On Wed, 5 Feb 2014 09:58:16 -0500, "John Grossbohlin"
wrote:

"Mike Marlow" wrote in message ...

John Grossbohlin wrote:

Last Wednesday morning one of those drivers got stuck on the railroad
tracks just north of Gainesville... the AMTRAK train I was on hit the
car shortly after the driver abandoned it. Net result was a tow
truck was needed to pull the car out of the front of the train and we
had a 2 hour 20 minute delay... I saw thousands of abandoned and
trapped cars... 3-5 lane wide parking lots that went on for mile
after mile! Glad we skirted most of the problems... ran into some
closed roads though as so many cars were abandoned that they were
blocked to further traffic. Crazy!

I've seen similar types of congestion in the south where they just don't
have the equipment to deal with this kind of storm. To be honest, our
drivers up north are getting more and more stupid as the years go by. We
see way more foolish stuff that people up here should just simply be aware
of, but seemingly are not. I guess it just owes to the dumbing down of
people. We don't see the same kind of problems since we are in the snow
country and we at least do have the equipment to deal with it but we seem
to be growing a newer and newer crop of stupidity.

From the Atlanta area news, as well as some "in the know" folks I was
visiting, they have equipment but don't know how to use it. I found it
rather funny that they weren't putting the sand/salt on the road "because
there were too many cars on the roads." They also didn't react soon enough.

They have thirty plows (or something like that) for a city of 4.5M. As
far as not knowing how to use it, well, if you only have a need for it
once every three to ten years, it's hard to remember (and keep the
equipment up).

The roads were ice, quite quickly. Salt would have fixed everything
but THERE IS NO SALT AND NOTHING TO SPREAD IT WITH.

More of an observation than a opinion: Four wheel drive, anti-lock brakes,
stability control, improvements in tires, etc. have given folks an
unwarranted sense of confidence. Another case of technology leading to lost
skills...

Nonsense. People have lost all sorts of skills in all areas of life.
They're simply not being educated.