Driving While Blind
Here I am, driving to work in a wintry pre-dawn darkness. It snowed about an inch last night. My route to work, chosen for it’s relatively long stretches without traffic lights, is through Chicago’s north suburbs where street lamps are sporadic. While navigating westward through the first unlit, woodsy stretch, a black beast with livery license plates sloshes rapidly past.
I am instantly blinded by tire spray.
My car is still cold; the windshield wipers are stiff. They smear the salty slush across the glass. I’m traveling at 42 mph on an unlit, four-lane road with no divider. Headlamps from eastbound traffic provide backlighting for the rapidly freeze-drying crust before me. My view is now opaque. A frantic pull at the lever rains glass cleaner which, after four desultory swipes of the wiper blades, freezes into thin, crystal star-bursts across the glass. I bob my head, seeking the perfect angle to peer through the uneven frosting.
A couple of miles later in the next suburb, the road crews slept late. Actual white-stuff covers the roads where tires don’t tread. I find myself approaching a red light behind a Nissan Titan, its rear bumper level with my eyebrows exposing the rear axle and universal joint cowling that looks as attractive as a man whose genitals has escaped his swim trunks. the truck takes off, anticipating the light, and again my car is inundated. Apparently, mud flaps are just for show.
Automobile tire technology has refined over the years; a car’s contact with a wet surface is engineered to displace as much water as possible, creating secondary precipitation of fine mist over roadways. Snowfall collects particulate matter in the air and dirt on the roadways. Along comes the orange DOT trucks spreading their love in crunchy cubic crystals. Road salt melts the snow into a dirty mixture, and tire tracks atomizes the mess resulting in a mixture not unlike sea spray. The coating on your beloved vehicle becomes several molecules thicker, clinging like barnacles.
I’m awake now, and cursing. Not at the speeding pickup or its driver, but at the dangers of road salt. I hate the stuff. I can’t believe a society so proud of its scientific acumen can’t think of a better way to remove snowfall. No matter your speed of travel, being blinded on the road is dangerous.