All evening long, I kept hearing the warnings. I had driven as far southwest on Highway 401 as it goes – in fact, I think I got to Kilometre Number 1 – in Windsor. I knew when the event at which I was speaking, on the Windsor side of the Detroit River, wrapped up, I faced the four-hour drive home to Uxbridge. At 10 p.m. I got in my car, started the engine and heard the weather forecast.
“Environment Canada has issued a weather statement,” the announcer said. “Wet snow or blowing snow will make driving conditions treacherous.”
“That’s OK,” I thought to myself. “With my snow tires on, everything should be fine.”
In that breath I made the first of several incorrect assumptions associated with this time of year. First, I figured the weather forecast might not necessarily apply to where I was going to be driving – through the snow belt between Windsor and Woodstock.
Second, I figured the snow tires I had installed last week (and a defensive driving attitude to slow down and watch out for the other guy) would expedite my trip home.
Third, and most incorrect of all, I assumed that everybody else had done the same – installed their snow tires to deal with the bad driving conditions we always face in Ontario between November and April.
I managed to get about 45 minutes up the 401 away from Windsor towards the GTA when I learned that most of my assumptions couldn’t have been more incorrect. The EC forecast was dead on; light snow was falling, enough to make the highway where the temperature was right at the freezing mark slippery without decent traction. All of the defensive driving techniques in the world weren’t going to have any effect on the other guys’ driving inadequacies. And worst of all, I soon learned that too many car operators along that notoriously snowy stretch of highway didn’t have snow tires on their vehicles. Nor were they likely to ever have them, since they continue to believe all-weather tires or four-wheel drive are sufficient to keep them out of the ditch.
Around Chatham, Ont., all the brake lights began appearing in the darkness ahead. And in seconds we were at a dead stop. And there I sat with cars and trucks ahead and behind me as far as the eye could see with nobody moving. And I imagined a four-hour drive turning into an all-nighter.
After sitting in the two-lane gridlock for nearly 40 minutes, I found a spot in the median where police do u-turns. I used it to cross the median and I carefully backtracked and then drove around the problem, rejoining the 401 about where the road blockage had occurred. Police there told me that the problem was a driver without snow tires had spun out, causing an accident that blocked the 401 for a dozen kilometres.
Wondering about the state of winter tires and winter driving, I called an acquaintance of mine, Ian Law, who is president and chief instructor for the ILR Car Control School. At 59, he’s been teaching defensive winter driving techniques at so-called skid clinics all over the province for about 20 years.
I asked Law about the problem. He agreed that drivers who choose not to convert to snow tires in winter cause much of the chaos. He added, however, it’s partly the fault of auto manufacturers too, because they sell their multi-wheel-drive SUVs on the premise that those features prevent accidents in winter driving.
“It’s a false premise that four-wheel- or all-wheel-drive gives a better grip,” he said. “All it allows is better acceleration, better steering and quicker stops. … But it’s not a safety feature. It’s a performance feature.”
I wondered about the effectiveness of Quebec highway traffic laws that (since 2008) have required snow tires in winter. The Quebec legislation demands that about 4.5 million passenger vehicles, taxis and rental cars have winter tires between Dec. 15 and March 15. According to the Rubber Association of Canada, a 2011 study of the first two seasons of the mandatory law reduced the number of victims of winter road accidents by five per cent. Over all, deaths and serious injuries due to road accidents in winter weather fell by three per cent, the study said, thanks to the law.
“Anecdotally,” Law said from his regular checks of GTA parking lots and road sides, “I see probably 70 to 80 per cent of vehicles with snow tires. Maybe people are finally getting the message.”
I’m not so sure if that percentage applied to vehicles I saw on Hwy. 401 Monday night. En route home there were three more accidents with passenger cars in the ditch, SUVs into guardrails, and beleaguered police officers trying to keep things moving. I think it’s time for Ontario lawmakers to consider the Quebec model. It would have reduced my trek home by hours.