The System 163
March 2nd, 2009

The System 163

^ 51 Comments...

  1. Matt

    You live in Metro Detroit too?
    Apparently frozen precipitation makes people forget basic rules of the road. At least that's my experience.

  2. TheMonkey

    I live in a tropical climate. People drive at 40ks (35mi) when there a 5 minute shower of weak rain…. I like to think that, if it did rain, the last panel would not only be correct…it would be a correct diagram of the people who crashed when stopping to see the MAJOR crash involving 3 times as many cars.

  3. TheMonkey

    oops….i meant 25 miles/hour. and thats the fast ones

  4. rosscott

    No, Washington DC. But does it matter? When the first flake kisses the ground, people start testing how little they know.

  5. tizzyfoe

    I'm confused by the 40ks. What unit of measure is that. I don't no metric very well, but i don't think 40 kilometers per second equals 25mph. I'm now imagining you live in some magical land where rain water supercharges cars.

  6. ksteinhoff

    Hey, life's tough everywhere. We had ice in our birdbath in West Palm Beach, FL, last month:

    http://www.palmbeachbiketours.com/2009/02/05/snow…

    The worst place for winter driving has to be Dallas. I was in a training class there when sleet was forecast. The instructor said that they'd be put up in a hotel across the street to make sure that classes would go on.

    When I asked if that wasn't a little excessive, he said, "A redneck can pitch an ice cube out his pickup window in July and back up the interstate for 30 miles."

  7. Matt

    Did you link to Design Police and the Simple Pledge poster, or am I going crazy? If you did, sorry for re-linking. If you didn't, I think you'd get a kick out of them: http://www.design-police.org/ and http://www.luredesigninc.com/pledge/

    Keep up the good work!

  8. rosscott

    I don't know, but I've definitely seen them!

  9. Wizard

    It's one thing when that happens someplace where it only snows once every ten or twenty years. Where I live, we get at least one big snow a year, so you'd think people would adapt a little better. They don't.

  10. harkmomer

    Trust me, the quantity of snow has very little to do with common sense. I've been in Portland, OR for 8 years now and if we get a dusting of snow (heavy frost to most people), ODOT (Oregon Dep't of Transportation) goes on the news and advises people to stay off the roads.

  11. harkmomer

    We get at least 1 big storm a year in Portland, Oregon and you'd swear nobody had ever driven in it before…

    In fact, drivers here get confused by snow, ice, rain, and sunshine…

  12. VinkerekniV

    I'm from New York. In one of my classes today we were actually more or less poking fun at the inability of some places to deal with precipitation in any form. I believe my professor said something along the lines of, "They shut whole cities down for the amount of snow we don't even bother shoveling."

    I got a chuckle out of it, especially after reading this comic.

  13. rosscott

    SO TRUE

  14. Blcknwhtenred

    Same here…. Thank you for expressing it in such an illustrated manner.

  15. rossmom

    Yeah, that's about the way it looks–at least in NJ. You'd think by now, people would have learned to drive in the snow. Sad.

  16. Erika Wolff

    Same for Alaska. You would think that living in winter for three fourths evey year would teach people to drive in snoy, but noooo… everyone drives like an old lady with a can of grape juice.

  17. chipper

    Wordity McWORD! Ha! That is exactly how it looks way over here in Victoria for our one lone snowfall a year!

  18. Otto Germain

    Same here. As a pedestrian, it's amusing to see cars sliding through intersections with squealing tires and very puzzled looking drivers. Ease off the brakes, dummy!

  19. Adam

    Dude, same applies to Pacific NW, specifically to Portland, OR.
    My God some of the people… Absolutely no knowledge of driving in the elements.

  20. Mishii

    Rosscott- you've been to CT before, but have you been here in snow season? People play bumper cars IRL. We're more than USED to the snow, we practically make GAMES of it…

  21. rosscott

    LOLSent from my mail account.

  22. Cheshire

    Wow, you live in southern Indiana, too? All we have to get is a CHANCE of snow and people start flying off the road and into each other.

  23. Cheshire

    Wow, you live in southern Indiana, too? All we have to get is a CHANCE of snow and people start flying off the road and into each other.

  24. Apricizzle

    It's the Pacific NW in general- Seattle= apeshit drivers. Snow? People slam on their brakes to go for a slide ride in the middle of the street. First rain of the season? They've gotta slow down to 20mph.
    The Metro system also fails miserably.

  25. Adam

    The PDX bus drivers have balls of steel as far as that goes.
    Then again, some people got bad marks since they couldn't make it to work, which is BS. Other routes also got shut down because of some of the hills in the area are killers.

    Rain don't scare Portlanders much. Ok fine, we take it back a smidge, since oil is loosening up and the likes. But 20mph? That's a little excessive.

  26. kevin

    this is LA with rain.

  27. kevin

    this is LA with rain.

  28. rosscott

    OK So far in the comments of this post we've heard from just about every geographic area within the United States. I guess the answer is people generally don't know how to drive when \”weather\” happens.

  29. Adam

    I think any "weather" is basically the stuff that happens once in a while.
    EG, Portland got 18" of snow over two weeks in mid December… That was Impressive, and few people started driving their subaru's with studded tires, and chains on all 4 tires

  30. Abbie

    It's because studded snow tires are illegal in MI. Plus, they all have some form of ADD and are on the phone talking to their baby-mamma.

  31. Anon

    That’s Colorado. I mean, what makes these idiots think that *increasing* speed when it snows is a good idea when driving through the mountains? Or anywhere, for that matter?

  32. Metric

    what is wrong with you people?! 25 mph is equal to 40 kmph
    google it you morons

  33. Suz

    This is exactly what happens here in the UK, every single year. No fail, come late Jan-early Feb, it snows the shit down, the motorways close, the railways close, they run out of grit and no-one can get anywhere. One company has just announced that they're giving a £250 bonus to all the people who made it in to work on the days it snowed a few months ago, because it showed they were willing to go above and beyond the call of duty or some shit.

  34. door2darkness

    Im from south carolina
    we get off school for like 1 inch

  35. daniel

    totally houston

  36. robert

    lol, what snow? Down here in south Florida there is no such thing snow, just sun and rain, lol. Hasn't snowed in around 40 years, and even then it melted melted a little after it hit the ground. lol, gotta love the tropics.

  37. Steve

    I'll agree that portland is horrible when it snows. People here are simply retarded and have no idea how to drive in the snow.

  38. schmedlap

    Wisconsin … snow? No problems. Bring it on!

  39. AWI

    In New Hampshire, driving in blizzards is frequent occurrence. We still drive full speed and seat-belts are optional here.

  40. rosscott

    I'm surprised there's anyone left!

  41. chap

    That's the thing with the weather in the DC/Maryland area (I can't speak for Virginia seeing as I'm from MD but go to school near DC), the weather is so unpredictable at times. That's why we go apeshit crazy. It could snow one week and the next it's in the upper 70s. We're generally unprepared for the madness.

  42. rosscott

    Today it was sunny all day, poured for about 20 minutes, then got sunny again. Thanks DC!

  43. tissit

    Yanks.

  44. AngelicHapa

    As a SF native who's not used to seeing, much less driving in snow, I'm rather happy that the only issue I had driving home in the fresh snow on Saturday was backing the car up the driveway. I managed to get stuck in the mud puddle at the bottom of the drive. Oops.

  45. Shawn Handyside

    This seems about right for everywhere I've lived. :/

  46. PresidentSuit

    And with all this cold weather, where the heck is Al Gore???
    http://patrioticmobster.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/…

  47. TCV

    I read this comic and said "He must live in Maryland." I then read your bio, and found that you live in DC. I was both happy that I was correct and sad for you.

  48. rosscott

    I'm amazed how many people think this comic was written about their area in particular. I guess that means it's pretty universal. In a hyper-local sorta way.

  49. Crestlinger

    Conversion factor miles to kilometres = 1.6 25X1.6 = 40
    also for those into the smaller stuff, 2.2 pounds= 1 kilogram and 1 inch= 2.5 centimetres
    Why metric wins: ever try to convert 6 miles into feet? its gets Big, and odd too. However 10 metres= 0.01 kilometres, just simple decimal movements

  50. Ian

    I'm thinking they mean "klicks". Or however it's spelled.

  51. Matt

    No-one who uses the metric system calls it 'klicks', which is shorthand for 'kilometres' anyway; not 'kilometres per hour'. At at about 8 kilometres to every 5 miles, 40 km/h is pretty close to 25 mph.

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