all over again just how incompetent the drivers here really are. Quote
YocumRidge Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 Oh yeah, walking was faster than driving today as always happens in winter... Quote
denalidave Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 After 22 years it still amazes me all over again just how incompetent the drivers here really are. I agree but also wonder if the type of snow (wet & icy) is also a contributing factor? You would think that we get enough snow to the point where most folks would know how to drive in it, but apparently not. It makes sense that drivers are crippled by snow in places like Vegas, or Southern CA where they rarely get any snow, but Portland? You hear the news on the radio/tv and they make it sound like we got 10 feet of ice, when we just got a few inches. I used to deliver pizzas in Park City, UT and loved the days when we really got hammered. Tips were great, not many other drivers on the road and nobody complained when it took an hour or three for the pizza to show up. Plus, it was a blast driving around in gnarly winter conditions. Good times. Quote
rbw1966 Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 It generally snows ONCE a year in Portland (if that) and usually only only lasts a day or two (last year being the obvious exception). Thats hardly time for anyone living here for any length of time to develop enough expertise to drive in those conditions. Additionally, since very few people are actually FROM here and you have a mish-mash of driving behaviors from across the country its no surprise to me that a little snow wreaks complete havoc on the city. Â Add to that a healthy dose of media-induced hysteria, every one with a car jammed for the highways to get home. Â Â Quote
crackers Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 Oh My God. Â Thank you Joseph, Thank you. Â I can't believe how bad people in this town are at driving on snow and ice. I ended up going commando rally style on my drive from St. John's to Mt Tabor yesterday because every idiot on the main roads was managing to lose control going five miles an hour. Â Luckily, the "PDX Drivers" are generally scared of going down side streets, so i was able to keep up my speed pretty much the whole way. I taught one of my sewers how to drive into skids last night in the parking lot. It was pretty obvious that she had never even considered practicing driving in any conditions other than dry roads. Â I think that PDX Drivers are incompetent because they never try. Quote
YocumRidge Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 Witnessing the utter paralyzing horror that petrifies Portland drivers once a year during "The Snow" is the absolute, final truth that Oregon has the worst drivers in the Universe! People, you don't abandon AWD Subarus in the middle of the freeway (perpendicular to trafic at that!) just because 2 snowflakes fell out of the sky! Quote
John Frieh Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 abandon AWD Subarus in the middle of the freeway  Sounds like some great booty if you ask me. Finders keepers! Quote
murraysovereign Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 It generally snows ONCE a year in Portland (if that) and usually only only lasts a day or two (last year being the obvious exception). Thats hardly time for anyone living here for any length of time to develop enough expertise to drive in those conditions. Â That's close to the mark, I'd say, although I would argue that the type of snow we tend to get on the west coast is challenging to drive on for even experienced drivers. Growing up in the interior, where the snow persisted all winter, I used to laugh at the news from Vancouver when it snowed and all those stupid idiots can't drive and what a bunch of morons and... and then I moved to Vancouver and found my self driving on coastal snow. What an idiot. What a moron. I'd been driving on snow all my life - hell, I took my driver's exam during a snow storm - and I even had winter tires on my vehicle, so that wasn't an excuse either. But this wasn't like any snow I'd ever driven on. This stuff was greased wax compared to the nice cold dry powdery snow I'd grown up with. This stuff was hard to stand up on, never mind drive on. I ended up parking my car and walking, and it wasn't because I didn't know how to drive on snow. I knew how to drive on snow just fine. This wasn't snow - it was some bizarre fourth state of matter, not quite solid, not quite liquid, with a coefficient of friction so low it wouldn't register on any instrument known to science. So I think that's part of the problem - coastal snow is just harder to maintain control on. Â And as for the infrequency, I had a funny experience with a bunch of guys from Saskatchewan. We were all working on a construction job in Kelowna, and were enjoying a couple of beers after work one day at the local pub. On the TV was a news report showing the chaos caused by a mild snowfall that the drivers were obviously not dealing with very well. One little montage showed car after car after car all sliding off the same turn, piling up at the bottom of the embankment like cordwood. The prairie boys were all having a good time laughing at all those idiots in Vancouver who don't know how to drive on snow, what a bunch of morons... the usual. And then it became apparent the news story wasn't from Vancouver after all. Seems this was the first snowfall of the year in Regina, and it was causing chaos. Not because people in Regina can't drive on snow, but because it was the first snow of the season, and they were having to re-learn how to drive on snow after a nice long summer of bare dry roads. Over the years I've seen the same thing while living in Calgary, Edmonton, Banff, Vernon, and now at the coast. The first snowfall of the season causes chaos, no matter where it is. Drivers everywhere forget how to drive on snow over the summer, and have to learn all over again with the first snowfall or two. After that, they're fine for the rest of the winter. Â But here at the coast, because of the milder climate, any time it snows it's pretty much always the first (and only) snow of the season. At the coast we don't often get to see the second and third and fourth and fifth snows of the season, so we never get the opportunity to demonstrate that, just like those people in Regina, once we get past the first chaotic day or two we can drive on snow just fine. Last winter was the exception that proved the rule - after a few days of snow-covered roads, everyone adapted and managed without any difficulty. Â And it's further complicated by the fact so few people at the coast are running anything better than 3-year-old all-season tires on their vehicles. It is really hard to cough up the bucks for proper snow tires when you know damned well they're only going to be needed for a couple of days around Christmas, and the rest of the winter they'll just be wearing down on bare pavement. Â And if I really think about it, I've been involved in a half-dozen vehicle collisions and ditchings and roll-overs and such over the years, sometimes as driver, sometimes as passenger, sometimes I was out of control, sometimes the other guy was. They've all happened on snow, and they all happened when I was living in the interior, where I and everyone else "knew how to drive on snow". In all the time I've lived at the coast (about 15 years all told), not so much as a scratched bumper, despite the fact that we apparently are all so much worse drivers around here. Quote
JosephH Posted December 30, 2009 Author Posted December 30, 2009 It generally snows ONCE a year in Portland (if that) and usually only only lasts a day or two (last year being the obvious exception). Thats hardly time for anyone living here for any length of time to develop enough expertise to drive in those conditions. And this explains why it's also complete chaos every year for the first three weeks of steady rain? It's like OMG! It's raining in Oregon! Â The first snowfall of the season causes chaos, no matter where it is. That's not the case in Chicago, where they heartily laugh at Saskachetoons... Â Â Quote
Mtguide Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 Murraysov's got the answer. The colder it is, the better the traction, even on 6" of black ice. Temperatures below zero provide excellent traction for most vehicles, even with worn highway tread, seldom even requiring chains or studs. But when the temperature is right around 30F to 32F,it really is extremely difficult to drive on. Chains, studs, or sand and gravel, are the only things that help then, I don't care if you're a 40-year expert trucker from Point Barrow or Novosibisrsk. Â As for why there seems to be a higher incidence of accidents in the interior, just the fact that there are prolonged periods of ice and snow would result in a higher probability, plus the fact that maybe people used to driving on it might tend to take things a little more for granted on occasion and fail to watch their speed, or allow for changing conditions, such as a rise in temps. Seems like anytime you see news footage of blizzards in the Dakotas or the Midwest, there's always someone barreling along at 70 mph going through the picture. What we probably don't get to see is the footage of that same guy piled up in the ditch, or worse, a few miles down the road. Quote
JosephH Posted December 30, 2009 Author Posted December 30, 2009 Actually, being from Chicago, you rarely see anyone in a ditch in any weather and they drive like they're actually attempting to get somewhere. Ditto for Minneapolis, Detroit and Milwaukee. Quote
geoff Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 Grew up down the road from Chicago in STL. Don't remember many hills back there, or in Chicago. When it snowed everyone in town would go to the only hill in the city, Art Hill. Â Anyhow, most folks shouldn't drive rain or shine but, it was a bit tough getting around my neighborhood. Mind you this is with no warning to grab your chains and no help from road crews. Â Â Quote
denalidave Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 Chains are AID! Â (Not that there is anything wrong with that...) Quote
olyclimber Posted December 30, 2009 Posted December 30, 2009 who could forget this classic from a few years back  [video:youtube]qofe64lIvNg Quote
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