To think you don't have the right to get places when it snows?

[kokosnuss]

The local newspaper has posted it's now-traditional "OMG SNOW'S FORECAST, CHAOS IS IMMINENT" Facebook post and all the comments are along the lines of "oh great, not getting anywhere that day then, not with our incompetent council".

I do think councils have some responsibility to keep major roads passable if they can, so that emergency vehicles and other key traffic can keep moving.

But AIBU to think you don't have the automatic right to continue completely as normal when it snows? Isn't there a case for just accepting that the weather is bad and some things might not happen?

It stresses me out! I am an "evil employer". If my work force can't get in i have to accept that. But I have to get in (vet) and cover all the others who cant. Then I also have to deal with my children being off school or (worse) having to be picked up at random time due to school closure (2 separate schools)

I hate snow

I don't get why some people seem to get so angry about the snow. Okay, it's inconvenient but it doesn't mean people are pathetic or ridiculous.

Of course not everyone has the experience to drive in the snow - it's something that comes with practise, and when you only do it maybe once or twice a year, you're hardly going to be an expert. Snow chains are pointless in the UK as they can't be used on regular roads, and snow/winter tyres aren't necessary for probably 50 weeks a year!

Often round here, the roads between my home and my job aren't gritted, or get closed due to snow. If I can't get to work as a result, so be it. My job isn't that important and my workplace will just have to cope without me. I'm not risking my life driving on narrow, un-gritted, snowy country roads just to go and work in a shop!

I've never been snowed in and I've lived fairly rural. I've had times where I won't drive unless very necessary, but always got to work, school etc.

I've driven a lot in snow before, both here and in ski resorts, yet I still had a right nightmare trying to reverse one of our cars off our flat drive the other week in sheer icy snow. It had partially melted the day before, leaving deep ruts in the snow on the road, and then frozen solid overnight. And that was before I got anywhere near the hills surrounding us. It's all very well people who live on a gritted and ploughed main road sneering at those who say they are snowed in on the side roads, but conditions can be very very different, even within a short distance.

I live is a fairly rural county and our council is pretty proactive about gritting (maps and schedule readily available) but they often can't do it in time. And gritters do get stuck in soft snow while it's still falling and the type of grit we use relies on being pressed down by traffic, so is ineffective on the roads that have 2 cars a minute for most of the day, if there's snow landing on it.

They ran short of grit in 2010 and the 2 equally severe winters we had a few years before - each of those winters involved 3 months of constant snow cover, more than a foot deep, in our village, and buses had to re-route as the main road through the centre of the village was prioritised over the main road through the estate, which meant that we didn't even have a clear road to walk to school on.

Agree about it often raining first. I had to completely abandon the school run , one day, because freezing rain had covered the pavements and roads in thick black ice. I got about 200 yards in 10 minutes and spoke to a neighbour who had just pranged her car and decided I couldn't do any more. DS1 was in a complete panic about walking on it and my legs were hurting with the effort of staying upright - walking down that steep hill mentioned upthread.

Gritting beforehand did not prevent that.

It's never feet deep. Walk if you really have to

Gosh why didnt I think of that! Mind you since its 25 miles to my work and then 25 miles back Im not sure exactly how long it would take...maybe a few days? My DH is quite fit and runs marathons but this would take him 4 hours approx to run. Is it really so hard to understand people dont all work within walking distance?

I live in a hilly city. What happens round here is:
It snows, people keep driving because theyve got to go home/to work/to tesco. As snow settles, traffic starts getting jammed up, buses and cars start skidding off roads on hills/getting stuck. Snow ploughs and gritters can't do their work cause the roads are jammed full of cars. Total gridlock. Eventually people abandon cars and walk home.

Every fucking time.

I think if you live 25 miles from your work Laguna it is reasonable for you to not expect to be able to get there when the weather is particularly bad.

I live very rurally, and it's about 12 miles to work. I drive at 5am and sometimes the only living thing I see the whole journey is the deer that leaps out in front of my car trying to kill me on an unlit one lane forest road... Somehow I can always get to work though - I assume because our councils grit and I have snow tyres!

I'm not "important" - except that if I didn't get to work the solo working night shift would have to do the day shift too, and then the next night... Especially at weekends when we work solo with people who cannot be left without anyone looking after them, not going to work just isn't an option.

If you need to get places in snow it makes sense to buy a 4WD and/or snow tyres
For what, 2 days of snow a year?
& not much help in any case if the cars in front of you don't have them too!

It's never feet deep. Walk if you really have to
and if you are a trades man, say a plasterer you would carry a few bags of plaster mixing buckets, trowels etc with you?

But if it's only for 2 days if the year then you don't really need to travel in it, do you?

Because the British climate is generally fairly mild, we struggle in extreme weather simply because we are not used to it.
The last couple of snowy winters we had (when there was actually snow in London) DS had quite a few days off school: the issue was that several of his teachers live in the more outlying bits of the borough (we are on the outer edges of South London) and would get snowed in, because there are a lot of hills, steep hills, lined with houses, where the gritters don't go.

I think if you live 25 miles from your work Laguna it is reasonable for you to not expect to be able to get there when the weather is particularly bad

Im in Scotland, that could be anytime of year! I do live in a valley and the worst is usually getting out of my town, the main road to Glasgow isnt half as bad as that. However Im a Psychiatric Nurse, I would feel bad at letting my patients down, but in 17 years I have only not made it one day thankfully, and that was because I couldnt get my car out of the street and all the buses were off,

you grit before the snow actually falls, when snow is forecast overnight

Doesn't work. Our gritters drive past our (rural) road 3 times, every time ice/snow is forecast, but if there's a heavy snowfall, no amount of grit will make a difference. Can't fault our council for that. I CAN blame them for the massive, massive potholes that have been ignored for years (we've started to fill them ourselves because they're dangerous, and our 'filler' is working quite well - don't care if it affects future council repairs - it needs to be done).

3 times a day, I should have said!

You don't need a 4x4 for driving in snow. I live in the Highlands and in 10 years have only ever once gotten stuck in snow with a front wheel drive car. That was in 2010 when the snow was very very bad everywhere and it got grounded in a city on a side street because it was literally 2ft deep. But otherwise I've always had low 2 wheel drive cars and haven't struggled. I do put winter tyres on though every year because you just should frankly. 4x4s don't make you invincible either, it's hilarious up here how many people think that. They go flying past me and I later on go past them stood at the side of the road with their 4x4 in a ditch. You go fast on ice, you deserve to crash. Take it slow and steady, don't move the steering wheel quickly, don't accelerate quickly or brake sharply and 9 times out of 10 you'll be fine. If you do hit ice steer into the skid and don't panic. It will happen at some point and snow tyres or 4x4 won't save you.

It's all down to how much disruption happens, how often.
Where I live now, school closes if it rains. Granted, I don't think we have had more than 0.1mm of rain since March, so it is a pretty rare occourance. Can you imagine what would happen in the UK if places stopped functioning when it rained?? Snow is the UK is our version of rain.
Yes, it's perfectly possible to put infrastructure in place for these 5ish days a year. But is it worth it?

I don't have a 4x4 either Youngmystery - just winter tyres.

My last job. Nobody was dependent on me being there. Had the usual boss who had a 4 wd and declared that if he could make it in so could everyone.
I told him i wouldnt be in and would take it unpaid. Our estate was up high and untreated. Frankly just the excess on our insurance made it foolhardy to work.

I do agree that you need a workplace that approaches things sensibly.

In the 2010 snows I was working in London and lived somewhere that was 52 minutes by train to London. (Then had to trek across the undrground). So the snows happend and the trains are all cancelled. i did not have a car at that time, and besides there was no-where to park even if I did drive in.

Added to this was the fact that my role was to support our global offices so everything was done online and so could be done anywhere. I was standing on the platform at the station and called my boss to say the rains had been cancelled. Her response was; 'Yeah yeah, another person who claims they can't get in'. SHE of course, lives in Clapham. It was slightly easier for her to get in than others

That annoyed me immensely.

As it was I went to our local pub that had wifi and spent the day there working perfectly industriously in between drinking white wine and eating roast chicken. (It was a lovely day in the end and has stuck in my mind)

SNow in the UK is much wetter than snow in places that get large accumulations. It is generally much harder to plough snow in the UK, as it clumps rather than is powder (such as in the mid-west US).
Also some places get snow rarely, but when they do it can build up. EG. where I live we last had deep snow about 7 years ago. Admittedly the when we had roads blocked it was partly because the council had saved money by reducing the number of routes it would keep open.
But also being somewhere where it rarely snows we do not: change to winter tires or use snow chains etc.
There are places that get deep accumulations - but in my experience people don't get hysterical about certain roads being closed, but just accept it as part of winter.

But it does snow regularly here. Unless the snow is unexpectedly heavy councils should be prepared to deal with it seeing as you know, ithapoenes every single year in sone parts of the country. It's not really a surprise.

I don't see how this can still be a surprise every. fucking. year.
It doesn't snow as much as it does in Finland, or Canada, or Germany (where I am), but still, it does snow, so there should be appropriate measures in place BEFOREHAND ready for if and when it does happen.

We haven't any significant snow since 2010. I live a few miles from the south coast, and can only remember 3 significant snowfalls in the 26 years I've lived here. There was a snowy day in 2014 when the trains were all cancelled, but it had cleared by the evening.

I don't think the council can be blamed for not spending several million a year on such a rare event.

I can work from home, or walk to the office (1 mile). One winter, I was nearly at the office when I got a text saying the office was closed because the car park was so icy! I can't go out and see clients though, which is 90% of my job, unless they're near enough to walk.

We live up a steep hill, which is never gritted, even though it's a bus route. Unless you have a 4x4, you can't get up the hill. My ex had to leave his work van parked on the main road for 5 days in 2010 (after spending 13 hours stuck on a motorway on the way home). The trains didn't run for several days either.

I'm paranoid about walking in it after breaking my wrist in 2010. It never set right, and even after surgery 2 years later, it's less painful but I still have some loss of function. It's made me very uneasy about trying to walk anywhere when it's snowy/icy.