If winter tires are for people who can not drive, this guy needs a set... haha
Angry Man Stuck in Snow - YouTube
This guy is pretty funny... I like how he gets out of his jeep and starts cursing the snow
I wonder if jeeps have traction control like our 4runners that can control spinning wheels on one side or the other? If he's spinning all 4 wheels it's impressive that he's that stuck. Inferior 4wd systems will just spin the two wheels with the least traction.
That reminds me of a snow storm we got in Colorado last winter. It was a Sunday afternoon on a big ski weekend, and everyone wanted to get home. It was snowing a few inches an hour, and because of the traffic and lack of budget, snowplows couldn't quite keep up with it. It was right around freezing, so some of the snow was melting making for really slick conditions.
We waited in traffic for several hours to get up to the Eisenhower tunnel. We had plenty of time to watch the chaos going on around us. At the bottom there was an 18 wheeler where every time he used the brakes the trailer wheels would lock and the trailer would start to slide into the other lane. Colorado only requires chains on the drive wheels of commercial vehicles. We passed that one really quick!
Later on there was a 2WD Xterra, and at one point he couldn't get going from a stop. The rear wheels started spinning, and he just hit the gas harder to spin them faster. The rear end was sliding all over the place. Some people got out to push, and they were just sliding around and couldn't do anything. It was comical to watch! Eventually a 15 passenger van came and gave the Xterra a push (Ford vans have steel bumpers, so they don't care) and got it going. I assume the van had good tires or was 4WD or knew how to accelerate in the snow.
Later we were stopped and watched a jeep try to pull a car with a tow strap. I'm not sure what was wrong with the car, but I don't think it was even running. I don't even know why they were trying to move it, or how far they wanted to take it? The jeep was in 4Low and would just hit the gas and spin all four wheels. The car moved a bit, but not very far. The jeep was sliding side to side, nearly taking out anyone next to him (including us at one point). There was a driver in the car who seemed to just turn the steering wheel all the way to one side or the other, so the car was swinging like a wrecking ball behind the jeep. There were 3 lanes on the highway here, hardly moving because of idiots like these people, and they were taking up the whole width of the road. They tried to pass us, but eventually we got by them.
At one point when the traffic lightened up, a Toyota Yaris with chains on the front wheels passed everyone! There was no need to go any faster than the flow, which was about 15-25mph when we were moving, but the Yaris seemed to have no trouble with traction! I just hope he didn't have to hit the brakes hard or he would likely find the rear end in front!
Later, the same Xterra that got stuck before was still ahead of us, and he got stuck again. So of course he floors the gas and is all over the road again. We got by really quick to avoid getting hit and to avoid getting stuck for another hour while he was trying to cause an accident.
By the time we got to the Eisenhower tunnel, I looked back and there was no one behind us for at least a half mile. There were just some big trucks, some SUVs, and maybe a few small cars with us, and everyone who was left was really reasonable about driving in snow. Along the way we had passed countless cars, including Subarus and SUVs parked or abandoned on the shoulder. All of this happened on the roughly 13 mile stretch of I70 from Silverthorne to the tunnel. It ended up taking more than 6 hours to get home when it normally takes about 2. I was riding in a friend's 5th gen 4runner with factory all season tires, and I never felt us slipping at all.
I suspect a big part of the problem was tourists coming to ski. They rent cars that aren't equipped for winter, or they drive their own cars from Texas, and if they are coming to Colorado to ski they obviously have no idea how to drive in snow because they don't get snow at home. News reports blamed the traffic and delays on tunnel metering, which they do to keep traffic flowing in the tunnel, but by the time we got to the tunnel traffic was light and no one wanted to stop, so we all ignored the tunnel metering. It definitely wasn't holding up traffic below, it was the idiots who didn't equip their cars for snow and who didn't know how to drive in snow that were blocking the road.
Unfortunately having a vehicle that can get through anything doesn't always help when conditions get really bad because someone without proper equipment will end up blocking the road, or they will just close the road as a preventative measure. I wish Colorado would require chains or snow tires for passenger vehicles on snowy mountain passes like California does (though California ends up closing roads in the mountains a lot of the time too). Right now it's only ever required for commercial vehicles, as far as I can tell.
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