It's That Time Of The Year

Hi Everyone:

Yes it is that time of the year again, I mean that it is winter. With winter, (depending on where you live) comes snow. Inevitably with snow comes accidents. Where I live, so far we have only had one snow fall amounting to a whopping 4 inches. That doesn't include today, due to the fact that we are having a snow storm with 12 to 18 inches expected.

During the first snow fall, I passed 2 accidents. Being a normal driver, I had to slow down to check out the accidents. Both accidents involved only a single vehicle. Not to my surprise, both vehicles were large AWD SUV's. Unless there was some kind of mechanical failure that I wasn't aware of, the apparent cause for both accidents was speed. I think that before someone buys a SUV or any AWD vehicle, it should be mandatory that they go through a common sense speech from the seller/dealer. The speech should center around how any AWD vehicle can not stop any faster or easier then any other vehicle on the road. Yes AWD vehicles can accelerate from a stopped position faster then any other vehicle in snow and have better traction going forward, they still can not stop any faster.

Having been an owner of 2 AWD vehicles, I learned early on about the lack of stopping power. Somehow, a lot of SUV owners have not learned that lesson. Common sense should dictate that in bad weather, snow and rain included, your stopping ability is severely hampered and you have to slow down.

Case closed.

Til next week.

Peter