More Bloody Snow

When I titled the previous post 'Let it Snow', that wasn't meant to be taken as an invitation. I've had to endure bloody blizzards again today. As I've mentioned before, I really don't like snow. However, as usual, it isn't really the snow which is the problem, but people's reaction o it. Or rather, overreaction. As soon it started falling early this afternoon, people panicked, decided they just had to get home early, (presumably because they'd otherwise fall prey to gangs of wandering penguins and polar bears), jumped in their cars and promptly gridlocked every main road. Now, as I'm not at work this week, this wasn't really that much of a problem for me, although it did mean that I couldn't go and pick up some beer I wanted for the festive period. Of course, as usual, nobody wants to admit that all this chaos is avoidable. Oh no. Apparently it is impossible to drive in snow. Cars won't go up hills or drive in a straight line when snow is on the ground. This is quite patently bullshit. The cars we drive here are no different to the ones they have in countries which have far more snow than us. Yet they seem to be able to drive them in these sort of conditions.

The difference, of course, lies with the drivers. Egged on by the media, every time it snows here, motorists panic. They seem to forget the most basic rules of driving in slippery road conditions. As I trudged through the snow today, I was amazed by the number of drivers who seemed to think that the way to get their vehicles up a hill in the snow was simply to hammer the accelerator pedal, then wonder why all that happened was that their wheels span furiously whilst they remained stationary. Just keep the bloody thing in a low gear and creep forward and you'll usually be OK. Now, I'm not saying that heavy snow can't make driving impossible. Clearly, if it is three feet deep and drifting, it's going to make roads imapassable. But that isn't the case around here. If people just approached the situation sensibly, then we wouldn't have had so many bloody problems today. But obviously, that isn't the modern British way - we just love to turn everything into a bloody crisis.