Dashing Through the Snow

Ahh, the first accumulated snow. It's a little late this year here in our part of "America's High Five", but the inevitable has finally happened. Of course the veritable dusting has lead to the equally inevitable and totally predictable carnage on the roads as people regain their "snow legs."

I think driving in the snow is the best example of modern day Darwinian theory with respect to natural selection. Only Darwin didn't know about 2 stage airbags, passive and active restraints and CATIA developed safety cages made with equal parts 'mathemagic' and high strength steel.

What does all that mean? Last year's idiots have survived to crash again this year. The herd is therefore not thinned, and a new Darwinian construct is allowed to flourish... "Reciprocal Idiocy."
Never heard of that one? Probably because I just made it up. So, for the benefit of those readers who might not immediately latch on to the concept, allow me to explain a bit further.

Reciprocal Idiocy is the phenomenon in which bad behavior is repeated due to lack of permanent consequence, (the most potent example being death), resulting from outside, (non-natural), forces that result in a preternatural, (read superhuman levels of), ability to survive the unsurvivable, (cheat death), thus allowing the perpetuation of the genes that are marked as predisposing the gene holders, (idiots), to repeat said behavior in the future, (hence, Reciprocal Idiocy), until the eventual intercession of the consequence, (death- but only after they perpetuate the legacy of Reciprocal Idiocy by parenting 9 kids).

This year's soccer mom, upside-down spinning like a top in the ditch of her new Honda Odyssey, cell phone plastered to her ear and bottle of Xanax spilled all over the headliner is the same soccer mom who ran last year's new Honda Odyssey off the road to ruin at the same place under the same circumstances. Hey, isn't that what insurance is for?

This year's contractor, feeling equal parts invincible and ignorant, who takes out 60 yards of shiny, freshly installed, tax payer funded guard rail is the same one who did the same thing in the same place last year... only his truck still bears the scars because the insurance company stopped covering him years ago.

The most egregious offenders are typically those with 4X4 stickers emblazoned on the flanks of their huge vehicles which are often additionally festooned with extra lights, knobby tires and are lifted to the point where one would need an elevator to make it ADA compliant. These people wouldn't understand coefficient of friction if you were on an ice rink. They cannot be convinced that 4 wheels spinning on ice isn't better than 2, or 6, or 100.

Not too far behind them are the aforementioned soccer moms in the mini-vans, (about which there is nothing mini, with the average one weighing in excess of 4,000 pounds), followed by anyone driving a commercial vehicle.

These folks all seem predisposed to driving as fast as possible, testing the limits of their capabilities and indeed the laws of physics. Often, they are single-handing it on the steering wheel, staring at the cell phone, trying to text with gloves on, or otherwise engaging in activities that lie in direct contradiction to the act of driving.

You can see them from a mile away, or you could if they ever turned on their headlights. Come to think of it, it seems as though most of these folks adopt a run-silent-run-deep philosophy, never bothering the even remove the accumulated snow from their vehicles, (including those unneeded and pesky brake lights), so they can achieve maximum stealth. There is nothing quite so awe inspiring as a huge snow drift passing you at 80 miles an hour in white out conditions. It's as if the ice berg passed the Titanic on the right, cut it off and slammed on the brakes.

On the other side of the coin are the shell-shocked Sheldons and Susans who are sitting so close to their steering wheels they would be blown into the next county in the event of an airbag deployment. They couldn't possibly negotiate a change of direction of their vehicle on account of the fact that they have left no room for their arms to manipulate the wheel more than a degree or two off-center.

Therefore, they drive at something just over the pace of the tectonic movement of whatever continent they're on, creating a rolling chicane that exposes all around them to danger tantamount having a mountain dropped directly in the path of a bullet train. Bad things always happen when one of these people are about.

I wrote a paper in college once that scientifically predicted the likelihood that these people would be first at each and every stoplight, causing spectacular near-collisions at each quarter-mile interval as people who are not idiots take drastic evasive action to avoid sure metal on metal contact. The likelihood, I surmised, was 100%. Perhaps there is a margin of error there, but anecdotally, it's at least 100% of the time. Probably more.

The final group of idiots are the "Crazy Ivans", so named after the maneuver practiced by many Soviet submarine skippers to check and see if anything is following them on their "six", directly behind them. This maneuver involves a rapid change of direction, (often a 360 turn) in the least possible space without provocation or warning.

Crazy Ivans don't use their signals, don't tap their brakes before slowing, don't offer any indication or warning at all of impending drastic vectoring. In fact, it seldom looks like Ivan and Ivana even know where they are going and even appear to be just as surprised as you are that they just pulled a left turn from the far right line right in front of you, lost traction (on account of the snow) and are now about to become your hood ornament.

I watched a Crazy Ivan driving a Ford Focus two winters ago down the center of the highway (which was fine, because we all were since conditions were really awful). He tapped his brakes. Why? Only Ivan knows, but he got a little squirrely. Ivan didn't simply let off the break and coast safely to a slower speed, he yanked the wheel to correct, which started a polar moment oscillation from which there would be no recovery, at least not with his demonstrable lack of skill.

Ivan then hit the built up snow with one tire, panicked, slammed on the brakes and pirouetted gracefully backward into the ditch. I could see his face as I passed him by and I am pretty sure he called his wife for a change of pants before calling AAA.

People, and I'm speaking to the non-idiots (if you are not sure into which group you fall, just stop reading now) - we have to watch out for the scourge of the reciprocal idiot. They aren't going anywhere. Imagine watching "Night of the Living Dead", only the zombies didn't die when you shoot them in the head. They just kept coming. The reciprocal idiot isn't out to get you, but like a large tuna net, they just sort of indiscriminately collect anything and everything in their path... Oh look, a shoe!

I encourage you, parents of the future leaders of the post-apocalyptic earth... be on guard. Don't get taken out! Live to keep the gene pool deep and chlorinated. You are the final hope of all civilization. Godspeed. Be careful out there, it's gonna be a long, long winter.