What I don't understand is why were they stuck in the first place? Especially if it was not icy like I thought it was. Was everyone on summer tires or something?SonicHKS wrote:The problem with Atlanta is its a clusterfark even on a good day. Traffic here only works at all because of a staggered release from schools/jobs. Even then it barely works. Add in some ice/snow and you end up with a disaster of epic proportions. This storm was the worst I've seen here and I've lived here all my life. There were people still stuck on the interstates, "commuting home" for something like 30+ hours straight. There were even kids stuck on schoolbuses out in traffic.
Thing is, a normal commute with heavy traffic makes me nervous because I know in the back of my mind that it can get as bad as it did in this storm. It can get to a point where you have to abandon the car and walk. So, I called out of work and stayed at home. Figured that there was no point to going in if it'd be impossible to get back. Most I did was drive to the grocery store.
That all said, people here are idiots. This wasn't that bad of a storm. In fact, it was good, because it was ALL SNOW. There was no ice. If there were ice it was caused by traffic, not from it falling from the sky. Basically, the storm hit and it was 20*F all day with the light dry snow you see in places like Colorado, not the slushy icy snow we usually get down here. I drove in it....and it was like driving around up north or at a ski resort. Roads covered with thick snow. Very fun and somewhat easy to drive on if you know what you're doing.
I drove to the grocery store in my Sonic no problems at all. No gas launches = no wheelspin on takeoff. Nice easy delicate power delivery, careful of momentum, speed, stopping distances, etc. Knowing what hills/turns you can and can't take. I went up slopes that people were having trouble with in AWD SUVs and 4x4 p/u trucks. Because for so many people, especially around here, driving is just mashing pedals. Mash the brake, or mash the gas, nothing inbetween, no coasting, engine-braking, etc. They would freak out and stop halfway up a hill, then try to get going again. Or try to get going by mashing the gas. Believing more power would get them up the hill faster or better. When I drove it, it looked like I was just driving normally, just going up snow-covered hills and getting into parking lots/etc with ease. My biggest problem with it, and why I didn't drive more, was other drivers. NO ONE else knew what they were doing at all. If you try to drive normally on snow, you'll be farked. Everyone would just freak out and line up at traffic lights, when a light would turn green they didn't even have even the most basic skills required just to get the car moving! And lights turning red....even worse. People would always slide into the intersection. Me....facepalm every time. I ended up going home because it took 1/2 hour to go 1/2 mile and I was more worried about other drivers hitting me or something.
For me....it was FUN. Doing "rolling burnouts" spooling the turbo at like 30 mph. Locking up the brakes and sliding just for fun. Popping the e-brake. Driving like a WRC driver. Very fun . To me snow driving is some of the most fun you can have in a car. Especially with the conditions we had, where the roads had nothing but snow like up north.
Edit: what irks me is why they didn't cancel school. Growing up here, they would cancel for like 1/4" of snow....there were even times where school was cancelled before snow even hit the ground and it ended up only being a dusting. With this, it was a guaranteed 1/4-1/2", and setting up to hit just before evening rush hour. We've had weeks of teens/20's at night too, so it was guaranteed to stick to the roads. And.....asinine administrators decided to treat it like any other day. So we had kids camping out in schools, stranded on busses, etc. One of the biggest problems was that the busses got stuck everywhere and contributed to the traffic clusterfark. You know, the paranoid cancellation of school back when I was a kid was designed to AVOID this.
I can understand traffic being really slow because of people not being used to the conditions, but why were school buses stuck not being able to move?