The Zohan

It is snowing on Northampton!

Black ice under fresh snow, tried to take Jenny to work in MK and failed miserably.

Followed a snow plow gritter (full to the brim with grit) from m1 j15, he was not gritting the roundabout or roads leading to the m1, go figure

Watched helplessly as a artic slowly jacknifed going up a hill, he stopped and slid back jacknifing in the process. He was stuck unable to get traction.

Its hell out there!

cookstar

iTrader: (6)

Shouldn't be on the road in the first place. Surely there must be logistic managers, or whatever they are called now checking weather forcasts.

Just be gratefull you wasn't at the bottom of the hill he slid down.

The Zohan

saw lots of lorries havoing trouble getting traction, especially on hills with the stop/start traffic.

Shocking how the standard of driving seems to be dropping and how few people can drive with skill and compentancy in the weather.

davyboy

I must admit half wit lorry driver have caused many of the delays this week on major trunk roads. If they are not jack knifing, they are doing stupid overtakes as us car drivers are to slow for them.

BTW, I was up at 6, at MK by just gone 7.15, then turned around and came home..office closed.

Luan Pra bang

If you know how to drive even thick snow and ice seems simple enough to drive on. I keep seeing BMW's parked up on tiny barely noticeable hills though not sure if its BMW's or the drivers . I really think some all weather tyres would help I drove to Estonia in a 1990 golf diesel and the M+S tyres I put on were great in all weathers dry rain or snow, they are a perfectly decent all year compromise but we in the UK seem obsessed with driving on summer tyres even though they only work to their best for 2 weeks a year.

The Zohan

Yup, some are ***** - just reminded me after failing to get on at J15a we returned along the DC at around 20mph single file (black ice under the snow) when a building supplies lorry came steaming down the outside lane which was full of snow and slush, est. speed 50-60mph thorwing cr@p/snow/ice/slush over all the cars and causing them them brake and slip all over the place. I just hope the stupid selfish **** did not kill anybody!

Iwan

I went out in my 56 plate Honda Accord i-CTDI yesterday and I'm not sure if it was the tyres or the Honda traction control but I could hardly get up a gentle slope that other folks were driving up with no problems at all. No matter how gentle I was with the throttle (in 1st or 2nd gear) it seemed to spin up without the traction control being able to do much about it.

The tyres are all brand new, the rears are Bridgestone Turanza ER300 but the fronts are some horrible far-eastern unbranded ones which were on it when I bought it 3 weeks ago, so I suspect they may have something to do with it.

I never had any problems in my VW Golf 2.3 V5 with it's traction control in the 3 years I owned it...

tanyatriangles

iTrader: (2)

I was taught, years ago, before the advent of traction control, ABS etc, to set off in icy conditions in the highest gear you could.

GlesgaKiss

14 miles in 3 hours? Could have walked faster.

GC8

This climate change will be rectified with more tax

ChrisB

What size tyres? My 9-3 with Conti Sport Contacts3 is pretty dire on hills with snow. Low profile sports tyres are great wet or dry but shocking in proper snow.

Hence I bought some AutoSocks when I got stuck in work a couple of years ago (I couldn't get up the hill out of our business park). Not had the chance to test them yet though, even this week

GlesgaKiss

Of course. The warming was our fault, so it's only fair to accept that we would cause the planet to cool.

alistair

Autosocks are supposed to be pretty good - I considered some last year, but in the end went for a full set of winter tyres. Got some spare wheels off eBay and now swap them over in November & April.