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  #21  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 1:39 PM
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Great story Rousseau. I've driven the Ottawa -> Montreal highway following the snowplows. It is a white knuckle experience for sure in my little Corolla. I really should have called the movers and said another day, but I had work to start in a couple of days and really needed it done. The usual slightly less than two hour drive took six and a half.

My thoughts now: STUPID TO BE ON THE ROAD.
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  #22  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 1:49 PM
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Story 1: Travelling from Bangor to Moncton in February blizzard. As with many times travelling W to E, you can SOMETIMES get ahead of a storm (which usually travel the same direction). Driving a white, diesel VW Jetta with snow tires. These cars are great in snow, generally... a bit of ground clearance, narrow tires, and lots of torque. Snow got worse and worse until I was between Fredericton and Moncton on the old road (highway not yet built) around Coles Island, Canaan.

This is a two-way, 2 lane road and we were the only car left on the road. Everyone else had hunkered down. It was nearly dark and the only guide I had were the VERY murky forms of where the forest was on each side. I couldn't see the powerpoles, even. I just kept the car halfway between the forest-blobs for miles. No idea where the road or ditches were. Got home and the car looked like a moving snowdrift. FINALLY got stuck... ramming it through the snowbank the plow had left at the end of our driveway.

Story 2 (more recent): Coming back from Ottawa after first driving-trip to visit the inlaws. It's between Christmas and New Years. Again, trying to punch through a blizzard that was chasing us. It slowly overtook us... we stopped once for gas and there was a giant ice-wedge stuck to the front bumper that stuck out 2 feet in front of the car and went to a point... slush was flying up and sticking and freezing there.

Made it to Montreal... still blizzard. People are driving like it isn't... and we see dozends of them in the ditch. We keep puttering on. It gets dark. We just make it into NB in white-out (and dark) when without any steering movement at all, we do a SUUUUUUPER SLOW 180 rotation in the middle of the highway in front of a transport truck. It and two more cars pass us before we pull back in line and keep going. Pull over at the next ramp (a hotel right by the highway @ Edmunston) and call it a night.

Story 3 (2013): Four of us had a vacation rental booked in St. Maarten. Day before our flights were to leave Moncton, bad weather is incoming... we get early notice that flights will be cancelled. We call Halifax (2.5hrs away) and they verify that they'll still be flying in the morning (weather was going to be OK there). Make the quick decision to change our flight and quickly load up the old CRV with four people and luggage and leave town immediately. Snow is just starting... Notice a pattern? Gets a LOT worse very quickly. By the time we get to the Cobequid pass, traffic is barely moving, and many people are pulled over with their hazards on, not willing to chance it. Up ahead, we get diverted down a side road due to an "accident" (turns out a family tragically lost some young ones in that one, again due to weather). Picked our way along the old highway 4 in near-whiteout. Very slippery. 2.5 hour drive took 5, but we made it. The rest of the trip was mostly a disaster due to mechanical issues on aircraft, but we survived the drive!

It's kind of ridiculous what weather Canadians will drive in. My only real mechanism for doing so is "drive for conditions". You can drive in some incredibly bad weather if you have 1) snow tires and 2) patience.
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  #23  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 1:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes View Post
Great story Rousseau. I've driven the Ottawa -> Montreal highway following the snowplows. It is a white knuckle experience for sure in my little Corolla. I really should have called the movers and said another day, but I had work to start in a couple of days and really needed it done. The usual slightly less than two hour drive took six and a half.

My thoughts now: STUPID TO BE ON THE ROAD.
I've done the same drive Montreal to Ottawa, although I followed a transport truck. A sickening driving experience.
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  #24  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 2:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kwoldtimer View Post
I've done the same drive Montreal to Ottawa, although I followed a transport truck. A sickening driving experience.
I'll follow a transport 100x instead of it following me!
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  #25  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 2:35 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vorkuta View Post
I'll follow a transport 100x instead of it following me!
You can't follow too close, but a transport truck can be quite useful for wayfinding in a whiteout.

Even if it isn't a winter driving horror story type of event, an 18 wheeler in front of you can be very useful for clearing moose off the road on a dark night.
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  #26  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 2:38 PM
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I'll follow a transport 100x instead of it following me!
Absolutely, especially in conditions like those, where it would not have been possible to pull over to let the truck pass.
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  #27  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 8:20 PM
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I have two stories:

The first one I was in Morehead MN (just across from Fargo ND) on i-94 in January 2014 going back to Regina from Minneapolis in a Honda Element, and on the on ramp I start to fishtail. So I also do a 180, thinking I was going to smash into the concrete divider, but I don't and end up facing on coming traffic. It was an eight lane highway in morning rush hour! I see tons of cars coming my way, but miraculously they all stop and I do a three point turn on drive off with with heart exploding!

The second story, same thing, same vehicle, I start to fishtail on the 102 just by Halifax Stanfield International, ( I was living in Halifax) and this time I go off the road into the grassy median all snowing out and I plow through a cross memorial where someone had died and I think the Element is going to flip on it's side. It doesn't, I come too a stop and I get out and a car from Quebec stops and a young kid asks if I'm ok, I say yes, but thank you, and another woman in a brand new Grand Cherokee pulls over and I say i'm ok, I have CAA, she says "wait in my car so you don't have to stand out in the snow!". I say thank you but also say I have my dog (husky cross). She says no problem, so I get him and I ask if she doesn't mind, she has a brand new Grand Cherokee Limited with leather seats! She says don't worry, go get him, so I do. I tell her people like her give people faith in humanity. She then follows me until my exit after getting the car out of the median!!!

After this, that summer I bought a Subaru WRX with all wheel drive to be safe!!
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  #28  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 9:44 PM
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Another one:
Went to Vancouver with a couple of friends during university spring break in late February of 1992. We had a great time! What was funny about that trip was all the grief we heard from people who were going to Florida for the break -- why Vancouver??? Are you nuts??? Are you stupid????? etc. Turns out we had the AMAZING weather, a mostly sunny week of low- to high-teens temperatures and we barely wore more than light jackets. Their trip was cold, grey, damp, and depressing (even MuchMusic seemed embarrassed to be covering it)... but I digress.

One day we took a drive into the interior, along the Trans Canada and across to Osoyoos, then north through Penticton and Kelowna and back. The weather most of the day was cool but dry. I was slated to drive the last leg back to Vancouver from Kelowna, which we began in the evening, just as the skies opened up. Rain in Kelowna turned to slushy and icy snow on the Okanagan Connector, and then we drove the Coquihalla Highway from Merritt (back then then it was tolled). It was a bit better, but sections of it were still pretty icy and lane changes were dicey at times. I recall playing leapfrog with a transport truck that would pass us on the downslopes and which we would pass on the upward climbs. Once we got back to the TCH at Hope things were just wet, and I was able to unclench.
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  #29  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 9:47 PM
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Back in December 2007, when I first had my 'G' license in Ontario, I was still driving one of my parents' cars and they absolutely did not believe in winter tires as they insisted "all season" meant you could drive them in all four seasons. I pulled over on a country road near Lambeth to deliver a Christmas card into one of those roadside rural mailboxes, and when I went to pull away, the car got stuck. We had just had a major snowstorm days earlier (the same one that stranded the Buffalo Bills in Cleveland), and the road wasn't well-plowed.

I had a cellphone but it was before smartphones were common, so I called 411 and asked for a tow truck. I had to get the car towed a short distance, which cost me around $80.

Once I bought my own car, I bought winter tires.

Were winter tires just never a thing prior to this century? Yearly tire changeovers were just not something my family ever bothered with, despite living in the Snowbelt - and to this day they still do not change tires over as they just don't see the need when their tires are for "all seasons". I know it's only within the past 5-7 years that auto insurance discounts were offered in Ontario for having winter tires.
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  #30  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 9:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos View Post
Were winter tires just never a thing prior to this century?
It's not something we did in NS and I don't do it here either. Haven't had any big driving problems except for the usual "5-10 cm of snow falls around rush hour and the city is gridlocked for hours" scenarios.

In Vancouver it can take very little for there to be sports cars and buses littered all over the city streets, etc. Halifax is not a whole lot better and is hilly and prone to mixed precipitation events in winter that can be very unpredictable. Both cities also have the issue of highway driving potentially being way worse than conditions in the city, with Vancouver being much more extreme (+6 and rain here, Coquihalla in whiteout conditions). But I've never really needed to do that highway driving in the winter.
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  #31  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2020, 10:09 PM
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The Cobequid Pass driving horror stories potentially could have been averted had a sensible passenger rail option existed (i.e. not 2 trains a week).
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  #32  
Old Posted Nov 28, 2020, 12:21 AM
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My lesson in the importance of winter tires came when I was in my early 20s and didn't think I could afford them. I was driving a Hyundai Accent a couple hours after a storm on a road that hadn't really been ploughed yet. Just driving in a straight line at low speed, nothing more than the angle of the road made the front tires let go. I spun across four lanes and ended up in someone's driveway, somehow not hitting anyone.

I bought winter tires the next day. After that the little Hyundai went from hopeless at the slightest hint of snow to handling the worst winter could throw at it like a champ. The difference really is like night and day.

In a country with winters like ours, it's almost criminal that we rely so much on driving. We easily have the worst passenger rail of any northern country.

Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos View Post

Were winter tires just never a thing prior to this century? Yearly tire changeovers were just not something my family ever bothered with, despite living in the Snowbelt - and to this day they still do not change tires over as they just don't see the need when their tires are for "all seasons". I know it's only within the past 5-7 years that auto insurance discounts were offered in Ontario for having winter tires.
I distinctly remember my dad changing the tires every spring and fall when I was a kid.
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  #33  
Old Posted Nov 30, 2020, 9:49 AM
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In November 2001, I drove an old Fiat Spider from Montreal to Halifax on summer tires. I was gambling, but things were very smooth from the city to about Riviere-du-Loup.

Then the snow came thick and hard.

I must have averaged about 30 kph to Edmundston in the pitch dark, 18-wheelers blaring past me, skidding and sliding. My thought was that any accident in that car, in those conditions, would mean death or at least mutilation. I can't believe I made it through. By Fredricton I was rolling at 120 again in perfect night conditions, and I pushed it to Nova Scotia; I am pretty sure I let out an audible yelp of victory and relief coming over the MacDonald Bridge.
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  #34  
Old Posted Nov 30, 2020, 9:54 AM
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Here in Sweden, winter tires are mandatory (as they are in Quebec). About a year ago, I was cursing Hertz for renting me a Volvo V40 on metal studs, as most main streets in Stockholm forbid the use of such tires. It was already a new city, and a confusing archipelago connected by the sort of freeways you build when your SimCity is getting out of control. I was not happy to be skittering around on those metal nubs, and restricted to side streets.

It all paid off, however, when it came time to drive up to Luleå near the Arctic Circle. From Sundsvall to Skellefteå, it was like driving at 60 kph into a broken CRT TV. Like the TransCanada, the E4 has its "401" moments and its "farmer's driveway" moments.

The studs paid off, big-time.
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