Snow doesnt Kill Mileage...

[320touring]

[QUOTE=robchalmers;206792]

Originally Posted by 320touring

As for fwd .. It's dependable, safe and No fun!

QUOTE]

how VERY dare you

IIRC, The real Stig (a mr Bloemqvist) took a 1600 Group N Felicia to 3rd OVERALL on the
1996 Network Q Rally of Great Britain

My brothers was fun in the snow- until you realised that drifting was a "power OFF"" skill, rather than a "power ONNNNN" one

[ShadeTreeMech]

3. Locking the brakes WILL NOT slow you down, only let you accelerate down the hill!!!! If you lack ABS you have to be very easy on the brakes to maintain control! Using the transmission in low gear helps a lot.

I think the lack of a massively popular rally circuit in the US contributes to the ignorance of the beauty of small front wheel drive cars in loose traction. All the good rally races are outside of the US, and I can't see a good reason why, considering we have so many mountain ranges here, and dirt roads are still very common.

I suppose the popularity of going fast in basically a straight line is too deeply imbedded into the American psyche to take enjoyment out of buzzing down narrow dirt roads in a small car (which I've done---its a blast!)

[darcane]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

Two things struck me in that video:

1. It seems that the bus driver (around 3:20) knew what to do when sliding (turned the front wheels into the slide),
2. Some drivers prefer to drive onto a sidewalk with pedestrians (around 2:01), rather than to hit another car. Hitting something soft won't leave a dent, hopefully.

1. Did you notice that bus slid down the hill... and it had chains on?
2. You are assuming there is some level of control going on there and driving onto the sidewalk is intentional. I suspect that once the slide starts, these people are in full-on panic mode and there is no rational thinking going on. The car mostly just slides where gravity/momentum takes it.

I also live near Seattle, and it was a mess out there. It literally took people 5-10 hours to drive 40 miles that day. Many people abandoned their cars on the freway because they ran out of gas, just idling along.

It snows so rarely here that few people know how to drive in it and we don't have the appropriate equipment to clear it out in a timely manner.

I drive a RWD pickup and love driving in snow. I had no problem getting around in spite of my worn out tires, but I've got a lot of experience driving in snow. My wife, on the other hand, struggled to get up a modest incline with good all season tires and nearly wrecked her FWD Vue.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by gasstingy

We don't appear to do much in the way of teaching people the skills needed to drive as safe as possible on slippery roads. We never test anyones skill in foul weather driving. What few times there is snow / ice on our north Alabama roads, we can always expect a BIG story on the local news showing the best accident pictures of the day. When questioned, they almost always admit to driving as if it was a clear, sunny, August day.

I took my drivers training during mid January, that year all the roads were glare ice and in those years no salt was put down on side roads, so our drivers ed teacher had us driving on lots of side roads with lots of stop signs.

I drove for years steering lightly and braking very early summer or winter.

[endurance]

'tis the silly season for driving. I had my first dusting on Sunday night and Monday morning was my first time driving out of my neighborhood with snow on the roads. It was a learning experience to find that most of the road was just wet, but there were a couple shady corners that concealed black ice and bumped the pucker factor to about a 9.5. I've now taken note of the corners that get little light during the day in the winter and adjusted my morning strategy accordingly.

Regardless, the other guy is always out there, generally in something much bigger and harder to stop even if you do control your own car, so, in the infamous words from Hill
Street Blues, "Let's be careful out there".

[jamesqf]

I have to disagree with the OP: packed snow may not hurt your mileage, but loose snow certainly does. Especially when it's deeper than the belly pan of the Insight. The car has lots of good qualities, but a snowplow it is not. That said, I've been driving it around the Sierra for seven winters now, including a couple where I'd be driving over 8800 ft Carson Pass pretty much every weekend. If the road was open, I made it through with nothing worse than cold fingers from putting on the tire chains.

[Piwoslaw]

Here's another reasons why certain drivers waste fuel when it's snowing:
Yesterday morning my neighbor spent 20 minutes revving and spinning his wheels trying to get out of the snow in front of his house. Why? Because on the previous evening he didn't clear his parking space but just pulled in. In fact, he pulled in faster than usual, so that the car wouldn't get stuck halfway in. Then he just got out and went home.

Originally Posted by darcane

1. Did you notice that bus slid down the hill... and it had chains on?
2. You are assuming there is some level of control going on there and driving onto the sidewalk is intentional. I suspect that once the slide starts, these people are in full-on panic mode and there is no rational thinking going on. The car mostly just slides where gravity/momentum takes it.

1. Now I do! (had to go to full screen)
2. I agree that gravity (or Newtonian physics, to be precise) play the largest role when sliding, but in most cases it is still possible to change your trajectory in some small degree. In that exact case hitting the car or the sidewalk may have totally been out of the driver's control, yet most drivers, especially in panic situations, have a subconscience urge to not hit anything that is
   (a) on the road in front of them,
   (b) more or less their size or larger.
   I am by no means claiming that that driver tried to hit the pedestrian, only that the driver (if (s)he had any degree of control) intentionally tried to avoid the car in front, maybe playing less attention to her/his alternative route.

[robchalmers]

You never know driving on the side walk might have been a cunning ploy, if there was fresher fallen snow there, that can offer more grip for acclerating or deccelerating. the guy in the red mazda3 looked mcompletely unphazed by the snow, while SUV were floundering around, dying on the ass'es!!!

loving the corolla ballet!

[320touring]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I have to disagree with the OP: packed snow may not hurt your mileage, but loose snow certainly does. Especially when it's deeper than the belly pan of the Insight. The car has lots of good qualities, but a snowplow it is not. That said, I've been driving it around the Sierra for seven winters now, including a couple where I'd be driving over 8800 ft Carson Pass pretty much every weekend. If the road was open, I made it through with nothing worse than cold fingers from putting on the tire chains.

I think you may have missed the point of my post somewhatt.

I'm not contesting that driving in (ANY) snow reduces the MPG you get- thats obvious.

I'm contending that incompetency on the part of other road uses is at least as big a factor in the reduction in MPG- crashes/inability to move etc all have an adverse affect on other road users.

What I'd give for the skinny tyres on your Insight

[Varn]

I learned to drive in Wisconsin in the 60s in my AH Sprite. The first snow was and remains a learning time. I live south of there now and get a lot of ice and have crowned paved roads and a lot of gravel.

My tire guy doesn't seem to want to sell me winter tires. He lives in town and sees that they are 4 season, figures that means winter, yeah right. I know that once He removes the tires from my car he resells them to someone else. For my Jetta I had to purchase the new winter tires on-line and have him mount and balance them.

One thing I have learned about the winter is that if the weather is real bad my business is not going to be doing anything and I stay at home.