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While winter conditions are more difficult, police say poor driving is to blame when it comes to awful commutes like the ones drivers have experienced in the past two days. We rode along with the OPP and had them spell out what drivers are doing wrong and what we can do to try to stay out of trouble and on the move.
Acting Inspector Doug Fensk was in an unmarked police cruiser to give us an uninfluenced look at how poorly people are driving once winter weather hits.
Preventing commutes like Wednesday nights could be easily avoided if we just follow a couple steps.
After the region’s first snowfall, the OPP said there were 600 collisions across the GTHA. In the Hamilton area, the worst stretch of road was between Centennial Parkway and the 407/403 split.
OPP Acting Inspector Fensk: “Traffic bottlenecks at the 403/407 and that causes traffic to intermittently stop and what happens is people aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing and paying 100% attention to the task of driving.”
Acting Inspector Doug Fensk, took us along that dangerous stretch of road and discussed why drivers have so much trouble in the winter: “People don’t adjust their driving behaviour for the winter conditions. They don’t leave extra time when they leave home. It’s our belief that you should be listening to weather forecasts the night before and prepare your next day accordingly.”
“You should be reducing your speed. You should be increasing your following distance from the vehicle you have in front of you. Stay in your lane as much as possible, don’t be making sudden lane changes and don’t be making sudden break applications.”
“The key is, maintain a steady speed and don’t make any sudden steering motions, if you just maintain a constant speed. Obviously snow tires are a big part of that.”
“Winter tires have deeper grooves, they’re a different compound, they’re a different rubber compound that doesn’t freeze as quickly and they grip the snow and ice a lot better than all-season tires.”
“If you have to remain at the scene and you have nowhere to go and it’s freezing cold, you’re probably safest place is in your vehicle.”
“At this time of the year, you have increased traffic flow. You’ve got slower traffic flow so you’ve got more congestion so your margin for error is a lot less. So if you take your eyes off the road for a split second and it could be the difference between life and death.”
Driving to winter conditions isn’t only going to protect your life but also the lives of those who trying to help you.
“Slow down move one way to the left to give emergency workers that buffer lane to do their job at the side of the road.”
Last winter, nine OPP cruisers were hit while on highway shoulders. Failure to move over will cost you $495 and demerit points.
It’s one thing to drive according to the weather conditions. But it’s also very important that you’re sober. As we get closer to wide spread company holiday parties, the OPP will be launching their province-wide ride blitz from next Monday to the first week of January.
