applied physics

[cellio]

Dear certain drivers I had the misfortune to be near today: Write "momentum is not always bad" 500 times or until you learn that on icy uphill stretches there is such a thing as "minimum speed", whichever comes second. Having to plan around your antics is a PITA. Thank you.

Driving this morning was "interesting". Nothing had been plowed when I headed out to the morning minyan, which wasn't too surprising (barely past sunrise). Nothing in my neighborhood had been plowed an hour later either, which was cranky-making. They had managed to plow in Greenfield and the south side, but Forbes Avenue (Forbes Avenue!) and Beacon Avenue were untouched when I left for work. I got up Beacon with a running start, but I had to delay until someone got out of the way and that made the guy behind me initially cranky. I think he figured it out as he followed me up, though; that looked like a wave at the top of the hill.

I got stuck on the way to minyan. I could see that I was going to have to stop on a slight incline; I had enough warning to try to aim for the least-bad spot, and it would have worked if someone hadn't decided to pull up right behind me (so no "roll back slightly" option). When traffic moved I couldn't go forward, and I had to wait for the guy behind me to conclude that I wasn't going anywhere and back up himself before I could move. I was wondering if perhaps my tires are just crap (how are Hondas for that in general? it's not age; the car only has 4000 miles), but on the way back later I saw two accidents in that block, so maybe not. On the other hand, I did some unexpected sliding in other places. I think of myself as an average driver; there are undoubtedly things I could learn that would help in situations like this, but I think I mostly do ok.

Things were better tonight, but parts of Beacon still hadn't been plowed. I guess they're just waiting for next week's thaw.

Comments

[sue-n-julia.livejournal.com]

Hondas aren't terrible in the snow, though they don't seem to handle it quite as well as American-made cars (that seems to be one thing the Big 3 got right). The only trouble I've had with ours is when the city leaves 1" of ice on the road and it gets badly rutted/washboarded by semis with chains.

I hate driving Toyotas in the snow (it was a Toyota that I had to let get perpendicular on the interstate because it wasn't handling the road conditions very well at all).

S

[cellio]

My Mazda 323, power nothing, anti-lock nothing, just plain old car, was pretty good in the snow/ice, as was the VW Golf (new enough to have helpful features). I suspect that the Honda is also ok but that yesterday's roads were very challenging, based on what I've heard/read others say about it. That wasn't clear to me at the time, though.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

From the stuff I saw in the paper, it sounds like it was pretty bad. I'm pretty lucky on that point since I haven't even needed to leave the building until today to walk to the gym.

I don't know about your car but my Civic handles better than my Saturn did under any circumstances I can think of (that Saturn would hydroplane on the Turnpike all the time). In fact, I liked the original tires on the Civic so much that I tried to get ones like them when it was time for replacements.