If you were to have people to make a list of all the different aspects of winter driving that they hate, you'd get stuff like "it's cold", "it's hard to steer", "the car won't start", "I have to shovel my driveway to get to work". Pretty standard stuff. No surprises there. Part of what makes us Canadian is our shared dislike of the coldest 6 months of our seasonal year.
Everyone has something they hate about winter driving. Want to know the thing I hate most?
It has nothing to do those things listed above (although they can be troublesome, I'll admit it). What I hate most about winter driving is something I call "The Tank Syndrome".
Here's what happens: You (yes, YOU) get up in the morning and it's cold and you don't want to go to work. And when you get out to your car, you notice that there is snow and ice all over it. Instead of taking the three minutes to brush off all of the snow and then using the ice scraper to completely clear all the windows, you create a wee little opening to see out of.
This little opening is probably the size of a postage stamp or, if you're really diligent, maybe it's the size of a business-card. It's small enough to make old-time pinhole camera manufacturers jealous. For those who are really conscientious, they can boast about creating a panorama with their postcard-sized hole.
I call it "The Tank Syndrome" because it reminds me of military tanks – the car is armoured in show and ice and there is a small slit in the front window that the driver can see out of but the enemy can't shoot inside. You feel invulnerable in that kind of rolling cage of safety.
How does this happen? During the summer, the windows are down (or better yet, the convertible roof is retracted), and you have full range of vision and can drive safely. That makes sense.
But during the winter our minds somehow change and we decide that the weather is bad so we don't want to see any of it. Somehow, the short days and bitter temperatures confuse us into thinking that we shouldn't have a clear field of vision to drive through ice and to swerve around snow banks and to battle through blizzards. We somehow think that our cars – armoured in snow and ice – will protect us from the worst weather and we minimize our field of vision to the narrowest possible amount.
By the end of winter, the ice and snow on our cars have built up so much that only a team of archaeologists could chip down to the original surface of our car.
Please! Take a few minutes and chip off the ice and snow. Ignore your desire to drive around in a tank and do battle with the snow.
And, if you get hit by a moving ice-tank, bring your car to Boyd Autobody & Glass and we'll restore the REAL safety features of your car so you can get back out there and face the elements.
