[HN Gopher] A salt monopoly could spike car accidents in the Mid...
___________________________________________________________________
A salt monopoly could spike car accidents in the Midwest
Author : new_guy
Score : 228 points
Date : 2021-03-15 13:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com)
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Capitalism in action.
|
| It's not because of too _much_ regulation that many of these
| monopolies exist. (That 's not to say there aren't industries
| where this isn't the case.)
| orolle wrote:
| We have anti-trust laws. Still the anti-trust laws are not
| enforced.
| giantg2 wrote:
| A vast majority of laws are not enforced, especially not
| consistently.
| minikites wrote:
| Because it would be political suicide to do so. Many people
| in this country love big companies and build their entire
| identities and personalities around brands like Tesla or
| Apple.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Many small and medium businesses also have been hurt by the
| monopolies. I don't think it's political suicide, and the
| winds seem to be shifting back towards anti monopoly.
| jfindley wrote:
| "Its [salt] main use is deicing our roads ..."
|
| I thought this sounded surprising, salt is used for lots of
| things, and it'd be surprising if road use was the main one. So I
| went to look, found a bunch of sources, including [1] and indeed
| this does not look to be correct. Further down the article
| acknowledges that indeed only about 40% of salt is used for
| deicing roads, but it really annoys me when writers knowingly
| write misleading statements at the top of their piece for
| "impact".
|
| The article also fails to mention that there are a number of
| alternatives available if it's infeasible to acquire salt in
| sufficient quantities, such as CMA[2]. Currently CMA is about 13x
| more expensive, but that would seem to put some sort of
| constraint on just how much price gouging is possible, especially
| as CMA and similar alternatives have a lot of significant
| upsides, such as much less vehicle damage and environmental
| impact.
|
| 1: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-
| analysis/industri... 2:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_magnesium_acetate
| bandyaboot wrote:
| As others have already stated, though probably not the most
| informative, "main" is a reasonable choice in this context.
| Given that, your choice to label it as knowingly misleading for
| impact is itself more deserving of criticism than the thing
| your criticizing.
| CPLX wrote:
| I don't think you've identified any criticisms here that negate
| the main points he's making.
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| To me "main use" only says it's bigger than any other single
| use, not that it's > 50%.
|
| I agree that just writing "40%" would be more informative, but
| that's not how journalistic writing works, for reasons I don't
| fully understand.
| Retric wrote:
| They actually gave the number lower down. "Roughly 40% of
| domestic salt, produced largely from mining, is used not for
| food or chemicals, but for deicing."
|
| So, I don't know what the issue here as the term main use is
| as you say accurate.
| ghaff wrote:
| I won't argue this specific case but, in general, terms like
| "most," "about half," a "significant majority," and so forth
| can be more readable for a general audience than spouting off
| a bunch of precise numbers (which may not really be that
| accurate anyway).
| btown wrote:
| In what possible world is a 13x priced chemical a meaningful
| rebuttal to the notion that this conglomerate would be free to
| gouge prices? It's good to know it exists, but it's a red
| herring from an argumentation perspective.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Further down the article acknowledges that indeed only about
| 40% of salt is used for deicing roads
|
| Isn't that the main use then? The article doesn't say the
| majority is used for deicing. It says it's the main use. Unless
| there is another use at 41%, then this is the main use.
| collsni wrote:
| I'd rather have no salt vs rust.
| williesleg wrote:
| Salt is so hard to find.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I went from Ontario where salt is used to Alberta where grit
| (gravel) is used and I'd say grit is better. The downside is more
| windshield repairs, the upside is car underbodies last a lot
| longer and you don't have the slippery time after salt is first
| spread.
| strig wrote:
| I believe salt stops being effective around -12C, so for colder
| places it's not an option.
| nerdponx wrote:
| In the northeast US I think they typically use a mix of both
| sand and salt.
| freshpots wrote:
| Alberta gets too cold for road salt to be used which is why
| they use gravel. Though, I agree and would like to see gravel
| used in Ontario as it is much better for the environment. We
| are seeing a significant rise in the salinity of our rivers
| and, more concerning, groundwater drinking wells.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| In Ontario, sand is typically used outside of cities, at
| least in Simcoe County. It's remarkably effective at melting
| ice and snow.
| peeters wrote:
| Sand does nothing to melt ice and snow. It's used for
| traction.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yes, it's used for traction, but sand will absolutely
| melt snow and ice. I know from experience. On my low-
| traffic street, the ploughs only spread sand on
| intersections and hills (to conserve it, I'm assuming),
| and when the rest of the street is hard-packed snow and
| ice, those spots are bare asphalt. It melts it by making
| it darker, thus absorbing more sunlight. This effect is
| less pronounced at extremely cold temperatures, and only
| works during the day.
| nostoc wrote:
| Grit and salt are two tools used for different temperature.
|
| Salt is better when the weather is close to 0 celcius. Grit is
| better when it's colder.
| destitude wrote:
| The problem is is that all the marketing for tire companies and
| their all season tires has convinced people that snow tires are
| not necessary. Every all season tire on the market starts to lose
| performance characteristics when the temperatures drops below
| 40F. You can not have both "long tread life" and good performance
| below 40F in the same tire. Even if you don't have snow the
| performance is worse below 40F for all season tires compared to
| "snow" tires.
| Faaak wrote:
| Not a single mention about "positive" impacts that less road
| salting will have on aquatic ecosystems.. Interesting article
| though
| xbar wrote:
| I initially dismissed this comment because the article was
| clearly about the market dynamics of an infrastructure-critical
| commodity.
|
| But on reflection, I would say that this comment misses the
| point by less than I'd originally thought.
|
| I would argue in response to it that every market-focused topic
| should include the key externalities associated with the topic.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Maybe the newly formed salt monopoly will increase prices,
| thus reducing use of salt on roads and reducing the impact on
| the environment. Win-win?
| vmception wrote:
| This reminds me that this is what annoys me about comedians
| doing news. Everyone thinks their favorite late night talk show
| host is _better_ news because they raise awareness in a
| digestible format. But they arent willing to realize that every
| single topic - if it is on their show - is presented in a
| pejorative view.
|
| Between the quick cuts to "here's a funny photoshop" (said in
| John Oliver's voice), it should be a red flag that they aren't
| actually balancing out the purpose of an organization or system
| or how it got to be that way
|
| Its just "system you aren't a part of is bad, we raised
| awareness, we did it you're informed!"
|
| Trevor Noah, John Stewart, Steven Colbert, John Oliver, Hasan
| Minhaj, all do/did it the same
|
| This bothers me. All part of the same polarizing filter bubbles
| we want to think that only people with different beliefs are
| in.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I'm reminded of John Stewart on a Tucker Carlson show 15
| years ago where Stewart had to explain the difference between
| his Comedy Central comedy show and Tucker's News show.
|
| I didn't know all the right news was so non-pejorative. Maybe
| if they'd add a laugh track it would be more entertaining.
| vmception wrote:
| The point is that they aren't balanced _either_
|
| It doesnt fix the adage: if you dont watch the news you are
| uninformed, if you do watch the need you are misinformed
|
| Comedy news is not fixing this by presenting everything as
| the controversy of the day. They are all still omitting
| lots and are just aiming to rile you up like the others.
| "But its funny and feels good and isnt Fox or OAN so it
| must be balanced!" is really what many of the viewers feel.
| ccsnags wrote:
| The news is more about cutting a good promo than informing
| the public.
|
| Anyone who gets their news from comedians should be laughed
| at and any comedians who think that they are important should
| be ignored.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know how people can stand the John Oliver/Hasan
| Minhaj schtick. The shows are so formulaic with some out of
| context clip followed by a crude analogy. "That would be like
| if so and so did this and that and blah blah".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If you think a comedian is giving you good news coverage, you
| might be a lost cause...
| lupire wrote:
| Research shows that comedy "news" watchers are generally
| better informed than most other news station watcher. The
| question is of the comedians are bringing people up or down
| from where'd they be otherwise.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| "Research" shows literally whatever you want it to show.
| So unless you're going to link to the "research" for
| examination, nobody should be taking your claim very
| seriously.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > "Research" shows literally whatever you want it to show
|
| [Citation needed showing this reflects most research]
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Who claimed it reflects "most research"? Certainly not
| me.
|
| My point is that you can find "research" to support any
| idea that you want it to support. So without a citation,
| the prefix "research shows..." is effectively
| meaningless.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Who claimed it reflects "most research"? Certainly not
| me.
|
| Sure you did. You declared that Research = shows
| literally whatever you want it to show. By presenting
| Research without any limitation, you left the broad
| inferences in place.
|
| If you wanted to restrict the reach of your declaration,
| you could have qualified it as 'some research' or 'there
| is research'.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Ok this is getting ridiculous. You actually interpreted
| what I wrote as "every single piece of research ever made
| shows whatever you want it to show?" Or is it possible
| (likely?) that you're just nitpicking?
|
| Please review HN guidelines.
|
| "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith."
|
| With that in mind I reiterate: "research shows what you
| want it to show".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| My phrasing is "there is always a study 'showing'
| something is good or bad".
| wongarsu wrote:
| "If you think [single news source] is giving you good news
| coverage, you are wrong" seems true in general. You need
| multiple sources if you want to escape bias.
|
| Having comedians in your news diet is quite healthy. A
| comedian can say things that nobody else would dare to say.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > A comedian can say things that nobody else would dare
| to say.
|
| More to the point, some report on important topics that
| news orgs don't find sexy enough to cover (eg: Investor-
| state dispute settlements [corporate sovereignty]).
| hindsightbias wrote:
| That was true when Stewart's show started, back when
| being anti-war was pretty unpopular but I don't think
| it's true in the past decade.
|
| Lorne Michaels (SNL) was interviewed recently and asked
| about how the comedy skits had changed. He said they
| could not air today anything like the stuff they did in
| the 70's and 80's.
| lupire wrote:
| Despite the misnomer title of his show, John Oliver has
| always done issue advocacy not weekly nor news.
| nraynaud wrote:
| I am a big curious, would the communities buying shares in the
| salt companies be an equivalent of storing salt for the winter?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Jeld-Wen makes what are called door skins, which make up the
| back and front of a door, and are expensive and difficult to
| produce. Jeld-Wen sold door skins to door makers, but Jen-Weld
| also made and sold doors as well. So it both sold to its door
| skin customers, and competed with them as the final buyer of
| doors.
|
| Is there a typo here? It makes no sense to that Jeld-Wen would be
| a buyer of doors.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Yeah, that should clearly read "... and competed with them as
| the final _seller_ of doors ".
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Why are cities buying salt in spot markets, when they have a
| mostly predictable consumption?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Minnesota pays 30-40% more per ton for salt than NY or Ohio.
| Midwest governments should be using their buying power and
| ability to control political subdivisions to make these mergers
| less profitable. For commodities, this is an area where
| government procurement shines.
|
| In the absence of sane Federal regulatory action, consolidation
| of suppliers is best addressed by consolidating demand. A state
| like Minnesota should be forcing cities/counties to use a single
| state contract and leverage that demand to pull salt in from
| Canada, Western NY, wherever. Then use multi-state alliances to
| drive more demand and concessions from suppliers.
|
| The downside is that winner take all procurement will put
| incumbents out of business, but that will happen anyway.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| In Michigan everything is corrupted by 100 years of letting
| elites run the government which here means the auto concerns.
| The car barons own the salt mine and they heap it out
| generously to the roadways because they know it destroys the
| autos forcing the slave class to buy more autos.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Ohio has salt mines. Are there any in Minnesota?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> winner take all procurement will put incumbents out of
| business
|
| The worst part isn't that companies go out of business, they
| probably won't, but that after a few rounds of one big state
| contract only one company will have the capacity to even bid
| for the contact. That one big company will then subcontract
| lots of little local delivery contracts. The one big company
| will have then effectively replaced the government in that it
| will manage salt delivery across the state.
| trf12 wrote:
| Now do the same projection for government's usage of cloud.
| RaptorJ wrote:
| Who are the private organizations buying road salt/salting
| services to within even two orders of magnitude of
| municipalities/state govts?
| lxmorj wrote:
| That's silly. A single buyer doesn't have to buy the entire
| supply in one shot. They could easily say "We buy the
| cheapest marginal salt in any quantity until our total
| capacity is met. You must beat $CANADA_PRICE + $IMPORT_PRICE,
| as well as $NY_PRICE + $TRANSPORT_PRICE or we'll have to buy
| from them instead".
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The parent spoke of "winner take all procurement", which is
| a very different concept than "single buyer".
| enkid wrote:
| I believe that's what your parent post is saying.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| End of the day, the market is doing that anyway. Remember the
| private equity folks are buying up the means of production --
| contracting out trucking or whatever is meaningless.
|
| It's obviously building an old-school Trust, but under our
| current legal philosophy, as long the private equity / public
| companies slowly boil the frog and the commodity doesn't
| increase in price quickly, there will be no Federal
| regulatory action.
|
| All of these things are re-treads of what happened between
| 1880-1920. The cost efficiencies driving profit are about
| using computer tech to reduce labor and other costs. In the
| old days, it was spinning machines powered by
| coal/gas/electricity displacing water or craft work. It's
| more profitable/lower risk to build a monopoly and slowly
| implement cost-cutting than to be forced to do so by a
| competitve marketplace.
| bequanna wrote:
| Minnesota state procurement is seriously broken with residents
| now paying the second highest taxes in the nation (after CA).
| The only question is whether this should be attributed to
| incompetence via political appointments or straight up graft.
|
| Check out the MNLARS project, if you're interested in another
| excellent example. Pay attention to the insane dollar amounts
| involved and feel free to make up your own mind if the people
| in charge of that project were really that dumb or if there is
| something more sinister going on.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Road salt isn't a complex delivery of services. It's a pure
| commodity.
|
| Large complex procurement fails or needs change orders
| frequently because they are large and complex. Buyers don't
| understand what they want and sellers understand what they
| are told. More bidders often drive prices up.
|
| Commodities are different. It's driven by volume and
| competitive process. If 30 salt miners bid, you're getting a
| good price. If 2 bid, your only path to better pricing is to
| go vertical to control demand. State governments are able to
| do that for this type of commodity. Supermarkets do the same
| thing with produce, although that was illegal until recently.
| u678u wrote:
| I'll take your MN income tax if you'll take my NJ property
| taxes. Around here a typical middle class home is pushing
| $20k/yr.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Making direct comparisons among state income taxes is facile
| without acknowledging the marginalized rates. Do California
| and Minnesota have high tax rates? Yes, but only for high
| income individuals. California's highest bracket doesn't kick
| in until you make over $1MM and Minnesota doesn't until you
| make over $275k. Iowa's top tax bracket begins at $75k as an
| example. Someone making $80k per year would pay higher income
| taxes in Iowa than in Minnesota or California yet strangely
| the internet isn't full of people ranting about the tax rates
| in Iowa. If you compare effective tax rates versus median
| income, California and Minnesota aren't even in the top 20
| most expensive tax states.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's hard to compare because it depends on you and policy.
|
| Unless you have unusually high W-2 income, expensive or
| large property, etc most of the differences between states
| are pretty marginal when you net everything out.
|
| Many of the "low tax" states have a catch, whether it be
| sales tax on food, school funding, high property taxes,
| local governance that encourages HOA, etc. At the end of
| the day, it doesn't really matter too much. People
| complaining about taxes is background radiation.
| foobiekr wrote:
| On the contrary, it really matters in some contexts, like
| for retirement purposes. Taxation of retirement income
| can really impact retirees.
|
| Tax policy can also make a huge difference for whether
| rebalancing a portfolio is even viable.
| bluGill wrote:
| People in Iowa complain about their tax rates. If you don't
| live in Iowa, you don't hear about it. Iowa's population is
| too small to make the news for the most part (except at
| caucus time, but state taxes are not an issue in the
| national elections).
| tstrimple wrote:
| I live in Iowa. I've literally heard more people here
| complain about "Liberal California" tax rates than Iowa
| tax rates. Generally people just have a poor
| understanding of how taxation actually works. Most Iowa
| residents probably have no idea that they pay a higher
| tax rate they they would in California.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Minnesotans don't have much time for political nonsense.
| Taxes in Minnesota are not an issue. We have had the highest
| voter participation percentage of any state for a long time.
|
| This is a great state to live in that cares about its
| citizens, people with disabilities and children. We also have
| great schools but we do have a large achievement gap. Another
| thing that bothers me are some of the inequities across
| counties. We also have a lack of affordable housing like
| everyone else does.
|
| With respect to MNLARS you can read the report rather than
| speculate: https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/dvs/forms-
| documents/Documents/i...
| bequanna wrote:
| Ah yes, the "Blue Ribbon Committee" organized by the same
| people who were responsible for managing the MNLARS project
| for the past decade. I'm glad there were able to put
| together this "independent" and completely bias-free review
| of this project so this can be put to bed.
|
| Get real. I lived in MN most of my life and finally moved
| last year. I now reside in TX and keep much more of what I
| make. If you don't smell something fishy with this project
| and the way MN is managing tax revenue, they've got you
| fooled.
|
| The politicians will hide behind very noble reasons to
| request more money from taxpayers. Perhaps there are some
| true believers, but they are only concerned with empire
| building, giving high-paying/do nothing jobs to cronies,
| and maximizing the amount of money flowing through their
| coffers.
|
| People at all levels of government have few if any
| incentives to be results-oriented and efficient but are
| heavily incentivized to request more money, employees, etc.
| The unfortunate thing is that the people of MN have been
| easily manipulated via guilt, social justice, etc. into
| paying well more than their fair share. Maybe guilt is a
| cultural defect somewhat specific to MN, but it seems that
| the politicians have been quite good at exploiting it for
| gain.
|
| > This is a great state to live in...
|
| It _used_ to be a great state to live in. Below average
| wages, above average taxes. Keep buying into Minnesota
| exceptionalism and telling yourself that your quality of
| life is somehow better than other places in the US. It
| ain't.
| [deleted]
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Get real. I lived in MN most of my life and finally
| moved last year. I now reside in TX and keep much more of
| what I make. If you don't smell something fishy with this
| project and the way MN is managing tax revenue, they've
| got you fooled.
|
| Minnesota manages to keep the lights and heat on in the
| winter, how's TX in that regard? You still pay taxes in
| Texas, just in different ways.
| eru wrote:
| Shouldn't low barriers to entry reduce these excess profits?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Most government bidding processes are, in and of themselves,
| a high barrier to entry.
|
| Much of this is by design because the companies with the
| government influence to fix the problem are the ones who
| created it.
| michaelt wrote:
| The article claims it isn't economic to transport salt >150
| miles over land.
|
| So at the very least, you have to buy a salt mine in the
| right location. Maybe even start a new one, if the existing
| monopolists own them all.
|
| Not exactly a low barrier to entry IMHO :)
| megiddo wrote:
| Investment opportunity:
|
| Find a hole in the ground, buy salt in the off-years, sell at
| peak.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| If you are wondering what its like running out of salt, look at
| the UK winter of 2010. I don't know exactly what went wrong, i
| think it was a combination of unusually cold/snowy weather for a
| prolonged period. I think the governments, both central and local
| didn't bother buying enough salt. But even more crucially, my
| local government didn't seem to have any grit spreaders. At all.
| For about a full week, the roads were lethal. Only people with
| 4-wheel drive contemplated doing more than the bare minimum of
| driving. But now my local council has learnt it's lesson. At the
| most remote forecast of snow, the grit spreaders are out and
| about, spraying salt everywhere. and then they wonder why there
| are so many potholes...
| peteradio wrote:
| God I hate road salt. My poor poor Jeeps! Perhaps this will spur
| a shift towards alternatives? I've heard beet juice of all things
| is effective but I have no clue if its economical.
| giantg2 wrote:
| In some areas they used to use cinders from the coal plants.
| They are black and soak up more heat from the sun and contain
| salts.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| In my country, we use grit.
|
| > https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/gritty-effort-keep-
| city-s...
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps corn syrup would work too. If we take it out of our
| foods, then we can solve two problems at once.
| ginko wrote:
| My guess is that you'd run into problems with mold or
| bacterial growth pretty quickly if you spread glucose syrup
| on roads.
| macawfish wrote:
| They already put corn syrup on the roads, mixed with salt.
| brink wrote:
| Then we wouldn't be able to eat it off of the roads.
| justwalt wrote:
| Not too mention animals eating the syrup from the roads.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| There is already a problem in many places with deers
| licking salt of the road surface.
| amelius wrote:
| Just add a bitter chemical, like they do with the coating
| of medicine so that children don't think pills are candy.
| efficax wrote:
| Chicago has used a kind of beet brine for deicing. It's beet
| juice mixed with salt. It means you can use less salt, the
| sugar makes it more effective in colder temps, and helps it
| stick to the road so there's less waste. Also makes the road
| look red.
| thieving_magpie wrote:
| Where I used to live used crushed glass as part of a traction
| mix. They claimed there were no adverse effects on tires but
| there were many complaints from cyclists that their tires were
| popping regularly.
| volkk wrote:
| this sounds horrible. what if you walk on it and track it home?
| then you get to walk on crushed glass with your bare feet?
| yikes
| cbsmith wrote:
| It's really not that different from walking on sand.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Seems if it sprays into the air and gets into people's eyes,
| that would be an even bigger problem.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Seriously. Sounds like a major public health crisis in a few
| decades.
| jhickok wrote:
| Or gets into your lungs. I believe this is how Spinoza died.
| Faaak wrote:
| and it make the road so much noisier too.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Crushed glass is silica which is a component of sand.
| ISL wrote:
| Naturally-weathered sand and recently-crushed glass can have
| very different surface properties (i.e. glass can be sharp!).
| cbsmith wrote:
| The stuff they use for roads is not sharp.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I would be fine if they stopped salting. Here in Michigan we are
| on top of one of the worlds largest reserves of salt and I
| believe it has led to over-use. It completely obliterates the
| metal on your vehicle.
|
| It's definitely time for an alternative solution, no pun
| intended.
| lupire wrote:
| Does salt stay around and damage your car if you don't drive in
| the snow? Or can you limit the risk by opting out on snow days?
| whalesalad wrote:
| The salt becomes a liquid and then splashes all over the
| undercarriage of your vehicle, into crevices and between
| surfaces. It is definitely better to avoid driving if you
| can.
|
| Undercoatings can help, too, but they generally need to be
| applied annually.
| newjunkcity wrote:
| I take issue with this view at the beginning of the article:
|
| > They need salt. And not the kind of salt that flavors our food,
| but the kind that melts snow and ice. If we don't have salt, no
| one can drive, because salt is what keeps our roads manageable.
|
| Driving in snow/ice without salt is absolutely possible, but
| requires better driver education.
|
| I may be wrong, but I heard that in certain Scandinavian
| countries (e.g. Norway) being able to control a skid is part of
| the driving test.
|
| Driving in snow/ice, even snow/ice that is at the melting point
| and therefore extremely slippery due to the water, is absolutely
| possible without salt, but it requires your 'average Joe' to
| understand that they need to slow down, to leave 10* the space
| from the car in front, etc.
|
| As many have noted, salt negatively impacts aquatic ecosystems,
| and also decomposes your shiny new car into a pile of rust.
|
| Any situation that can be permanently resolved by education and
| intelligence, rather than by brute-forcing a constant
| 'workaround', would seem to me to be the best way forwards; but
| as is often the case, stupidity, laziness, resistance to change,
| and those who provide the salt being scared of the loss of
| revenue, win out...
|
| /rant
| timwaagh wrote:
| Scandinavia also has decent public transport and bicycling
| infrastructure available for those who fail driving tests
| and/or can't afford a course. And I imagine such a life is
| still pretty bad.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Driving in snow/ice, even snow/ice that is at the melting
| point and therefore extremely slippery due to the water, is
| absolutely possible without salt, but it requires your 'average
| Joe' to understand that they need to slow down, to leave 10*
| the space from the car in front, etc.
|
| Which means the highway has 20 times less carrying capacity
| because everyone is driving half as fast with ten times as much
| space between each vehicle, and your one hour commute becomes
| 20 hours. This is equivalent to the roads being unusable.
| amalcon wrote:
| _> Any situation that can be permanently resolved by education
| and intelligence, rather than by brute-forcing a constant
| 'workaround', would seem to me to be the best way forwards_
|
| Hard disagree. You're essentially proposing the "solution" that
| nobody should ever make mistakes, and if someone does make a
| mistake, we should educate them to prevent the mistake in the
| future. In studies of disaster prevention, this has been shown
| to be ineffective time and time again: training does not always
| work in a real situation. Should every driver learn how to
| control a skid? Yes. Should we rely on that type of training as
| a substitute for other measures? Surely not, if only because
| the driving test doesn't have kids in the back or a fallen tree
| blocking the road.
|
| The current solution is to adjust the environment in such a way
| as to make mistakes less likely and less damaging. This is what
| disaster prevention experts recommend. Now, salting roads is
| not the only way to do this: personally, I think snow tires,
| tire chains, and TCS software are all better interventions
| depending on the situation. Putting it all on training, on the
| other hand, will get people killed.
| InvisibleUp wrote:
| Another alternative would be to invest much more in rail-based
| transportation methods, because iirc they don't need salting.
| Also, they'd avoid the issue of needing to educate every driver
| on how to avoid slipping and sliding in the winter.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The trains shut down during snow storms on the East Coast.
| Plus, how would people get to the trains if the roads aren't
| clear?
| intrasight wrote:
| We shift the burden to the government when we should just all
| have better tires and learn to drive properly. But our current
| legal and insurance regime probably forces municipalities to
| salt.
| gambiting wrote:
| Also in some places it's completely futile to keep adding
| salt(or it's simply too cold for salt to be effective) and grit
| is used instead. It's not an insurmountable problem. But yes,
| driver education is a huge part of it.
| danaliv wrote:
| _> Driving in snow /ice without salt is absolutely possible,
| but requires better driver education._
|
| Good luck with this. If the past year has taught us anything,
| it's that Americans will fight tooth and nail against even the
| slightest hint of being told what to do.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _Driving in snow /ice without salt is absolutely possible, but
| requires better driver education._
|
| Can you elaborate on what the education would cover? My
| experience driving in the midwest for 30 years has been that if
| at any given moment, physics decides you, even as an abundantly
| cautious driver are going for a slip and slide, you're _going_
| for a slip and slide.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| A sliding car doesn't have to be an uncontrollable car. When
| it's only snow on the road, it's just a bit of sliding here
| and there, but most drivers can still drive safely.
|
| I consider myself a highly skilled driver but I agree that
| when there's a mirror-like icy spot hidden under the nice
| fluffy snow on top, and you hit it at the wrong moment,
| you're just going.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I _completely_ understand that and agree with it.
|
| It doesn't answer my question though. What kind of
| education, besides the education we already give about
| being a safe driver is the kind of education needed to be
| "good" at driving on snow and ice?
|
| Asking as someone who is reaching a point where training a
| younger human how to drive is about to be a thing, and I'm
| always curious what others think of how to drive in this
| mess.
|
| I've got all kinds of strategies and tactics passed down
| from _my_ old man, and you know what? After researching I
| learned that almost all of them are orally traditional
| wives-tales and actually have more anecdotal histories of
| helping my dad avoid a tree than any actual real value when
| the rubber meets the ice..
| Toutouxc wrote:
| The only thing that saves your ass when the rubber meets
| the ice (and your car's stability assist fails) are your
| own lightning fast reflexes and loads of experience.
|
| There can be the usual "do this when the car oversteers,
| don't do this when it understeers", but it's crucial that
| the beginner driver experiences it all in a safe and
| controlled manner. A parking lot, an old airfield, a safe
| road in the middle of nowhere. Literally the fun stuff we
| did behind our parents' backs. Pulling the e-brake on FWD
| cars, drifting the RWD cars, getting a feel for the
| different sounds of different surfaces under the tires.
| When doing this on snow and ice it's not even that hard
| on the car and it's fun and also educational.
|
| A car sliding a bit on a snowy road when you've been
| expecting it is a non-event. A car sliding unexpectedly
| with a beginner behind the wheel is a terrifying
| experience and often a dice roll between stuck-in-a-snow-
| bank or a head-on collision.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What kind of education, besides the education we already
| give about being a safe driver is the kind of education
| needed to be "good" at driving on snow and ice?
|
| You gotta drill into people's heads that "more of what
| you're already doing" makes losing traction worse instead
| of better.
|
| If it were up to me the crappy driver's ed videos would
| have someone who's obviously really high telling people
| "you gotta just chill and go with the flow, man"
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| As a small fleet owner I would gladly deal with increased car
| accidents if it meant they didn't salt the roads.
|
| I would gladly buy studded tires and chain up if they didn't salt
| the roads.
|
| I would gladly deal with worse traffic in the winter if they
| didn't salt the roads.
|
| I would gladly incur a greater risk of harm or death if they
| didn't salt the roads.
|
| I would voluntarily pay more fuel taxes if they didn't salt the
| roads.
|
| I would put up with all sorts of shit to get the state to stop
| chemically destroying my property. And pretty much everyone I
| know feels the same way.
|
| When people complain about public policy written by people in
| ivory towers who are unaffected by their own policy this is the
| kind of crap they're talking about. To see such policy presented
| as though there are no tradeoffs what so ever just drives the
| point home.
|
| Edit: Since apparently I didn't leave enough space between the
| lines for people to read, let me make this clear. I'm doing ok. I
| my fleet is N=6. I can play musical panel vans and station wagons
| as needed in order to keep costs down and put the wear and tear
| where I want it. That insulates me pretty well from vehicle
| maintenance issues. I can phase a vehicle out by neglecting it
| and then buy a replacement. Someone driving one old car to their
| job does not have this luxury. You're caught between several
| rocks and hard places with regard to transportation options. The
| state is raising the cost of you dragging your butt to your job
| and telling you its for your benefit. What's an annoyance for me
| is a serious financial problem for others.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| As a Canadian who lives with salted roads all the time ... what
| are you talking about? There is nobody I know that wants this.
| Studded tires and chains chew up asphalt. No one wants to die
| on icy roads. No one wants to spend 6 hours stuck in cold
| weather hoping you don't run of of gas because of an accident
| caused by icy roads.
|
| My last car, a Toyota Camry lasted 12 years without noticeable
| rust and, for all I know, is still running in the used market.
| My 2015 Prius is pristine. What "chemically destroying" is
| going on?
|
| Salt doesn't make sense if you get a LOT of snow and have
| steady cold weather but for vast parts of Canada and the US it
| makes sense.
| war1025 wrote:
| We moved to the next town over four winters ago. We still do
| all our shopping in the original place because that's where all
| the stores are and where I work.
|
| Our ten year old car went from having no rust to having
| completely rusted out rocker panels in two winters.
|
| Granted, they seemed to rust from the inside out, but over the
| course of the winter you can watch in real time as the rust
| spreads and dissolves more of the car.
|
| I appreciate that the road is always clear and passable. That's
| great.
|
| I wouldn't mind the rust so much except body shops won't touch
| the stuff. They only want to deal with fender benders and
| whatnot on new vehicles with fat insurance payouts.
|
| Not much appetite for patching cars up and keeping them on the
| road.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > As a small fleet owner I would gladly deal with increased car
| accidents if it meant they didn't salt the roads.
|
| > I would gladly incur a greater risk of harm or death if they
| didn't salt the roads.
|
| Let's hope that people around you are smart enough to keep you
| as far away as possible from local government.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Chains and studded tires lead to increased road wear. When I
| lived there the joke was MN has 142K miles of paved roads, but
| only enough asphalt for 100k.
| mellavora wrote:
| A lot of people have taken a rather negative interpretation of
| this post. I certainly see how it could be read that way, but
| let's for a second assume that maybe the author is just a
| little tone-def, perhaps didn't score top of the class in
| social awareness (a trait perhaps others here might share).
|
| Perhaps what the author meant by saying that they are a small
| fleet owner is that they for professional reasons are highly
| aware of side=effects and negatives consequences of salting
| roads, things which also hit people who don't have a fleet of
| cars they are managing.
|
| When you have a fleet, you have more data points than when you
| only have a single car.
|
| And yes, I've been poor and homeless myself, so I am speaking
| from an understanding of what it means to be on the edge (and
| sometimes on the wrong side of the edge).
| jvanderbot wrote:
| As a small fleet owner, you are effectively the landed elite.
| Ivory tower nothing, this is money-before lives of others.
|
| As a previously poor owner of a previously junky car that was
| previously leased by someone who appreciated salt on the roads
| ... I also appreciated salt on the roads.
|
| In fact, I was recently back in MN, and my outright-owned,
| otherwise nice vehicle which did stand to take some damage from
| salt, but I appreciated when they salted the roads.
| asdff wrote:
| Salting the roads aren't doing junky car owners any favors.
| I've had to replace suspension components, fuel lines, entire
| frames for rust. These things need to be replaced to keep the
| vehicle going and are not cheap. Suddenly that $3k honda
| civic is looking at $3k worth of repairs unless you want to
| risk your life when you approach highway speeds. I'm always
| shocked how in California there are absolutely beat up cars
| from the 70s all over the roads still.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You're not wrong.
|
| It's just the alternative proposed in above is not better.
| In fact, I assert it's worse.
|
| I believe that a road made safer with salt and sand is
| better than requiring individuals to take the steps of
| adding chains, tire studs, etc.
|
| I do not trust anyone to be so careful and intelligent and
| responsive to varying conditions.
|
| I expect enforcement of a "chain proclamation" to be
| haphazard at best esp. because it would occur precisely
| when enforcing traffic laws is the most difficult due to
| adverse weather.
|
| I assert that car maintenance is an acceptable price to pay
| to hedge against accidents and save lives through the
| widespread use of salt.
|
| I'm just clarifying, I do agree with you about how
| expensive it can be and how nice it is to own a car in Cali
| or other dry, warm areas.
| fnord77 wrote:
| property > lives
| decebalus1 wrote:
| You probably didn't read the memo that was presented to us
| repeatedly in 2020.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| You would prefer more dangerous roads for _everyone_ if it made
| maintaining your fleet cheaper? Am I reading this right is that
| the reason?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| My fleet is fine. I'm rolling in the dough (relatively to the
| average person who has to deal with these problems). My
| maintenance is done in house (mostly by me) at very low cost.
| I have a slow season to spend on preventive repairs.
|
| The janitor driving a 1997 pile who gets to choose between
| $1k for a new exhaust or $2k to roll the dice on a
| replacement vehicle is the person who really gets screwed
| here.
| r-w wrote:
| > America tends to operate in just-in-time style inventory models
| instead of managing risk by storing surpluses of critical
| commodities
|
| Does anyone know of some good readings about this? Seems
| intuitively true to me, but I haven't seen it discussed in-depth
| as a standalone topic.
| BooneJS wrote:
| I would argue that states and municipalities would continue to
| pay whatever was necessary to keep the roads passable for
| families and commerce. They'll have to pass it on with tax
| increases or service cuts elsewhere. To allow the roads to get
| worse in the face of monopolistic pricing isn't an option.
| clajiness wrote:
| Maybe, just maybe, more people could start buying winter tires. I
| wish our local governments would require them during the winter.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Winter tires and/or tire chains were uncommon where I grew up
| in a midsized city of the Great Lakes region. We regularly got
| multiple feet of snowfall, and depended mainly on city plows
| and salt trucks. I only encountered tire chains with any
| frequency when I moved to the West Coast, mostly in the context
| of driving to Lake Tahoe.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Many Scandinavian countries require cars to switch over from
| summer to winter tires and the other way around in spring and
| in autumn. Some even allow tires with spikes, which damage
| the roads, but only in winter. Spikes allow you to drive on
| very icy roads when it is too cold for salt to work. Driving
| from Sweden into Denmark, they'd actually check your tires at
| the border in the winter sometimes because they do not want
| people damaging their roads with their spikes.
|
| Kind of sensible to require cars have proper tires; also from
| an insurance point of view.
| Karto wrote:
| Many mountainous regions across Europe too, like the French
| region where I live. Tyres are potentially part of any
| routine police check. The region is a rather poor one, and
| many roads are simply not salted at all. With proper winter
| tyres (and AWD helps too, but it's not as important as
| tyres), you get through, albeit sometimes with poor
| elegance.
|
| The amount of snow we get is never anywhere close to those
| American phenomena I see sometimes in the news, where snow
| gets half way up your front doors nearly overnight. Seeing
| that, I'm surprised to read that most people don't use snow
| tyres in such places : it feels like going against common
| sense even on an purely individual level.
| bluGill wrote:
| In places that get a lot of snow we have good snow
| removal. Thus you don't need snow tires as you aren't
| driving in it much. You also learn to drive in snow,
| which mostly means slow down.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| In DFW this year it was -18c one day and two later it was
| 25c. That isn't normal but every year we have at most one
| or two periods where there is at most a week of frozen
| precipitation. The problem is we don't know which month it
| is going to happen in and it happens suddenly. Climate
| change made it worse perhaps, but it has been this way for
| at least decades. I rember waiting in line for santa it was
| a beautiful 22c, before we got to the front of the line it
| was -7c.
| chha wrote:
| This is changing somewhat though. Several of the larger
| cities in Norway are struggling with poor air quality
| during winter, so studded tires have either been banned or
| require you to pay a tax in order to use them. [1]
|
| This doesn't apply everywhere though, and people are
| require to use common sense and use the tires (and chains)
| that are best for where they live.
|
| [1] - https://www.stavanger.kommune.no/en/waste-and-
| environment/mi...
| lupire wrote:
| How do studded tires harm air?
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| Faster tire abrasion causes
|
| a) more particulate pollution from tire residual (which
| can be massively worse than pollution from exhaust in
| cities)
|
| b) more exhaust pollution from worse car mileage
| chha wrote:
| This is more or less correct; a car with studded tires
| will average around 20kgs of asphalt dust over a normal
| winter season.
| KMag wrote:
| I could see higher rolling resistance leading to poorer
| fuel efficiency and greater exhaust emissions. Though, I
| imagine temperature inversions, home heating
| (particularly via wood), etc. have a much greater impact
| on Winter air quality.
| whalesalad wrote:
| The dichotomy between Detroit and Ontario is interesting.
| Anecdotally my experience has been that folks in Ontario
| (Ontarians?) are much more likely to equip winter tires than
| my peers and neighbors here in Detroit.
| sneak wrote:
| When I lived in Detroit, I was happy when I would just have
| enough money to buy some (used) tires with tread on them at
| all. Another set just for winter was totally out of the
| question.
|
| ...and I wasn't even the most broke of my friends, all of
| whom drove every day (because how else do you get to
| work?).
| wcunning wrote:
| I live in greater metro Detroit and I used to think the same
| thing, until I bought winter tires and tried to get an
| appointment to have them put on in mid-November -- Discount
| Tire and Bell Tire were both booked solid for weeks with
| everyone swapping to winters, so I think it's more common
| than you'd know just looking around.
|
| That said, I didn't buy them until I had a long commute after
| graduating from college, since I could get around well enough
| in the college town only needing to go a few miles to the
| grocery store and such.
|
| Now, mid and post pandemic, I'll probably only maintain a set
| for one vehicle since that's all I'll be driving in ugly
| weather, since I'll be staying home whenever the weather is
| even vaguely questionable.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| My friend that lives in the mountains bought a set of cheap
| steel wheels to keep his winter tires on. That way he can
| swap them out without going to the tire shop.
| danaris wrote:
| In most of the northern US, that wouldn't make much of a
| difference without properly plowed _and_ salted roads.
|
| Winter tires are no help, for instance, when you're on what
| amounts to a sheet of ice.
|
| They're also no help when you're in 2 feet of snow.
|
| They're a big help at the margins, and it's definitely worth
| the investment in many, many cases, but they're absolutely no
| substitute for sufficient road treatment.
| rjsw wrote:
| I have parked up on an icy carpark and could hardly stand up
| when I got out, had no problems driving off afterwards
| though.
| clajiness wrote:
| They do, in fact, help on ice. There are plenty of youtube
| videos showing winter tire demos on hockey rinks.
|
| And again, yes, they help substantially in 2 feet of snow.
|
| I agree that properly treated roads are necessary, but we
| treat roads for the lowest common denominator. If we as a
| population properly prepared (say that three times fast) for
| poor road conditions, we and our environment would be way
| better off.
| danaris wrote:
| I've _had_ winter tires, and tried to drive on ice (not
| intentionally). Were they better than all-weather tires?
| Maybe. Didn 't try to do a direct comparison.
|
| Did the experience suck hard? It really did. I happened to
| get _really_ lucky, and there was no one around, and I just
| ended up spinning around and pointing the wrong way, so I
| very carefully turned back around and went on my way.
|
| But however much they may _help_ , trying to claim that
| winter tires are good enough that we can use them _instead_
| of proper road treatments is irresponsible and dangerous.
| And I say this as someone who is extremely upset at the
| environmental toll standard road salt takes every winter.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Winter tires (not studded) really are amazing. I live near DC,
| so don't normally use them (we don't get enough snow to bother
| - just stay home for a day or two and it's melted).
|
| But, when I had a Miata (small RWD sports car), I did use them
| and they made the car one of the best snow vehicles I've owned.
| Better than the AWD Lexus SUV we owned at the time for sure.
| KMag wrote:
| I grew up in Minnesota and commuted on the DC beltway
| (Bethesda to Reston) for about 18 months for my first job out
| of college.
|
| Drivers panic on the D.C. beltway the second a snowflake hits
| the pavement.
|
| Good all-weather tires probably give you better average
| traction than winter tires in D.C., even in Winter.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| All-weather tires will definitely be safer, since you will
| be less tempted to venture out into the apocalyptic
| hellscape that D.C. metro area roads turn into the second
| that drivers see a snowflake.
| alistairSH wrote:
| True, even with snow tires, it was safer to just stay
| home. Too many people who think AWD fixes snow or think
| they can drive well enough to take their Corvette out in
| a blizzard.
| moh_maya wrote:
| Yep; had an RX8 in Ithaca, NY. Had 2 sets of wheels + tires:
| one for summer and one for winter. The winter tires meant I
| was cruising safely and smoothly in a RWD car while regular
| vehicles with all seasons (and on occasion, Subarus with
| AWDs) were struggling to climb up or drive safely down
| (relatively) steep streets.. (Ithaca is a bit hilly)
| thrower123 wrote:
| Studded tires are even better.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| I'm surprised to learn that this is not mandatory
| alistairSH wrote:
| It depends on the region. In parts of the Rockies (and other
| mountainous areas of the US), they are seasonally required,
| sometimes only on certain roads.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I grew up in Colorado, and have never seen a tire
| requirement. I had all-seasons the entire time I lived
| there. I got my first set of snow tires in my 30s when I
| moved to Ithaca, NY.
| AdamN wrote:
| I think they're saying M&S symbol is required for certain
| areas (not actual winter tires). Most all-seasons have
| that though.
| schreiaj wrote:
| Relatively recently. Portions of i70 across the Rockies
| have requirements on either chains or awd during certain
| periods.
|
| Honestly. It makes a lot of sense.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Is spending money on anything mandatory? Its not even
| mandatory to feed your kids the schools will do it for you.
| null_object wrote:
| Studded winter tires are a major health hazard though[0][1]
|
| [0] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/cuot-
| swt1001...
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110105121137.h...
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| Winter tires are great, but they aren't anywhere near as
| effective as salted roads.
|
| Source: 3 decades living in Canada, with winter tires on my car
| 4-5 months per year.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Winter or studded tires make sense in flatland winter.
|
| If you live around mountains, the high roads will be icy while
| the low roads have no snow.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Winter tires are completely serviceable on dry pavement. I'm
| actually pretty surprised to read that people in the midwest
| don't regularly switch tires in the winter. The importance of
| winter tires comes just as much from their behavior in cold
| temperatures as it does from the different tread pattern.
| All-season tires use harder rubber compounds that lose nearly
| all their grip in the cold.
|
| I run winter tires until lows in my area are mostly above
| freezing, regardless of whether there's any snow on the
| ground.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| When I lived in the hills in NZ, the road maintenance crews
| dropped grit on areas prone to ice, and we all carried
| chains, and blankets, just in case.
| minikites wrote:
| I live in an apartment with on-street parking. Where do you
| suggest I store these tires for the other seven months of the
| year?
| dagw wrote:
| I store mine at the tire changing place down the road.
| astura wrote:
| The tire store, same place everyone else stores theirs.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Use all-season radials. Swapping out tires every season is a
| relic from the past that the average automobile owner should
| not be doing anymore.
| leetcrew wrote:
| buy another set of wheels. swap the entire set twice a year.
| usually the shop will charge you less to swap a whole wheel
| than to swap the tires themselves (less labor). if you have a
| small apartment, the unused set can make nice stools for
| guests. if that aesthetic isn't for you, there are things
| called "storage units" that you can rent to store things you
| don't want to keep in your apartment.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| hahahaha i'm guessing you're not currently cohabitating?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you can't store tires in the living room you're dating
| too high up the socioeconomic ladder.
| KMag wrote:
| Nor experienced tire dust and winter tire grime.
| leetcrew wrote:
| they make bags for wheels.
| leetcrew wrote:
| nah but if I were, I suspect the excessive amount of
| computers, ethernet cables, and guitars would be a bigger
| issue than the "stools" ;)
|
| but seriously, there is an observation to be made here
| about social norms around vehicle safety. all-season
| tires are not safe for winter use in large swathes of
| north america. why do we scoff at people who prepare
| appropriately?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| the jab is in good fun. i've had some very...patient
| partners, lets say.
|
| most people i know who drive in the northeast don't have
| any qualms with having a 2nd wheelset and storing it.
|
| i think there's a rather NA quirk to GP's comment -- they
| live in a small urban apartment, with no storage space
| available, but still have to own a car.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| I live in Canada and this is a common question! Most places
| that install tires will also store them for you. Tire stores,
| dealerships, etc.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| In countries where winter tyres are comon, tyre shops that
| offer tyre changes also offer storage for your unused tyres
| for something like 30 Euro (for all 4) per season. Or 50 Euro
| and they'll even wash your tyres for you.
|
| Yeah of course this doesn't exist in the US, but if they made
| winter tyres mandatory surely someone will start this
| business.
| astura wrote:
| >Yeah of course this doesn't exist in the US
|
| Where did you get this impression? This absolutely exists
| in the US.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Ah I got that impression from Mr. Defeatist up there...
| "Waah, where am I going to store the tyres." And further
| down this thread "Waah what if people can't afford a
| second set of wheels/the storage?" (I paraphrase...)
| wil421 wrote:
| Example that costs $99.
|
| https://www.belletire.com/tires-and-wheels/off-season-
| storag...
| minikites wrote:
| So not only do I have to pay for tires, I have to pay for
| storage. If this is made mandatory, there's going to be a
| lot of people who can't pay.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Still a ton cheaper for those people than having their
| cars rust out on them, which is a larger lump sum even if
| it's a comparable cost over time (which it's likely not).
| astura wrote:
| Dude, seriously? It's part of the cost of owning a car,
| cars are really expensive to own and maintain - that's
| life.
|
| Winter tires are worth it if it snows regularly where you
| live, you'll probably save money in the long run by not
| crashing and your insurance might even give you a
| discount for putting winter tires on.
|
| I don't put on winter tires nowadays because it only
| snows 0-2 times a year here so I simply don't drive in
| the snow instead. When I lived in a very snowy area I got
| winter tires put on every winter.
| curryst wrote:
| This likely doesn't apply to a lot of people here, but I
| have several friends for whom a new set of tires is a
| substantial portion of the value of your vehicle. When
| you're driving a $2,000 car, buying $600 worth of tires
| probably doesn't make a lot of sense.
|
| Of course, you could buy used, but I would wager most of
| the things that make winter tires good in the winter tend
| to wear out by the time they make it to a used tire shop.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > Of course, you could buy used, but I would wager most
| of the things that make winter tires good in the winter
| tend to wear out by the time they make it to a used tire
| shop.
|
| probably not. the main thing that makes a winter tire
| good in the winter is the rubber compound. as long as the
| tire has enough tread and is less than about six years
| old, it will outperform all-seasons in cold weather.
| every rubber compound has a temperature window where it
| performs optimally. too cold and the tire is like a rock;
| it doesn't grip well even on dry pavement. too warm, and
| the tire is too supple and will wear out much faster. if
| you expect to do a lot of driving in ambient temperatures
| much below 40F, you need winter tires. you might get away
| with all-seasons for a long time, but you probably don't
| realize how close you are to the tire's limits.
| astura wrote:
| Look, when I was a poor college student my car was worth
| less than $2k, I still put winter tires on. Safety is a
| top priority and I'd absolutely needed to get to class in
| the snow.
| leetcrew wrote:
| not to mention the injustice of having to pay for
| seatbelts!
|
| sometimes safety isn't free.
| minikites wrote:
| You don't have to change your seatbelts with the seasons.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Serious question, if you crashed in winter conditions,
| and you didn't have appropriate tyres or chains, would
| your insurance cover it?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Lacking a mandate to use winter tires, yes, they probably
| would.
| lupire wrote:
| And your insurance would cost more to cover. Insurance
| isn't free.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Sweet, that makes sense. Thanks!
| astura wrote:
| Definitely depends on the specifics of the individual
| policy, many policies (that I've had) don't list winter
| tires as a requirement for wintertime, but sometimes you
| can get a discount on your premium for having winter
| tires if you live in a snowy area, which then would have
| a tire requirement in the policy.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Ask the people of Montreal. They live in apartments and have
| a winter tire mandate in Quebec.
| minikites wrote:
| I will, thanks. Do you happen to have Montreal's email?
| bradfa wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see a comparison between the various ways
| roads can be made safer for driving in wintry conditions. Plowing
| is clearly important, but putting down salt vs sand and gravel vs
| beat juice vs other solutions.
|
| I want to see the performance of various types of vehicles on a
| test course when using different types of tires (all season vs
| winter tires at least) and the different salt-alternatives. For
| the cost of the alternatives, do any of them get close to the
| performance of salt?
|
| Obviously salt is the cheapest, otherwise it wouldn't be in such
| high use. Maybe the price of salt going up will create a viable
| market for other solutions? Maybe some environmental concerns
| about salt use plus the cost going up will spurn development or
| cost reductions of competing solutions?
|
| Markets being manipulated isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes
| people realize they don't need the thing whose market is being
| manipulated any longer as there's viable alternatives.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Sand isn't all that useful at temperatures near freezing- as
| the snow / ice melts a bit in the sun, it sinks in, and you end
| up with fresh glaze as it cools and refreeze. Using salt or
| similar to completely melt the cover allows it to drain off the
| road or sublimate, leaving the road dry.
| nend wrote:
| Maybe, but worth noting that both Vermont and Colorado (maybe
| more), have banned the use of salt on roadways due to
| environmental concerns. So to ops point, there are
| alternatives to using salt, even with near-freezing
| temperatures.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > So to ops point, there are alternatives to using salt,
| even with near-freezing temperatures.
|
| in my experience here in colorado, the most commonly chosen
| alternative is "do nothing".
|
| they dump the gravel/sand stuff out sometimes, but then it
| just accumulates near intersections, reducing traction in
| dry weather until the end of spring when they go sweep it
| off the sides of the roads.
| bradfa wrote:
| Yeah, and I'd like to see a scientific study about this to
| show how it works and so people can understand it. A
| significant amount of money is spent on clearing and treating
| roads during wintry weather, I think it would be very
| beneficial to understand why taxpayers spend this money and
| what they get in return.
|
| Additionally, if information such as "winter tires are X%
| better at stopping/turning than all season tires when
| treating roads with Y" could be presented, then maybe more
| people would opt to purchase winter tires (or maybe the
| opposite) depending on what types of solutions the local
| government uses.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Why tax payers spend the money: so roads are safe to travel
| on.
|
| What they get: safe roads to travel on.
|
| I don't think we need a study here.
| zdragnar wrote:
| A brief google search brought up a PDF for winter tires
| from the traffic injury reduction foundation, with the
| basic conclusion that yes, they are better, but updated
| studies are needed for exact numbers.
|
| Walk into any car tire store, and you will see displays for
| winter tires claiming anywhere from 25-35% improved
| stopping distance. Of course, with less frequent plowing,
| salting and sanding, these numbers likely go out the
| window. They get you better stopping distance, but they
| aren't magic and it is still worse than all season tires on
| a dry, summer road.
|
| If you want safer winter roads, you use salt and / or sand
| and plow every time significant accumulation of snow
| occurs.
| destitude wrote:
| I drive on unplowed paved roads and I can tell you from
| first hand experience that there is a world of difference
| between snow tires and all season tires. The chemistry of
| the tire itself is different. All season tires start
| getting hard around 40F whereas snow tires stay
| soft/rubbery below 40F and colder. This is fundamentally
| why snow tires are superior for snowy/icy conditions.
| This is also why you should not use snow tires in summer
| because they will wear very fast due to the composition
| being soft.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The use of sand also requires extensive street cleaning each
| spring. Lots of the sand gets recovered, and is presumably
| re-used.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's not re-used. It goes to a landfill. There's too much
| street garbage mixed in by the time they sweep it up in the
| spring.
| lstodd wrote:
| Reused? Ha-ha. Just swept somewhere out of sight.
|
| Which is much better than the salts, because sand is mostly
| neutral, while salts, esp slow-dissoving stuff kills plant
| life long after the season ends.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Well, it's collected, and if they already have it in a
| dump truck, why wouldn't they re-use it? In the spring,
| the street cleaner cleans my whole street, and dumps each
| load at the dead-end. Later, it gets loaded into a dump
| truck and taken somewhere (3-4 dump truck loads in total,
| estimated).
|
| The last few years they've used sand a lot more sparsely
| (only on intersections and hills), so I'm pretty sure the
| street cleaner only picks up one load and can carry it
| away without needing a dump truck.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Around here, they use grit instead of a fine sand. It doesn't
| matter as mcuh if there is a melt and freeze cycle. Since the
| grit is around the size of a pea, it leaves textured ice.
|
| Don't get me wrong, you can still slip and fall, but I can
| catch myself more often and tires seem to do well enough.
| zdragnar wrote:
| We get a mix of grit and sand at intersections and steep
| hills, but it only lasts just so long- sand disappears and
| grit gets kicked off the road. It certainly beats salt
| alone, especially on a hilly gravel road and sharp turns
| and intersections, but I wouldn't advocate for it as a
| complete replacement.
| hourislate wrote:
| A possible solution is allowing studded tires and making snow
| tires mandatory at certain times of the year (Quebec does
| this). Studded tires would make driving a lot safer in icy
| conditions and snow tires are an incredible improvement over
| regular tires in wintry conditions (tradeoff is they tear up
| the roads). Winter Tire tech has vastly improved over the years
| and most manufacturers have added a feature for Icy conditions
| (sip their tires - https://www.discounttire.com/learn/tire-
| sipes ).
|
| Salt may be cheap but there are environmental costs. Recently
| this news article was published about how Toronto rivers are
| seeing high levels of salt. If it's happening in Toronto, I'm
| sure it's happening all over the mid west and north east.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/road-salt-gta-water-1...
| Hayvok wrote:
| I think what might make this tough for midwestern states is
| that the snow doesn't stick around all winter. It's not
| unheard of to have 4-5 big snows that melt relatively quickly
| and most of the winter you're just dealing with cold weather.
| If you won't have a reliable snow pack you can guarantee
| you'll be driving on for three or four months it's hard to
| justify swapping out for snow tires or chains.
| 3131s wrote:
| What will make it tough is that our roads already get
| destroyed every winter without the help of spiked tires.
|
| In MN the entire summer is filled with road construction
| already. I wouldn't be that thrilled about switching my
| tires 2x every year either.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Get the winter set mounted on a second set of steel rims.
| It's a 45 minute job with the scissor jack that came with
| the car, less with anything better.
|
| It's a nice excuse to spend a little time outside on a
| pleasant spring or fall afternoon.
| destitude wrote:
| This is exactly what I do. Just have your winter tires on
| another set of rims and use the jack that came with the
| car. I do have a impact driver to make getting the lugs
| on and off a lot faster though.
| greedo wrote:
| Exactly. My area gets snow 3-4 times per year, usually less
| than a foot. It is often gone within a couple of days. Our
| worst storm this year (roughly 15" of snow), the roads were
| cleared within a day or two. No way is it economical to buy
| snow tires; and snow tires damage roadways.
| destitude wrote:
| Snow tires do not damage roadways. Only studded tires
| damage roadways which are illegal in many states.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Studded tires destroy roads and are serious overkill, even
| for northern MI. (Not sure about CA).
|
| Honestly, newer winter tires are amazing. I DD a newer Camaro
| with proper extreme weather tires. It's not fabulous in the
| handling department, but it will stop and go mostly straight.
|
| But put those same tires on any modern family vehicle and
| you'll be all set. Even roads covered with a solid sheet of
| ice would be no problem in a FWD Camry.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| God help us if they start allowing studded tires in
| Michigan. I have a colleague who swears that some of the
| roads here are worse than where he grew up in an extremely
| poor, rural part of India.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| > Even roads covered with a solid sheet of ice would be no
| problem in a FWD Camry.
|
| I was with you till that last sentence. Have you ever
| actually tried to drive (or walk) on a solid sheet of ice?
| I was involved in a freak situation where the temperature
| plummeted suddenly after a few hours of mixed
| ice/water/slush precipitation. The roads and any other
| concrete flat surface were coated with smooth ice. We sat
| near a curve and watched all the 4WD vehicles come along
| and slide off the road. Wherever people were in town that
| evening they had to stay there until morning.
|
| True sheet ice cannot be handled by any combo of FWD or 4WD
| without perhaps studs or chains. Even then it is sketchy.
| Fortunately, that kind of ice is fairly rare on a large
| scale. However, patches of ice are common and that creates
| many problems since drivers may not recognize it.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Once you consider the environmental and health costs of
| studded tyres I am not sure if salt is all that bad. It's
| usually combined with small stones that increase road grip as
| well. Studded tyres grind the road down to small particles
| that contribute to the fine dust problem in cities and this
| also requires new layers of asphalt fairly often.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Forcing everyone to spend hundreds of dollars each on studded
| or snow tires, to change them on and off, and to store them
| until next year would be prohibitively expensive for the the
| handful of days each year when the roads are actually snowy
| in the Midwest.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Yes car owners are rapidly hostile to actually directly
| paying the costs of their car use in the US.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I was amused when a Bernie supporter contacted me with
| the argument that Medicare 4 all would lower my car
| insurance rates. "Why is it a good thing to transfer
| costs away from drivers?" was my pretty immediate
| response.
|
| Of course my 'libertarian' leaning state rep supports the
| same changes to vehicle insurance, except the costs would
| be dumped on Medicaid most likely.
| destitude wrote:
| Instead we push the cost off to being paid by everyone via
| taxes even if they don't drive.
| hourislate wrote:
| In my situation, I would leave the Snows on from Nov-March
| and then spend the 20 minutes putting on my all seasons for
| spring summer and part of fall(both sets had their own
| rims). It was all a wash since the all seasons lasted about
| twice as long since I wasn't using them all year round.
| Insurance companies also give you a small discount if you
| have winter tires during winter.
| lstodd wrote:
| > making snow tires mandatory
|
| Why is this even necessary at all?
|
| I'd like to see anyone who's got to drive a month or three on
| compacted snow or snow slush and not willing to switch to
| winter tires.
|
| The car becomes uncontrollable at like 32 kph / 20 mph.
|
| Back there in Finland they use crushed granite and it works
| just fine without corroding everything in sight and also
| killing plant life.
| bluGill wrote:
| I lived in MN for most of my life and I never switched to
| snow tires. Some people I knew did, and I believe them when
| they say snow tires are better. However in the end traction
| just isn't an issue, nobody drives fast when it is icy and
| at slow speeds I did just fine.
| destitude wrote:
| The chemical composition of snow tires is completely
| different compared to an all season tires. All season
| tires get hard whereas snow tires stay soft. That is why
| you can't keep snow tires on all year is because they
| will wear really fast in hot temps because the rubber is
| soft to begin with.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Tread depth/design is king for the "not quite liquid, not
| quite solid" slush that most snow commuting is done in
| anyway. All that stuff has to go somewhere, preferably
| somewhere other than between your tread blocks and the
| pavement.
| ars wrote:
| You can't really require studded tires in a place that can
| have 2 weeks of lots of snow, followed by 3 weeks of no snow
| and repeat.
|
| You'd have to repave the entire city each year. And you can't
| expect motorists to keep adding and removing the studs as the
| weather changes.
|
| Studded tires are only realistic in a place where you need
| them for an entire season.
|
| Snow tires on the other hand can help a TON. But not everyone
| has room to store them in the off season.
| waterheater wrote:
| Well, you can design the roads better. Two primary ways are
| used.
|
| The first is material properties. For example, it's possible to
| make roads using asphalt mixtures which naturally prevent ice
| from forming. I've heard a rumor that the Autobahn is made of
| such a compound, but I can't find corroborating evidence right
| now.
|
| The second is shaping the surface. For example, leaving
| parallel grooves in the driving surface increases traction. See
| the first picture at this link for an example:
| https://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/construction/con...
|
| The latter technique is used widely across the Midwest. I'm not
| certain about usage of the former, but road maintenance costs
| are significantly higher in the Midwest than other parts of the
| country thanks to multiple freeze-thaw cycles per year, so
| switching to a ice-mitigating compound may not be cost-
| effective when balancing multiple variables. If an ice-
| mitigating compound reduces roadway durability, you'll avoid it
| since you'll need to send a plow over the road anyways to clear
| the snow...
| namibj wrote:
| No, the Autobahn just doesn't typically get that cold and has
| highest priority access to snow plows.
| peeters wrote:
| > Obviously salt is the cheapest, otherwise it wouldn't be in
| such high use.
|
| Not sure why you would assume that's obvious. The various
| solutions vary in effectiveness due to a number of factors, and
| are not equal in what they actually do. Sand doesn't melt ice,
| it provides traction. It's better when it's cold enough for the
| ice to stay ice. Salt melts ice, but is less effective in lower
| temperatures, and causes lots of fallout (corrosion, etc).
| Meanwhile plowing is the only real solution for heavy snowfall.
| curryst wrote:
| A small thing to add, not all road salt is the same. Some
| contain additional additives that allow them to be effective
| at lower temperatures. From what I recall, the low
| temperature salt is more expensive though.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Yup. They've got calcium chloride & magnesium chloride.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| De-sugared beet juice is a common additive too
| cbsmith wrote:
| Oh yes, absolutely.
| duxup wrote:
| I'd be wary of say expending a lot more money on an alternative
| / more expensive solution... just because someone cornered the
| market.
| wongarsu wrote:
| You can use it as a scorched earth tactic. If the market
| disappears as soon as it's cornered, in the long term people
| will stop cornering markets.
|
| But more importantly if you use a solution with a lot of
| known downsides for the sole reason that it's the cheapest,
| reevaluating that decision when costs rise is the prudent
| thing to do.
| duxup wrote:
| > in the long term people will stop cornering markets
|
| I'm not at all convinced that is the case.
|
| > if you use a solution with a lot of known downsides for
| the sole reason that it's the cheapest
|
| I don't think your scenario means people will somehow
| consider something they didn't consider before. More likely
| in a disruptive event folks do whatever they can to fill
| the gap at the lowest price again ...
|
| I think you're expecting efficiencies / consideration here
| that simply doesn't happen... or maybe already have.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| This may just be a "Just-So" story, but in NZ we've found that
| Euro cars tend to go to utter shit after six years, requiring
| their purchase price and then some in spare parts to fix, and
| that this lifetime exists, because in Europe, after 5 or so
| years of driving on salted roads, they're corroded to shit, so
| the cars are engineered to go great for those 5 or so years
| because afterwards they'll be rooted so what does it matter.
|
| Really want to clarify that this is an Aotearoa urban legend,
| and I have no idea if it's true or not. I will say though, that
| finding a running 2005 BMW that hasn't required multiple parts
| replaced is never heard of. Whereas a 2005 Toyota, no worries.
|
| I guess I like this theory because the alternative is that Euro
| cars are just built badly compared to Jappas.
| corty wrote:
| European cars, especially German ones, are built for company
| leasing markets almost exclusively. After the 5 year lease is
| up, it will be resold. To make more money for the
| manufacturer, it needs to start breaking down and requiring
| parts at that point. So everything is engineered to last
| exactly 5 years.
| phicoh wrote:
| I don't know about Germany, but The Netherlands has a
| significant market for second hand cars, and many cars,
| including German ones, are sold for serious amounts of
| money when they are 10 years old.
|
| It is instructive to go to scrapyards. Typically many parts
| of a car are quite cheap. Some parts has some sort of
| design error and fail in almost all cars of the same model.
| However that varies from model to model and from brand to
| brand.
|
| Of course, the lease market prefers low maintainance costs.
| So it makes sense for manufactures to optimize in reducing
| those costs during typical maintainance periods. But that
| does not imply that after 5 years or so, maintainance is
| suddenly sky high.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Huh, well that makes sense.
|
| When I first travelled to Munchen for work, I was amazed at
| the amount of luxury cars driving around Schwabing, until a
| German colleague mentioned that they were all most likely
| leased.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Munchen is the most expensive city to live in in Germany.
| If you commute there you probably use public transport,
| if you life there you earn enough that you probably have
| a company car.
|
| In Germany about 1/8th of all cars and 2/3 of all new
| cars are company cars.
| bradfa wrote:
| Living in upstate NY, it's rare to see cars more than 15
| years old on the road. Metal cars rot out from corrosion to
| the point where they're not worth fixing after a little over
| a decade. For example, I used to own a 2005 VW Jetta which I
| really liked but I've not seen a VW Jetta or Golf of that
| vintage on the road in a long time.
|
| It's not just the European cars which rot out due to
| corrosion around here, all makes and models do it. No one
| brand is terrifically worse than any other in terms of
| corroding away due to winter use.
|
| A good number of people apply "undercoating" treatments to
| their cars around here. The creeping oil type treatments seem
| to provide a reasonable amount of protection with few
| downsides other than getting really messy when you need to
| work on the underside of the car. The rubberized types, if
| not applied properly and prior to any corrosion starting,
| seem to do more harm than good. But even undercoated cars
| will eventually succumb to corrosion. If you want a car to
| last here you store it away from about November till April.
| greedo wrote:
| We just use the local carwash that blasts your
| undercarriage to get the salt off. Everytime it snows, the
| line at the carwash a few days later is long...
| ghaff wrote:
| In late 2019, I finally unloaded a 1997 2-seater I hadn't
| driven in the winter for quite a long time. The car was
| from the last model year (Honda del Sol) and was a minor
| cult thing. Latterly, the mechanics at the dealer always
| gathered round to look at it as basically you never saw
| them in the wild in the Northeast any longer.
| pinjasaur wrote:
| Chiming in from the Midwest USA: cars manufactured with
| galvanized (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanization)
| metal seem to fair better in my experience. That said,
| galvanization isn't terribly common and as you mentioned,
| if you really care about your car you should store it in
| the winter.
| kokey wrote:
| European cars have more complexity, so more things that can
| break that requires expensive parts especially things that
| makes it more comfortable to drive on roads that are rarely
| flat or straight. There's less space for parking and more
| public transport in Europe so the second hand vehicle market
| is constrained so there's less incentive to make the cars
| last longer to retain resale value. Western European climate
| is wetter so corrosion used to be a big issue but it's much
| less so with modern materials. There's also a critical mass
| issue, e.g. Toyota is not so popular in some parts of Europe
| so the parts end up more expensive than say for VW parts.
|
| My tip is to buy a car that's relatively popular where you
| are and in that area have a reputation for reliability and
| maintainability because this is actually different depending
| on where in the world you are.
|
| For example I drive a first generation Land Rover Freelander
| in the UK that's 17 years old and it's the most reliable and
| maintainable vehicle I've had in the 5 different countries
| that I've lived in, but to most people around the world it
| would sound like I'm completely insane.
| S_A_P wrote:
| European cars are engineered to feel good while taking money
| out of your wallet. The 3 euro cars I owned all felt
| incredibly solid and substantial. They also were constantly
| in the shop and expensive to maintain. It has made me
| appreciate my Jeep and it's less than solid build quality but
| still runs fine forever. Ironically my Jeep is based on a
| Mercedes Benz suv(Grand Cherokee shares some bits with the
| GLS) but hasn't required the same monetary commitment to keep
| running.
| cafard wrote:
| A while after college, my wife moved to San Francisco from
| upstate New York. The first mechanic she took her car to
| asked whether she took the car to the beach a lot. He was not
| used to cars driven on salted roads.
| destitude wrote:
| "salt is cheapest" does not take into account all the
| associated damages they cause as well, from eating away at
| bridges, roads, and vehicles, to polluting waterways that are
| starting to kill off freshwater fish.
| 14 wrote:
| Was there not some concern about what to do with the salt from
| desalination plants? Could the brine from that become economical
| to recover?
| CivBase wrote:
| Many places in the midwest have actually switched away from using
| salt to melt snow because it does a lot of damage to concrete and
| vehicles. Sand is a popular alternative, but frequent ploughing
| is often enough to keep main roads clear. Raised vehicles like
| trucks and SUVs are also much more common in the midwest to avoid
| getting stuck in the snow.
|
| > America tends to operate in just-in-time style inventory models
| instead of managing risk by storing surpluses of critical
| commodities
|
| I don't think this a particularly fair criticism. Deicing salt
| works by absorbing moisture as it lands, before it can form a
| sheet of ice. It's useless if it gets wet before you use it. It's
| pretty dry in the midwest during the winter, but humidity spikes
| in the summer making deicing salt difficult to store in the off-
| season. Climate-controlled storage is expensive and deicing salt
| is quite heavy and bulky.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| > I don't think this a particularly fair criticism. Deicing
| salt works by absorbing moisture as it lands, before it can
| form a sheet of ice. It's useless if it gets wet before you use
| it
|
| Over here deicing is frequently done with brine because it
| sticks better to the road and doesn't get blown away, so I'm
| very skeptical about the salt being useless when it's wet.
| indymike wrote:
| When dry salt is disolved by water, it is brine.
| kapitalx wrote:
| To add to this, there was a piece on NPR a few days ago where
| they talked about brine as a more environmentally friendly
| option to rock salt. De-icing salt gets into lakes and
| streams, and with brine you need much less salt to achieve
| the same results apparently.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| The point was that rock/crystal salt is useless if it gets
| wet, because then it can't be reasonably
| used/moved/broadcast. If it turns into giant bricks of salt,
| it's impossible to work with.
| ink_13 wrote:
| > Deicing salt works by absorbing moisture as it lands, before
| it can form a sheet of ice.
|
| That's...false? Salt gets spread on existing ice to melt it all
| the time. Where does the absorbed water go in this model? This
| assertion is so confusing.
|
| As someone who grew up in a cold climate, the way I recall it
| is that the salt lowers the freezing point of water by forming
| a brine, allowing it to run off the road and/or be evaporated
| by the sun.
| busyant wrote:
| > before it can form a sheet of ice.
|
| I think the person is just saying that pre-emptively salting
| the road (before snow/freezing rain actually lands) provides
| some additional level of safety because the road might spend
| less time with a frozen coating (as opposed to salting only
| after the surface is frozen over).
| pc86 wrote:
| It's not quite as straightforward as "yes it does" / "no it
| doesn't." There's a temperature at which it's too cold for
| salt to work, and a great deal of the benefit of salt comes
| from friction as cars drive over it, crushing pieces of ice
| and forming that slush we all know and love, even at
| temperatures where it won't actually melt the ice.
| ink_13 wrote:
| > There's a temperature at which it's too cold for salt to
| work
|
| Sure, brine has a freezing point.
|
| > a great deal of the benefit of salt comes from friction
| as cars drive over it, crushing pieces of ice and forming
| that slush we all know and love, even at temperatures where
| it won't actually melt the ice.
|
| What do you think slush is? It has liquid in it, and that's
| not molten salt.
| skynet-9000 wrote:
| > a great deal of the benefit of salt comes from friction
| as cars drive over it
|
| You may have never tossed a handful of rock salt on steps
| that have a quarter-inch of ice on them and watch holes
| actually form in the ice within a half hour or so.
| Green_man wrote:
| On thin ice, you can watch it form in real time!
| jfoutz wrote:
| My hometown used cinders. About the same as sand, but better at
| absorbing sunlight. No idea where they got them from.
| beached_whale wrote:
| A lot of places are using things like beet juice in addition to
| sanding.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Curious would beet juice create red stains om the road?
| beached_whale wrote:
| Ive never noticed that on the roads here. You would think
| it would though eh, my hands are after cutting them
| Loughla wrote:
| >Many places in the midwest have actually switched away from
| using salt to melt snow
|
| They use salt to melt ice. They plow snow. The only times I've
| seen the midwest US use sand instead of salt is when the
| temperatures are below where salt is still effective.
|
| Do you have a citation for this statement, because it is 100%
| the opposite of what I see in my day-to-day life.
| diggan wrote:
| I presume the snow/ice was just a mixup, don't think there is
| much point arguing about it.
|
| Yes, when I grew up in Sweden salt was everywhere as well.
| Then before I moved away the forbid salt in some places and
| replaced it with sand. If I recall correctly, erosion on cars
| and the effect on local fauna being the reason. I mostly saw
| sand being used instead of salt at that point. Now I don't
| know how it looks, as it was a couple of years ago, but I
| expect sand to be used even more now than before, as the
| country is getting more focused on ecology and
| sustainability.
| Zenst wrote:
| Some area's won't be allowed to use salt, I know in Issaquah
| in Washington state they could not use salt upon the roads
| due to laws to protect the salmon streams.
|
| Probably a fair few area's in which salt is prohibited for
| road use due to such things. So sand makes sense and for some
| that is all they will see in their area.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| To me, this is a much more restrictive claim than the
| original.
| coryrc wrote:
| That's not even kinda the Midwest.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| How much persistent snow does Washington state get though?
| The discussion is most relevant for places where snow falls
| and will stay where it is for months if something is not
| done.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > How much persistent snow does Washington state get
| though?
|
| At elevation, of course there's some that's persistent,
| but that's not much of the state at all. eg Crystal
| Mountain has snow in the winter, but is completely bare
| by the summer.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Quite a lot, especially at higher elevations.
| grogenaut wrote:
| In the Seattle area, which Issaquah is part of, they use
| Sugar Beet Juice. Theres an interesting little article on
| it here:
| https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/bellevue/unique-
| mix....
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| (To help keep the salt stuck to the road instead of
| blowing away.)
| brianwawok wrote:
| We use a mix by me. Sand goes for most stuff. Hills and
| dangerous intersections get salt. I think salt costs several
| times what sand costs, so it is only used where deemed
| necessary.
| rmason wrote:
| My late father worked in the salt industry. There is no cost
| effective substitute for salt. Sand is used for traction
| purposes, not to melt ice.
|
| There are a number of chemicals that will melt ice though not
| as well as salt. But these alternatives are much more
| expensive, they get talked about a lot but haven't made a dent
| in salts market share.
| e40 wrote:
| And sand is becoming a precious resource. I believe it's been
| discussed on HN before.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is...
| njarboe wrote:
| There is plenty of wind-blown sand, which I imagine is fine
| for this snow-on-road use. Rough river sand is getting more
| scarce and smooth, wind-blown desert sand should not be used
| for making concrete.
| clairity wrote:
| > "...but humidity spikes in the summer making deicing salt
| difficult to store in the off-season. Climate-controlled
| storage is expensive and deicing salt is quite heavy and
| bulky."
|
| to provide some color, just-in-time doesn't literally mean
| holding no inventory and perfectly matching inflows to
| outflows. it means that stores of inventory and intermediate
| work product are minimized as much as possible in light of the
| typical mean and variance of a process, but not more than that.
|
| in the case of a town, that means you'd likely size the salt
| store to be one storm's worth of salt and then trigger a
| replenishment as soon as a storm is imminent (just in time;
| that is, when necessity is established, but no sooner). you'd
| also likely try to deplete the store at the end of a storm
| season and replenish a storm's worth at the beginning of the
| next.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| That's assuming you can get salt in time for the storm, or
| even at all at that point. At least on the consumer side, a
| lot of the manufacturing facilities that produce deicing salt
| switch over to producing fertilizer around new year's. A year
| or two ago we had a late winter storm and all of the stores
| in the area were out, and their warehouses too.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, good point. we base our statistical inferences on
| backward-looking data, but the future can change in ways
| we're unable to fully predict and account for.
|
| this illustrates that just-in-time isn't an unalloyed good.
| it trades off resiliency for cost (and a bit of agility).
| it also introduces more structural variance in the supply
| chain, exacerbating supply issues, which isn't obvious on
| first blush (operations research coursework covers this).
| closeparen wrote:
| I don't think public works and highway departments can really
| say "just get an SUV lol" unless they're really rural. Plenty
| of small cars on the road in Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis,
| etc.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Yeah, even in smaller towns there are a ton of people with
| Civics, Neons _, and Saturns, and they have to get through
| all winter. You do need to carry a shovel in case the plow
| leaves a berm across your street or driveway apron though.
|
| _ The remaining ones not destroyed by road salt rust.
| alkonaut wrote:
| SUVs actually often have worse traction because the larger
| tyres are more expensive so some buyers go with a single set
| of all-weather instead of a proper M+S tyre in winter.
| Taniwha wrote:
| For the non-americans here americans have a very 18thC view of
| their own geography - the "mid-west" is not in the middle of
| the west
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> salt to melt snow
|
| Who does that? Salt is used to melt ice, not snow.
|
| >>Raised vehicles like trucks and SUVs ... to avoid getting
| stuck in the snow.
|
| "Raised" vehicles are not tall because of snow. That clearance
| is for off-road driving, not snow on a road. Any public road
| would be closed long before snow became so deep as to actually
| require a car to have greater ground clearance. If anything, a
| taller vehicle is more of a liability on a slippery road. The
| ideal vehicle for winter _on road_ driving is any 4WD /AWD car
| with some good snow tires and a modern traction control system.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Tell me you live in SoCal without telling me you live in
| SoCal.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Canada. BC and Alberta, the north bits. Wet mountain snow.
| -40 prairie winters. Have tire chains in my trunk. Have
| used them multiple times. Only -13c this morning but was
| -46c a month ago. Ya. I have done the winter driving thing.
| I did a bit of it this morning.
| bluGill wrote:
| The ideal vehicle for slippery conditions is actually rear
| wheel drive, with ABS brakes. RWD means that everything you
| do reminds you that it is slippery and so you never get going
| fast. 4wd/awd means that you get going fast enough that you
| end up well into the ditch instead of just stopped on the
| side of the road where you can push yourself out without a
| tow truck.
|
| The above is partially tongue in cheek, but there is a point
| worth thinking about.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The ideal vehicle for any given amount of traction is going
| to look pretty close to the same regardless of the amount
| of traction.
| [deleted]
| analog31 wrote:
| Madison WI still uses salt, but we also use a lot of a mixture
| of sand and salt, which looks like pure sand from a distance,
| and liquid salt solution sprayed directly on dry roads before
| snowstorms when possible. The city claims that both of these
| methods, while not eliminating salt, greatly reduce its use.
|
| The city also puts out piles of sand-salt for residents to use,
| so I usually grab some at the start of the winter. The mixture
| is easier to store than either sand or salt by themselves. For
| instance, a pile of salted sand won't freeze solid.
|
| Salt works by freezing point depression. You can throw salt on
| sheet ice and it will melt the ice, until it gets too cold.
| Calcium chloride works to even lower temperatures.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Up here in the Fox Valley we've been using brine and
| selectively salting roads to reduce salt usage. There are
| concerns about sand usage adding sediment to storm drains and
| into Winnebago, but I think the same applies to salt as well.
| irrational wrote:
| Does putting all this salt on the sidewalks and driveways of
| your house affect plants around your house? I would imagine
| that over the years the salt buildup in the soils around
| everyone's house would be immense. In ancient times they
| would salt enemies agricultural land to prevent plants from
| growing. Do plants not grow near to sidewalks and driveways
| in the Midwest?
| analog31 wrote:
| Plants grow anywhere in the Midwest, just not the ones you
| want. ;-)
|
| Yes to some extent. We actually use the sand/salt quite
| sparingly, because shoveling usually takes care of things.
| Just a bit on the front steps, and in a couple places where
| it tends to ice up on the sidewalks in late winter.
|
| Probably the main source of salt is what gets thrown from
| the street by the plow trucks.
|
| The lot slopes down towards the street, which helps, and
| what happens to the grass on the boulevard, we basically
| don't care. The weeds seem happy enough. The University of
| Wisconsin has actually developed varieties of trees that
| are resistant to salt, and we have those varieties out
| front.
|
| At my workplace they salt more heavily, and have had to re-
| sod the grass near the walkways. But I think that's the
| result of several factors, including over-fertilizing
| during the summer, and maybe having a variety of grass
| that's less salt tolerant than our weeds. We also don't
| fertilize or water our lawn.
| pixelbath wrote:
| Similarly, in the northwest salt actually becomes a liability
| when temperatures are well below freezing. Using salt can
| actually increase the incidence of more compact, harder-to-see
| ice (aka black ice) because of the slight thawing and
| refreezing.
|
| All our county plow trucks scatter gravel behind them. Only
| businesses seem to sprinkle salt around their entrances.
| rmason wrote:
| Morton Salt from it's beginning led a charmed life. The company
| was so well managed that it was a Wall Street favorite. Then they
| got a young CEO in his thirties. He thought the company could be
| even more profitable if they got rid of everyone in the company
| over 55 years of age. Their replacements could be hired for much
| less money than they were making. This was before laws
| prohibiting it so he went ahead and did it.
|
| My father who had spent a thirty year career at Morton Salt was
| suddenly out of a job after having the best year in his career.
| What the young CEO didn't realize is that in one swoop he got rid
| of some of the top performers while at the same time wiping out
| the people most responsible for maintaining the company's winning
| culture.
|
| Within six months the stock collapsed, the young CEO had no
| answers and was fired. Morton Salt never recovered. They were
| merged with Thiokol and after the space shuttle disaster that
| merger was unwound. The once proud Morton Salt was passed around
| between different chemical companies until becoming part of
| Milliken's empire. All because of a single action by a young CEO.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Any recommended readings on this?
| rmason wrote:
| Morton Salt has whitewashed that part of their history. I
| know it because I lived it. If there wasn't a Harvard case
| study there should be.
|
| Some of the employees sued though my father chose not to be
| part of the lawsuit because he had moved on. The company lost
| the lawsuit but I can't find any record of it on Google. I
| don't think that was a coincidence ;<).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What, roughly, was the timeframe for this? I'm presuming
| within the past 50 years or so?
|
| Morton-Thiokol (I remember the name from the Challenger
| disaster, I didn't realise it was _that_ Morton until,
| well, about 20 seconds ago) formed in 1982.
|
| So that'd be 1970s / early 1980s?
| rmason wrote:
| It was I believe in the late seventies, 1976-77 perhaps.
| Thetawaves wrote:
| The midwest should not be salting roads at all anyway. Its
| terrible for the environment, your car, and everything else. Salt
| use has been prohibited in northern climates such as Alaska for
| decades because of its damaging effects.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| The spice must flow
| destitude wrote:
| I remember when people used to use snow tires and it wasn't an
| issue. All-season tires provide relatively poor traction in snow
| and ice compared to snow tires. The compounds in all-season tires
| start getting hard below 40F whereas snow tires stay
| soft/rubbery.
| zz865 wrote:
| USA uses too much salt anyway, it ends up in the soil and
| poisoning the groundwater. In much of Europe salt is banned. Get
| proper tires and shoes.
| Glawen wrote:
| Salt is not banned in Europe, it is used extensively
| baybal2 wrote:
| A big irony is how America got a salt monopoly, while China has
| just scrapped its own.
|
| I believed China was the one, and only country in the world still
| left with a salt tax, and a salt monopoly.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Can the state governments start to charge the domestic mines
| extraction fees like they sometimes do for natural gas?
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