Snowplowing and snow driving are not rocket surgery

I find myself ranting yet again. This time about snow, and Long Island. I grew up in the great white north, where winter driving was a necessity, and if you didn’t know how to do it, you were stuck in your house for 4 months out of the year.  While drivers outside of Long Island have the knowledge to drive in the snow and the patience, it is also worth noting that they, and everywhere else in the world does a better job at snow clearing than Nassau and Suffolk County. I am pretty sure that the nations that compromise the Sahara desert do a better job of clearing snow.

So here’s the deal with Long island. You have many, many side streets, all interested by a grid of parkways and the LIE. Going East West, you got the LIE, Northern State and Southern State. North to South, you got the Meadowbrook, Wantagh, Bethpage, 135, etc... All you need to do is throw three parallel plows out every 2 hours to swipe the length of the road. That’s it. It’s not rocket science. Now, I would love to say that these plows are busy elsewhere, but where is that elsewhere? Everything else is snowed in too. The frightening part is it’s not a lot of snow. It was like five inches. I call that a dusting. Down here, they call that the Great Blizzard of 2010.

So one might assume that resources would be dedicated to these main thoroughfares to ease congestion.  Not so much.   Yesterday, the streets were impassible, and today there were still some trouble spots. The Southern state had insane icing in the middle lane, with big patches of black ice. The car in front of me lost it’s ass, and then I realized what I was riding on. The Wantagh was fine for the most part, except for the shoulders. Oh, but there was an accident in the southbound lane, which all of the E-Signs on the Southern State decided to embrace the singularity early, and label this as Northbound.

Northern State though was a different story, this road was a mess throughout Nassau. The middle lane had a few inches of packed snow up until about the Queens line. Spinouts everywhere and a few really good ones.

Clearview, CBX, Jersey? Perfectly fine.

But the drivers… This is the view from part of the northern State.  Please note the asshole with a foot of snow on top of his car cruising in the left lane.



People, driving in snow and ice is not that hard. Here are my tips for you.

1. Get off my ass. Stopping distances are decreased. This is why you spin out when you tap your brakes.


2. Clean off your damn car, and watch out for people that don’t.


3. AWD and 4WD are really useless here unless you need to get out of a snow bank. Here is the fact that might startle some people – THERE ARE NO DAMN HILLS IN LONG ISLAND. YOUR AWD IS USELESS. When your car decides to slide, and it will, AWD is only nominally better in recovering this slide, but recovery still requires space (which based on the excessive speed you’re probably doing, will not be enough to avoid the snow bank or another car). So ditch the confidence, and drive within the limits of your vehicle and your ability.


4. Know your tires. Summer tires do two things well in the snow: Jack and shit.


5. Anything that throws off your centrifugal force is going to pose a hazard, including, steering, passing, ramps, and even a heavy downshift.


6. Snow accumulates between lanes. Avoid lane changes until clear.


7. Find a parking lot, have fun sliding and learn recovery techniques and your limits.