Please don't melt your tires on the snow

I'd like to take a minute here, given the recent weather, to talk about something that bothers me.

People who can't figure out that if your tires are spinning, hitting the gas harder will not help you.

The winters I have spent in Lethbridge have been winters with these sudden huge dumps of snow that no one ever seems quite ready to cope with. Now, I am not some invincible unstickable winter driver. In fact, I freely admit that in my fourth winter here I became high centered three times in one day, and once again the next day. I also had the habit of letting my car battery die before I finally realized that plugging in was really actually probably worth the run outside at night to play with a frozen extension cord.

Here is the thing though. Once I -am- stuck, I do my very best to avoid being stupid, and making things significantly worse. Now, because I have had my fair share of boosts and pushes, I'm very willing to stop and try to push or did someone else out. Getting stuck can happen to anybody and I make no judgments based on the fact that a driver has become immobile, nor do I curse and complain and scream "idiots just don't know how to drive in the snow" because, like I said, it can happen to anybody. But this post is not about getting stuck in the snow. It is about getting unstuck in the snow.

Sometimes it requires no more than a willingness to allow someone else to hop into your car because perhaps they've been stuck often enough that they have become expert drivers in becoming unstuck (don't try to convince me this isn't something learned from experience, hotshot), sometimes all that's needed is a little shove in the right direction.

But do you know what is never needed? The smell of burning rubber, yes, burning, in -17 degree weather!

The term "gun it" should never be used in the context of getting unstuck. I find it perfectly appropriate to avoid being stuck in the first place, when you have good traction, and plenty of room to get a head start and just take a run at, say, a snow plow pile you need to cross, or deep wheel ruts you are trying to turn on to from the wrong direction. When you are already stuck, however, "gunning it" will not work. It won't. I have never gotten unstuck by spinning my tires in deep snow. I have never seen anyone get unstuck by spinning their tires in deep snow. All they do is get themselves more stuck, and when it come to the really enthusiastic tire spinners, they just wreck their tires too!

A few years ago (the same winter I got stuck repeatedly) I pulled over on a road just outside of town to help a guy stuck in the ditch. His solution to his problem, was to slam on the gas and crank his wheel back and forth repeatedly. By the time I gave up on the guy and left he had dug his wheels down in below the snow, torn us a bunch of grass from the ditch and was flinging mud all over the place. His tires creating enough friction to melt the frozen earth and turn it in to mud splatter in temperatures nearing -30. He was absolutely hopeless.

Last night was another case. I was working the last half of the closing shift at the kennel, boss needed some extra help and I needed the money. I was hoping for a quiet evening spent mostly indoors, but when a dog owner came to pick their dog up, it was not to be. She came down the hill and parked in the deepest drift that we had because, I guess, that was the spot closest to the door. Of course she got stuck. This presented me with a dilemma. If she was not out within the next hour and a half, I would not get to go home until my boss came back, despite being finished my shift, and who knew how long he was going to spend in town. He simply would not be happy with me if I left a customer sitting in the parking lot by herself waiting for a towtruck. If the towtruck response is anything like what I witnessed the day before, when driving by the same car four hours later only then just getting her tow, I was going to be spending all my friday night at the kennel. The obvious solution was to get her unstuck myself.

She made this very very difficult. I continually had to ask her to straighten her wheels, she spun her tires until I could smell them burning, and kept getting out of her car to watch me dig. Watching me did is not helping! Eventually she had created such a rut for her front wheels that her problem (going up hill in snow) was compounded. No matter how many times I told her ease up when her wheels started to spin, she just kept slamming on the gas.

I got frustrated and went back inside, but the problem remained. I would not be able to go home until this person was out of the lot. What we needed was traction (this was the perfect example really of why all season tires don't really cut it in these conditions) so I went to the cat litter bin. I would like to state that I put cat litter on the shopping list two weeks ago. Needless to say, we did not have any flippin' cat litter.

I wandered the kennel for a few minutes trying to devise ways of creating some kind of traction under the tires to get this person out. That is when I spotted the towels. With two dry, unsoftened towels in hand I hustled back out to the car, tucked one end of a towel folded lengthwise behind each front tire and pressed them into the snow snow out behind the tire, like a little track then made it very clear to the driver that if she pressed the gas too hard she'd spin her tires and the towel would get tangled around her wheels and that would be the end of her car (I do not actually know if that would happen, but the threat seemed to work)

The towels worked like a charm! I could not believe my genius. I wonder if anyone else has ever done this before. We had to do it twice before she was on flat enough ground that she didn't lose too much traction (and of course spin her tires, some people just don't know when to stop) but I got her out of the lot and watched her pick her way back up to the road.

So please.

Do not 'gun it' when you are already stuck. I will leave you in the ditch if you do. Slow and steady, if you don't have traction, pressing the pedal harder will not make traction magically appear.

On that note, please do not 'gun it' when you are towing someone out of a hole either! I've seen tow lines snap, hitches break off, flying lines break card windows. Your line is far more likely to hold if you put the tension on it gradually, than if you take a run at it. I refuse to be anywhere near a passerby with a tow line anymore. I fear for my eyesight when that line snaps.

So, I'll be adding towels to the contents of my car this winter. I highly recommend them for situations where all you need is a little traction. They're far lighter and less messy than sand and you can shove them right in under the tire in need.