Alright, Here’s the Deal with Snow and Ice and Southern Drivers

On the one hand, I’m not an expert on this. On the other, none of the rest of you are, and I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time these last two winters delivering food and human beings (at their request, mind you—it was Lyft) to places around Austin.

So let’s talk southern drivers in wintry conditions.

It’s fun to make fun of drivers in The South struggling with ice and snow. There was a good SNL skit about the havoc wreaked upon Atlanta by that snowstorm in…2014? But there are also some misconceptions. Let’s clear those up, and before clearing those up, let’s clear up that Austin isn’t in “The South,” but it is a southern city in terms of driving in the winter. It counts. Same frequency of snow and ice.

It’s harder to drive in the south when it’s snowy/icy than it is in the north.

Cities south of a certain point don’t have the infrastructure to keep roads plowed and salted when it snows or ices. Nor should they. It would be a waste of money for something that doesn’t even happen every winter. Northern drivers would not magically be able to drive on some of these roads just because they have experience.

“Handling” snow is different than having clear roads.

I lived in Minneapolis for two years, and their approach to snow wasn’t to do a spectacular job plowing. It was to have a lot of people work from home, because it’s a significantly white-collar city whose predominant voting population would prefer that to higher taxes. Which is fair. Minnesotans are definitely good drivers in the snow, especially relative to Texans or other southerners. They know their way around it. They were born into it. Just like Illinoisans, and Hoosiers, and Michiganders, and Wisconsinites, and Iowans, and New Englanders, and probably people in Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York, and definitely people on the plains and in the mountains and in Alaska where they do not drive in the snow, they drive over the snow (that sounded better in my head). But “knowing one’s way around it” might not mean what Texans think it means. Which brings us to the biggest point:

Driving well in the snow does NOT mean driving a normal speed.

“Oh Austin drivers are so bad in the snow,” the people say. “They go so slow!”

This is what they’re supposed to do.

The people you’re making fun of are the good drivers.

You imbeciles.

You automotive imbeciles.

Driving well in the snow, or on the ice, means:

• Stay away from elevated roadways if at all possible, especially those with inclines, such as overpasses.
• Drive like your car is a baby with brittle bones. Too sad a metaphor? Yes. But you’ve gotta have that mindset. Easy does it. Leave a ton of space.
• Keep an eye out for which way to—again, GENTLY—try to steer your car if you can’t stop and you’re about to hit someone. Don’t go into oncoming traffic. Don’t hit a pedestrian. If you have to rear end someone that’s better than a head-on collision or demolishing a child in a stroller.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do. It’s not “easy,” but it’s not the hardest thing ever, and no—there’s no way to make yourself able to drive perfectly normally in the snow. Four-wheel drive helps. Trucks do not help. TRUCKS DO NOT HELP. TRUCKS ARE ESPECIALLY PRONE TO SPINNING OUT ON ICE BECAUSE THEY ARE FRONT HEAVY YOU ABSOLUTE EFFING IDIOTS WHIZZING DOWN PARMER IN TRUCKS.

And this is the part where the actual “bad southern drivers” come in. They’re the ones still going a normal speed. That’s where the problems start. Not all of them. Some of them are unavoidable. But the avoidable ones.