Special bbc news report on snow?! Basingstoke – 1500 cars abandoned?

Didn't realise until today that most cars are only fitted with "summer" tyres the rubber of which basically stops working at temps below 7C

Continental talk about winter tyres

Reply from brother:

"There was a full 4 inches of snow and it's Armageddon. 2500 cars abandoned. People on the radio saying it took 7h for a 3mi journey. I had a 3mi walk. It took 40min. One guy from here took 9h to get out of town. All of my group are off today …"

It descends into expletive-laden unpleasantness from there, but you get the gist of it.

clear evidence that Northern gumption triumphs over Southern fecklessness.

'Northern gumption' – what bs!
Report from north of the border – Christ, we had more snow than that in London.
You've got massively empty roads and still manage to have accidents. And 'congestion in the snow in Aberdeens rush hour' – I thought that was one problem you didn't have judging from the comments erupting from some of the penises on here, since you all know how to drive so well in snow and ice. Or were they just some of Goan's alumni?

Ooooh.

Bit touchy there vinnyeh. Simple good-natured North/South banter; no need for getting yer knickers in a twist.

the fact of the matter is that people shouldn't have just started abandoning their cars. what a stupid frikkin idea. who/how is that going to help?

sorry, was intended in the good natured banter vein. Didn't realise I'd be touching a raw nerve in the sensitive. Should have put in a smiley 😉

Aberdeen is not representative of the rest of Scotland though – It's full of people that cant' tell what you don't stick in a sheep until they have owned a sheep.

This happens in Sheffield every couple of years – rain followed by snow and ice in the afternoon, everyone leaves work early to beat the rush, gridlock. A few years ago thousands of people ditched their cars by the road and walked or stayed in hotels – obviously this caused even more traffic problems. The year before that when I lived in the suburbs it took me 4 hours in snow to drive 7 miles home. A lot of of the trouble is caused by people driving onto roundabouts or junctions when their way ahead isn't clear so traffic backs up in both directions, and once the inner ring road with all its roundabouts is locked, the gridlock just spreads.

Of course, a city the size of Sheffield grinding to a halt is less newsworthy than a town of the strategic national importance of Basingstoke, presumably because the BBC's intrepid "North of England Correspondent" didn't venture out of his bunker in L**ds.

I take it all of these journeys that people were making yesterday were 'essential' then? Or is it just me who checks forecasts and Met Office warnings? The forecasters were telling people not to travel unless your journey was absolutely essential, but I guess no-one listens to that?

OK – I'm off back on top of my high horse. Its hitched at the top of the moral high ground 😉

I think that most bosses regard staff arriving at work as essential. I think xmas shopping jaunts probably exacerbated things.

The main problem apart from crappy standard of driving is that as someone has already said most tyres that cars are fitted with are just not designed to work in this weather.
If we all fitted winter tyres to our cars and probably turned the traction control off the car would be much easier to drive. However for the rerst of the time that its not snowing our emissions would be much lower and our carbon footprint resultantly lower as winter tyres are pretty rubbish on fuel consumption.

There are other alternatives but surely the best has got to be for more companies to allow home working

Just up the road in Bracknell, we had a similar problem to Amazingstoke. Loads of people left the office early, gritters failed to grit and the snow came down big time. The whole town was gridlocked, loads of people abandoned and walked home, some in their shirtsleeves with no coats on! I felt fairly smug rolling by on my MTB, but, still, felt sorry for the people going nowhere in their cars. No fun is it!

The forecast for yesterday in the Berks/Surrey/Hants area was for light drizzle/snow and above freezing temperatures. What actually happened was a localized blizzard dropping 3" of wet, slippery snowflakes in a couple of hours on to untreated roads. As mentioned this was made worse by lots of people leaving work at roughly the same time, quiet roads being impassable and even the slightest of inclines causing huge difficulties.

Weirdly the snow and general conditions yesterday seemed to create an incredibly slippery mixture which we don't often see, but it came during the afternoon and caught people unawares. Just one of those days, but not a lot of fun for many people trying to get home. Essential journeys? Well does getting home from work count as that – I'd say it does. Going to work on the other hand, well, no point going and getting stuck.

I didn't think it was that bad to be honest. I drove home today after spendng the weekend in Wales with the family. Lampeter to Portsmouth took 7 hours [double the normal time] but I did have to drive through Gloucester for that brief period when both bridges were shut. Didn't find it too bad. Was much worse in Wales but I think there is a larger volume of traffic down south but a lot of those are inexperienced at driving in these conditions. We always seem to have issues in Pompey when it rains hard let alone snows!

It doesn't really matter how good a driver you are or what sort of car you've got once the road in front of you is blocked does it?

Maybe the best solution would be if people didn't keep considering it to be normal to drive an hour each way to work every day.

This is a recent phenomena, not just because of the weather but because of the increasing number of people who are on the roads doing increasingly long commutes.

Unfortunately our whole way of life is becoming less and less resilient to any kind of shock because people have a tendency not to think about potential problems and only to consider how systems will work under ideal conditions.

From my experience last night, in and around the M3 & A272 there was a lot of very bad driving by a few individuals, causing massive tailbacks when they just blocked the roads. A lot of other people carried on driving very close to each other and that meant that once you stopped you could not get out, or overtake.

I was lucky as I was able to take a vehicle equipped for the job – mud tyres :roll:, 4×4, spares clothes and food- from work as I was out in the field today. Just as well I did as the 10 minute journey turned in to 1.5 hours instead.

Most of the problem was the assumption that the more that you use your right foot the further forward you go.

The drivers on the A34 were bad. Thick fog, ice on the road and people hooning it and quite close. Someone brakes and everyone jams on the brakes. All it took was for one person to touch the snow / ice on the sides

To be fair…if you're not used to driving on snow you're likely to not be so good. I tried to be sensible by leaving plenty of space, driving smoothly and not so fast but that just resulted in people coming up close behind me or moving in front of me on the motorway. Not so bad maybe but if I'd lost control they could have crashed into me.

Driveing today from a northern town down to the motorway, bit of a hill and the ASDA driver in a transit decides to keep the brakes on all the way down it,instead of putting it in a low gear.

He asda be a poor driver.