Winter Pet Peeves

‘Tis the season of snow plows, drivers who go too fast for the conditions, drivers who go too slow for the conditions, malfunctioning windshield wipers on messy days, snow squalls, slippery walkways, salt overload, digging out, etc., etc., etc.

Before I go any further, I want to state for the record that there are some aspects of winter that I very much enjoy. But I’m sure that I’m not the only one to point out the winter peeves we all have to deal with from December to March (or even May in some instances).

In spite of the above annoyances of winter that I have generally come to accept, there is one personal peeve that I continually shake my head at every time I encounter it. What’s the deal with the motorist who sees no issue in driving our roads and highways with an extra thick slab of snow mounted on top of their vehicle? We can all understand a thin coating in these cold dark days of stubborn ice accumulation. But the avalanche look?! Whenever I see this intriguing sight, I half expect the snow to topple off and distract oncoming traffic or those poor drivers keeping their distance behind. If you’ve gone to the trouble of clearing your driveway, brushing the snow and scraping the ice off your vehicle in the first place, what’s an extra thirty seconds to take a few inches off the top? Maybe in the chill of winter, common sense can sometimes freeze up and a proper thought process needs to go through a thaw process!

But let’s not be too hard on confused winter drivers. There are a lot of people out there who really do exhibit safe driving habits and extra cautious know-how when the snow flies. I guess it’s all just part of the Grey-Bruce lifestyle where the reality of winter is as surefire a thing as encountering farmland on a county road.