The Mistake Some People Make

January 17, 2007 | General | By: Mark VandeWettering

You only need to make one mistake when it snows in Portland: that’s trying to drive at all. Here’s a clue: walk to your car. If you can push it sideways away from the curb, you shouldn’t attempt to drive it. Just stay wherever you are at. If you do decide to venture out, at least have the common decency to not insure with the same company as me.

[tags]Snow,Portland,Idiocy[/tags]

Thanks to Josh for bringing this one to my attention.

Comments

Comment from gattaca
Time 1/17/2007 at 6:43 pm

I used to live right at that location. The street is steep there. Less than 50 feet is a Light Rail station. They could have just hopped on the train and gone home.

Comment from Mark
Time 1/17/2007 at 6:51 pm

Last year, I was trapped in a freezing rain storm on the way to my Mom’s house from PDX. I was making good progress until I hit a bad patch on I5. It took me three hours to go two miles, and I had to bypass one exit where people basically were going completely ballistic, threading the needle (or more often, not) between cars which were piled on either side of the road.

Ultimately, I got my friend Jeff to come and rescue me with his 4 wheel drive, after driving my rental car to a quiet side street. I promised myself I’d never travel in Portland during icy/freezing weather again.

Pingback from Flutterby™! : slow motion crashes 2007-01-19 06:27:10.339006-08
Time 1/19/2007 at 12:10 pm

[…] Mark has a link and some commentary (with video embedded) to a YouTube video of cars sliding and spinning and crashing at slow speeds in a Portland snow storm. Sometimes you’ve gotta park and walk, and the smart ones make that decision early. […]

Comment from Kevin VandeWettering
Time 1/25/2007 at 12:02 am

“They could have just hopped on the train and gone home.”

Not usually in Portland. Usually when the road freezes into an ice skating rink, the lightrail wires are frozen and shorted out too.

If I remember it took Mark 6 hours to go 25 miles.

That’s because it doesn’t snow in Portland. They are actually little ice gremlins that will literally grab your tires and throw you in a ditch.