Or We Could Just Stay Home

Now that it's plenty snowy and slushy and the Boston winter is well underway, I can be especially interested in the idea of snow management on roads. Having travelled to Finland in the winter, Ian Sacs at Planetizen (via Tom Vanderbilt at How We Drive) tells us that,

It seems that aside from limited access highways and some primary arterials, the Finnish standard for snow tretment is to plow to a reasonable depth, but not worry too much about an inch or two of snow base layer covering streets.

He reports that drivers handle these snow-covered streets by going very slowly and carefully, and wonders whether slow, cautious driving over half-cleared streets might not make more sense, in some ways, than continuing to drive as if the streets were dry all year round when they may actually be slick enough to make this dangerous.

I think it would be pretty hard to convince people in the U.S. that taking the kind of time required to drive slowly and carefully on the way to work everyday would be a reasonable trade-off for much of anything (we need to get places, darn it!)

I might favor this plan, though, if it meant I could just hole up and sleep all winter!

But alas, that never works out as well as it seems like it would. You have to get food, after all. At least until we learn to hibernate properly.

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