As everyone I know in Maine will gladly attest, here in the Northeast it is still very much winter, and one of everybody’s least favorite but most necessary chores this time of year is to brush the snow and scrape the ice off your car before getting in and driving. Now, this may seem like perfectly good common sense, and it is, but enough people fail to do an adequate job of this relatively simple task that most states which have regular snowfall have had to enact laws that make it an actionable offense if you don’t.
And this is why:
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An online acquaintance from “The Site Which Shall Not Be Named” shared these pictures with us this morning. He lives just up the highway from me in Southern New Hampshire, and this is his wife’s car AFTER a big chunk of ice came flying off the top of a tractor trailer and smashed into her windshield. Fortunately, she was not hurt, but, as you can see, she was mere inches from death.
Cleaning your car, truck, or other road vehicle is not just for your own degree of visibility, it is for the safety of other drivers who must share the road with you, often under less-than-ideal weather conditions in the winter. It is nowhere near okay to only do the windshields, or, as I have seen, simply make a tiny hole in front to look through. Clean off the roof, trunk AND hood to prevent chunks of snow or ice from blowing off and striking other vehicles. Professional truck drivers especially need to pay attention to their trailers — this woman nearly paid for someone else’s lack of attention with her life.
