Let it snow

Why does the whole country go mad when small amounts of snow fall?

This is a question that has been puzzling me for a few weeks now.

We've had 3 helpings of snow of late, one before Christmas, one a week ago and another today. The middle one was, at least here, reasonable - in that about 15cm fell overnight. The others have been 2-5cm.

When I wake up in the morning and there's any amount of fresh snow on the ground, I take the trouble to walk up to the main road and have a look to see what conditions are like. If the road is solid with snow or ice, I'm not budging. What the world at large seems to do is anything but.

People, and by people I mean drivers, seem oblivious to the conditions beyond their windscreen - so you get the ridiculous situation where the road is covered in snow and ice and people believe that 83 mph on a B road is a good idea (estimate). Then you get the road which has been cleared and had 4 million cars drive on it such that there is not a hint of snow or ice and captain terrified in the car in front is doing 23mph all the way from Oxford to not-quite-Oxford.

I don't know if it's a product of the non-challenging conditions we have through most of the year, the improvements in car handling, poor training or rank incompitence, but it's very confusing and annoying to make an informed decision to venture out into some demanding conditions and be confronted by a not-inconsiderable number of people who fall into one of those categories.