Atlanta Is A Mess!

cities are a mess. atlanta is a city. therefore i must believe atlanta is a mess.

having never been there and having no wish to, i cannot claim any more then this as a personal judgement.

cities generally are too many people, living in too close proximity to each other, with too little reason for doing so. they are thus redeemed only by public transportation, diversity of eating establishments, and university engineering libraries.

 

well there ya go. Mr wizard's talking like he's all big and bad driving in any condition without any kind of special tires..I knew it was impossible. In the south when there is a couple of inches of snow it almost always turns to ice on the road.

So that pretty much answers anyone's question as to what happened in Atlanta, or at least I'm assuming. I live a couple of hours away from Atlanta, but I know here the roads iced over as soon as the sun went down and basically made them impassable. There were 150 wrecks in my town within a couple of hours of sunset.

 

In Ohio we have a snow emergency system. I don't know where wizard lives but doesn't he fix power lines? Maybe I am wrong but he could be out there driving in anything.

Ohio Snow Emergency Explanation:

Level 1 Snow Emergency: Roadways are hazardous with blowing and drifting snow. Roads are also icy; drive carefully.

Level 2 Snow Emergency: Roadways are hazardous with blowing and drifting snow. Only those who believe it is necessary to drive should be out on the roadways. Contact your employer to see if you should report to work.

Level 3 Snow Emergency: All roadways are closed to non-emergency personnel. No one else should be out during these conditions unless it is absolutely necessary to travel. All employees should contact their employers to see if they should report to work. Those traveling on the roadways may be subject to arrest.

 

We are very experienced with ice in my area. Most people use the same tires all year, nobody uses studded tires or chains. In fact, a friend just told me today that he thinks they were made illegal a long time ago which is why we never see them anymore. As said by someone else, 4WD doesn't really help much on ice. I guess it's just experience, knowing which roads to avoid, etc. But maybe the biggest difference is that we usually prepare well in advance. Our plow trucks are out spraying brine on the highways a day or maybe even two days before we expect bad weather. Even if the brine dries, it is activated by the moisture and then it usually will keep at least a portion of the lane just wet. Then during the storm, our trucks are out plowing on the front end and spraying brine and sand behind them. After the storm is gone, we will continue to spray for as long as we need to. Everyone knows to keep the driver side of the car on the sprayed part for traction and all the traffic will actually dry that section of the road. So even if the ice stays for a few days...there is usually a dry part of the road to keep you from sliding around. Also, most people around here have enough experience with slippery roads to know to keep the speeds safe and don't try to gun it and spin out.

 

Sorry. Not a big and bad driver. Just a normal driver for my area. I and just about every single person I know used the same tires year round. I can go out and take a picture of them if you'd like. I do probably commute/drive more than a lot of people around here though. Never put a vehicle in the ditch but I'm smart enough to know that can change tomorrow if I'm not careful.

Edit to say...hopefully my post #64 explains why we never get two inches of ice on the roads.

 

And btw...there is no difference between 2 inches of ice and 1/4 ice of ice. It's still slippery on top.

 

^^^ That

 

i was just teasing ya with the big and bad part

I do get a little defensive when people make fun of southerners for not being able to drive in the snow when its really just that we're not prepared for it at all. I can and have driven in snow just fine but I didn't dare venture out yesterday with the ice on the ground. They only salted the major interstates.

 

So there you have it.

It's difficult to drive on ice; and Atlanta's freeway system is not built to support the volume that it has to on a daily basis during rush hours, let alone during a mass exodus.

And Themnax, people live in the city and travel through the city, for work. The mass transit doesn't extend far enough into all the surrounding suburbs to prevent driving cars. Out where I live, we're about 35 miles south of Atlanta but people travel to Atlanta, or through Atlanta, going to work.

 

My sister and nephew live there and it took her six hours to get home yesterday. I can only imagine the sheer anxiety the range of driving conditions pushed her into. :sad:

 

Just Take A Look At The Size Of The Guy, I Was Expecting

Him To Just Pick Up One Of Those Cars And Turn It Around....



Cheers Glen.

 

I hope I didn't come across as making fun of anyone in a bad way. I moved to Nashville from Chicago in middle school. I was shocked when schools closed for an inch or two of snow because schools never closed in Chicago. But in Nashville, it was a major deal and I was like...what the hell? But I quickly realized that it's a much different world. Even the composition of the pavement is different in the south. Up north, we build the roads to handle those conditions and we are well equipped to maintain them. It's clearly much different in the south. But you guys have BCS championship teams so I figure we're even.

 

I would not make fun of southern drivers who don't know how to drive in snow because they just don't have those conditions very often. Unfortunately we have drivers here who don't seem to have a clue on how to drive in bad weather and when to stay home. Those people I just plain get pissed off at because they take other people's lives in their hands. That is why we get multi car pile ups and fatal accidents.

This list of tips sums up how to drive on snow and ice.
http://www.weather.com/activities/driving/drivingsafety/drivingsafetytips/snow.html

 

That must be what the big guy in the video was trying to say about when you come to a hill you have to go for it.

 

Now, that's a story, Meagain!!!

 

It's brilliantly sunny and 55F degrees out today. Of course, there's still snow and ice in places that don't get sun. Kids in our county stayed home because of that. The temps went into the teens last night.

 

i like to always have a spare bottle of brake fluid and a pair of vice grips for situations like that

 

^^^Good idea. I snapped a brake line coming off the freeway in san diego once...blew right through a red light lol. I found a small wood screw in the parking lot of a gas station I managed to plug the steel line with.