Why does the UK grind to a halt with a little snow?

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Damien. said:
I'd say there are more lazy people in the UK than hard working ones, despite the fact we may be the hardest working country in Europe.
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We don't work any more / less hours then most other European countries.

The only reason that England "grinds to a halt" is that we aren't prepared for weather like this, It snows in England once or twice a year.
As a country we don't often need to prepare for cold weather conditions.
 
The lazy people in the UK don't work anyway, they are already sat at home collecting the benefits cheques.
 
It's nothing to do with being a lazy nation or being a hardworking nation that "deserve" to take a snow day off.

Snow isn't here very often in England, In the sense we are only affected by snow for maybe a week out of the year.
Why would the government spend money on preparing / maintaining access to work for a few snow days out of the year.

If we lived in a country that suffered from heavy snow fall, our public transport and vehicles would be better prepared for this as it would be part of everyday life.
 
NathanE said:
The UK is probably the hardest working in Europe. We have fewest national holidays and it's only recently that the EU has started trying to balance things out for us by introducing more compulsory holiday days (25 minimum now).
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Eh? 25 days minimum holiday? since when? Have more bank holidays been added or something?
 
scorza said:
Rubbish, when was the last time an entire county (Surrey in this case) had to close down every single school because of snow (btw, they close schools in America too for snow)? It has certainly never snowed as hard as this in the South East of England while I've been down here (10+ years). We're talking about 4 inches of snow on the road in certain parts near where I live - that is pretty exceptional here.
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So what you really mean is that this amount of snow is a rare occurrance. Not snow per se.

Even so, four inches on the road is not an outrageous amount, and it's not as if there is nobody in the nation who is qualified to clear less than half a foot of snow. (Why didn't your local council get its act together on Saturday, in preparation for Sunday and Monday?)

In any case, none of this explains why other parts of the country with even less snow, are suddenly deciding that they're unable to cope. We do not have four inches of snow across the entire UK, after all.

Oh, and I saw a gritter out too, but gritting won't magically make all the snow disappear, it relies on other factors too - e.g. the infamous standstill at Stanstead was caused because gritters couldn't grit the motorway because of traffic.
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True, but my area (West Midlands) does not have a huge amount of snow, so gritting would have made a big difference. And yet, there was no gritting. Why not? Such a simple thing, but it just wasn't done. Laziness? Incompetence? What's the answer?

Considering that the UK gets so little snow throughout the year (as others have already said) and in such small amounts when it does arrive, I would have thought that the preparation would be simple, the resources easy to acquire, and the cost minimal. I mean, we're not exactly talking about Chicago winters, are we? Cars aren't being buried up to their bonnets in mighty snowdrifts. You don't even need snow chains for the meagre amount of snow we've had today.
 
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Snow's a foot deep here on the Surrey/Hants border.

Dolph said:
Because we get snow so rarely people aren't used to or prepared for it, because it's false economy to own snow tyres etc for the one time in every 4-5 years when they might be useful.
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Yep!

Last time we had 'real' snow like this down here was 18yrs ago apparently (sounds about right).

rgzcampbell
Yep I was gonna do that (15-20mph), but 2 of 3 main roads were(are?) closed due to accidents, which leaves my main route, & a work mate had tried that road & didn't make it in to work, & I only live 6miles away from work!.

amigafan2003 & Pudney@work
Most BMWs are rear wheel drive, the only time they are at a disadvantage to FWDs is in snow or mud. If you don't have traction control on a RWD it can be very tricky staying on the roads! ;).
When I had a Sierra I used to load the boot up with 75-100lts of water barrells!, with my BMW I haven't yet bothered, as I have traction control, although I'm thinking I may have to weigh it down afterall after my little drive lastnight.

*enjoying day off* :D

Damien & Strife212
For some no doubt, for others (like me) we don't really want to chance crashing the car, but more than that very few if any customers would have made it into our garage! :p, even the boss said don't bother coming in when I rang earlier ;).

The only thing I will say though is that they should have gritted more!, looks like councils are cutting back too much!:rolleyes:

sausagerolls
Right near ya mate in Ash ;), foot deep here too (naturally).
 
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We deal with snow badly for exactly the same reason Oslo would deal with 90c heat badly.

Come on guys use your loaf and stop running the country down. Everyone in the UK crashes into things in the snow because:

a) We don't own cars or tyres suited to snow because it rarely snows
b) We don't have years of snow driving experience and we didnt grow up with snow driving training because it rarely snows

How hard can it be to work this out?
 
Lol a couple of cm of snow and all the traffic lights stop working down the main road, no police presence either, drivers and pedestrians just had to make a run for it.
 
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After sweeping away the three inches of snow which covered my car, I got to work perfectly well without snow tyres, snow chains, snow driving experience or snow driving training (though it did take me an extra 15 minutes). And hey, I'm Australian!

If there's not a great deal of snow, it's not difficult to cope with. How hard can it be to work this out?
 
Evangelion said:
After sweeping away the three inches of snow which covered my car, I got to work perfectly well without snow tyres, snow chains, snow driving experience or snow driving training (though it did take me an extra 15 minutes). And hey, I'm Australian!

If there's not a great deal of snow, it's not difficult to cope with. How hard can it be to work this out?
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The problem happens when people crash & the roads gets blocked, like it has all over Surrey today. Once their is a layer of snow on the road some people just can't seem to handle it!, so far I've been ok ;).
 
Evangelion said:
After sweeping away the three inches of snow which covered my car, I got to work perfectly well without snow tyres, snow chains, snow driving experience or snow driving training (though it did take me an extra 15 minutes). And hey, I'm Australian!

If there's not a great deal of snow, it's not difficult to cope with. How hard can it be to work this out?
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Come drive me to work :D

Had about 25cm snow on my car this morning, swept that off. Drove to work, snow was about that deep or deeper then I gave up when it started snowing again. Was amused to see gritters out, dont need gritters down here, we need Mr Plough!
 
Because in Britain people like to make a huge scene out of small things.
 
Pudney@work said:
Come drive me to work :D
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I've only got a 14 mile journey, and I don't use the motorways. :D Roundabouts were madness, though. :eek:

Had about 25cm snow on my car this morning, swept that off. Drove to work, snow was about that deep or deeper then I gave up when it started snowing again. Was amused to see gritters out, dont need gritters down here, we need Mr Plough!
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Should ask your local council why they didn't get the ploughs out.
 
1. The council didn't grit the roads despite knowing well it was going to be bad weather.
2. SNow plough didn't come out till 10 am
3. As a result of 1&2, people are sliding all over the place and getting stuck on hills - there was even a 4x4 struggling - I'm guessing poor tyres and/or driving skills.
 
Its crazy, its just took me 1hr 50m to do a 4 mile journey...
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I find that quite amusing as you could've probably walked that far in an hour :-)
 
Evangelion said:
I've only got a 14 mile journey, and I don't use the motorways. :D Roundabouts were madness, though. :eek:
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Mine's a 21 mile journey with no motorways, i'm happy with my driving in the snow, other people were really scaring me at times though!!! :eek:


Evangelion said:
Should ask your local council why they didn't get the ploughs out.
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Saw a couple of ploughs on the A120 but nowhere else. That 4 mile stretch was the only nice part of my journey! :D
 
mrk said:
Because in Britain people like to make a huge scene out of small things.
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Yep I drove 50 miles this morning cambridge to luton airport comfortably enough. Taking it eay of course, just left earlier than normal.

Yet you get schools closing because teachers cannot be arsed to turn up. My mrs is sat at home in the warm, her boss phoned her up and the rest of the staff telling them he wouldn't make it so they shouldn't bother. He and my wife both live 4 miles tops from work.

I drove that route this morning and it was snow free, peope use it as an excuse.
 
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