Driving in bad weather is not something that should be done especially by a nervous driver. However, at some point in each of our driving lives, we will have to get behind the wheel during inclement weather. Bad weather is, for the most part, unavoidable. However, by practicing having better driving skills as well as following a few basic rules for safety, we should be okay.
Depending on the area that you live in, snow might be a rarity. When I first came down to North Carolina for college a few years back, North Carolina (up until that point) wasn t used to seeing snowy weather. Being from New York, I was used to having to drive on snowy roads during the winter time it was almost expected. Well, one year after I had been down here for a few years, North Carolina got hit with a sudden “snow storm”. What I mean here, is that North Carolina wasn t used to getting snow, so when it started snowing one day, people panicked. The weather people predicted that we would get some sort of precipitation, but the Department of Transportation didn t have the resources or perhaps didn t really think ahead to salt down the roads in preparation for the wintery weather. As a result, you had nervous drivers crowding the roadways one day as they all tried to leave work early. The result? Disaster.
What should ve been a thirty minute commute (at best) for me to get from school back to my apartment took me over eight hours sitting in my car on a highway that had turned into a parking lot of abandoned vehicles and nervous drivers. You would think that because the weather was bad out that people might have been a little more cautious with their driving right? Wrong. Everywhere I turned, people were literally sliding off the sides of the highway shoulders and into embankments. Cars that were following each other too closely misjudged the roads that were now icing over as it grew darker and were crashing into each other. It was like a scene out of a bad movie. If you got into an accident, you might as well just take the report yourself because all of the police and emergency vehicles were tied up with more important accidents.
My point is this. When the weather is bad out, you need to keep three times the distance that you normally would between your car and the car in front of you. You need to make sure that you re using your windshield wipers and that you have your full headlights turned on (not just your parking lights). Most importantly, just because you might own an SUV doesn t give you license to tear down the roads like you re at a Nascar race. To the contrary, you should be driving under the speed limit at this point. This is especially true if there is black ice, snow or standing water on the roadways. Caution is your best friend on days when the weather is bad.
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