Bile and rage from Jacob Black, helpful photo from Stephanie Wallcraft

Dear Carberg-driving muppet,

As you barrel down the highway, dumping ice chunks and billowing snow powder from your barely visible carberg I want you to know something. You, my friend, are an idiot. Worse: You’re an inconsiderate, selfish, lazy and dangerous road user. You should be sidelined. With force. By a snow plow.

“But uh, der, um, but, ah, I can see…”

Good for you! I’m sure that you felt a great sense of achievement when you moved your arm in one 30-cm arc and cleared the small section of driver-side windscreen of snow! And I can spot those of you who had to back out of your driveway this morning – you’ve managed to clear a small porthole in your rear window too! Bravo.

Seriously, I’m from Australia, and even I know I have to clear all the snow from my car before driving. In the past few days I’ve seen:

1: Some berk with a foot of snow on the roof of his minivan, merrily creating a one-car blizzard as he drove along, swerving across lanes to make sure everyone was blinded by his billowing snow cloud.

2: Another numpty, panicking as he jumped out of his car at a traffic light to clear the slew of snow that had blinded him as he stopped. See, when you stop with a big load of snow on your roof, it goes onto to your windscreen – obscuring your vision.

3: A poor, innocent (mostly) sod who nearly put himself in a fence trying to dodge a large chunk of ice and snow flying off the top of the pickup in front, and…

4: My personal favourite Jack Frost impersonating moron driving down the road in a new Acura with snow packed so hard onto his windshield the wipers wouldn’t even function. No matter though. He had a small portal to see out of, I’m sure he’ll be fine.

These people are a hazard to other road users and themselves. They’re also breaking the law and it’s inexcusable. $4 gets you a snow brush from Canadian Tire. $20 gets you a good one with extendable handles for doing your roof. The total time taken to clear the snow is less than the time it takes your car heater to reach temperature, so you can even do it while you wait for the seats to thaw out.

If you don’t clear all the snow from your car and you cause or are in an accident, you should be charged with reckless endangerment.

Quick digression: These people are the reasons you should have your lights on full at all times in winter – it gives you a slightly larger chance of being seen through the snow-covered windows of some clown’s car.

There is a silver lining to every cloud I guess. As pointed out by twitter user Jason Applebaum @jasonappleb, at least in winter you can identify the clowns who don’t look around them.

Driving in the winter is not catastrophic or even all that hard. It just requires a little more attention and effort than driving in summer. If that’s too much for you, put your car in a garage for the season and stay home. You don’t deserve to be on the roads. It’s as simple as that.

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