Why is Momentum Theory so hard to grasp RE: winter driving?

Between the electronic nannie’s and 4x4/AWD that make people feel invincible and people refusing to go out to an empty unplowed parking lot and learning how their car reacts you get a bunch of people that can’t do much more than hold the steering wheel and pray.

I am forever grateful that my first winter driving when I was 15 my mom took me out to a parking lot and had me intentionally slide around, floor it, slam on the brakes etc to learn how the vehicle reacts. She went as far as having me drive around and yanking the e-brake when I wasn’t expecting it and teaching me how to recover from oversteer and understeer. Every car I’ve gotten since then I’ve done the same thing, heck I do it when I get new tires.
 
I know how to drive well and carefully in snow. But I stay off the roads when bad weather hits. Morons all over the place who can't drive in it. Getting worse as time goes on. Forty years ago not such a problem.
 
I put 200 miles a day on my FWD car during this mess. Common sense isn't so common.
 
winter tires are not easy buttons. they are simply the appropriate tools for the conditions.
They do little to a newish drivers to understand the lack of available traction in winter. When people lose it with with winter tires or quickly on all seasons it is lack of respect or understanding how little grip you can have and developing the skills to cope.
 
They do little to a newish drivers to understand the lack of available traction in winter. When people lose it with with winter tires or quickly on all seasons it is lack of respect or understanding how little grip you can have and developing the skills to cope.
That's on driver training (or the lack thereof).

Avoiding dedicated snows in a place that gets real winter is like deer hunting with a .22LR. Yeah, you can do it, and many people have, and yes, .308 is better, but neither is going to help you much if you can't shoot. Better training however, never makes the .22LR the better cartridge, it just makes you more proficient with both of them.
 
My first experience driving on ice, believe it or not, was in tractors pulling grain wagons. I was 14. If you think cars are hard to drive on ice, then try a tractor with tires meant for gripping soil. Tractors are terrible on snow/ice. The gravel roads were crowned and you stayed in the middle of the crown. If you dare get off the center of the crown, you had a very good chance to start sliding toward the ditch and there was no saving it. If you met a car or truck, they all understood to pull off into a driveway and let you pass. Everyone was polite and had some common sense. The experience taught me to have great respect for icy roads. Slow down and watch those around you like a hawk.
 
Drivers ed for us was an ex nun who taught drivers ed at school. If it were snowing she would take us out into parking lot get us doing about 25 mph and pull e brake on our manual transmission Nissan Sentra and jerk wheel to get us to understand skid recovery. She’d also take use over to a slight incline make us stop and learn to feather vehicle up a hill with a manual on snow/ice.

I realized I got amazing winter training beyond the experience self taught age 16 in the white mountains of NH.
 
It always take the first 2months of winter for people to get back into it around here. We are into the bonus 4 months were everyone is accustomed to low traction now so accidents are reduced. They still spike up at each new snowfall though. I learned to drive by taking my mother shopping every Saturday from 14 to 16yo in this with studded winter tires in the back and summers in front. You learn vehicle dynamics quickly with that layout and your mother screaming at you when you mess up.

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Drivers ed for us was an ex nun who taught drivers ed at school. If it were snowing she would take us out into parking lot get us doing about 25 mph and pull e brake on our manual transmission Nissan Sentra and jerk wheel to get us to understand skid recovery. She’d also take use over to a slight incline make us stop and learn to feather vehicle up a hill with a manual on snow/ice.

I realized I got amazing winter training beyond the experience self taught age 16 in the white mountains of NH.
Mine was a combination of learning from my dad (who would "test" the road conditions and explained to me controlled slides and all that stuff when I was like 10) and driving an ATV (trike, Yamaha 225DX) on ice on the lake in the winter in Muskoka before I was old enough to drive a car. I had a lot of experience driving on slippery surfaces long before I was legally able to drive.

That said, I did do driving school (mostly for the insurance break) and it was a decent experience, though not as informative as what I learned from my dad so many years prior.
 
I grew up 45 min from ski resort and snow tires were mandatory. Winter driving was just a normal way of life.
So, since we had mandatory theory test+45hrs of practice than test by two member committee, one has to know stuff.
I failed my first attempt. It was like 2ft of snow, packed snow on road, and I was bit too fast. The guy in back seat says something like: “son, how do you plan to stop on that stop sign?” Come back after two weeks. Again 2ft of snow, even worse, but went well.

I move to the US in 2005, Alabama. Went to do driving tests and there is sign: “no road tests during rain!”
 
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