Saturday, December 20, 2008

A Case of the Piles

The next several hundred collisions we hear about will result from driving between piles of snow.

Kinda hard to see traffic when your sightline is 4' off the ground and the damn snowpile at the intersection is 8' high.

IIRC, last time this came up, most municipalities knocked down the intersection-piles about a week after the snow stopped.

In the meantime, drivers are urged to take defensive actions.

One possibility: strap a teenage child to the front end of your car to serve as a "lookout." Another tried-and-true remedy is to strap that teenager to the TOP of your car (they must be standing) and have them foot-tap once to "stop" and twice to "go."

Or, if you don't have a handy teenager nearby, you can purchase an 8' length of 2x4 and strap it to the side of your car, extending forward from the front end by about 2-3 feet. Oncoming drivers will see it and politely stop, right?

High-tech remedies include purchasing snow-penetrating radar or sonar. Navy surplus stores may have these systems, on clearance for $575,000/each. (Installation is extra.) There may be a backorder problem.

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