Knoxville got snow last night, which makes for guarenteed entertainment. Usually that entertainment comes in the form of counting abandoned cars along my neighborhood. Half-a-dozen is about the norm for a one-to-two inch snowfall.
Today, people have been determined not to abandon their vehicles or their daily routines. Instead, they're going with that good, old, Southern mainstay of four-wheel-drive-will-save-me. To be fair, that's working well for many (though for this meager snowfall, any old front-wheel-drive sedan/hatchback would suffice). There have been several....special cases, though.
One such special case was a neighbor from up the hill. He thought four-wheel-drive would save him from the snow. He seemed to forget that most modern pickup trucks default to rear-wheel-drive, unless the driver actively engages four-wheel-drive. That was his first mistake, but with big, gnobbly off-road tires and a little bit of sanity and sense, surely this guy could get around a corner and up a ten degree incline, with a modest amount of snow on the road.
Yeah, well, he had the gnobbly tires.
I started watching from my front window, when I heard him spin up his tires on his first attempt to ascend the hill. Rather than easing off the throttle, he let off completely and went straight for the brakes, locking all four wheels, causing him to slide very slowly back toward the T-junction. He conceded the battle, but not the war, putting the truck in reverse, and backing out onto the street to the left. As a bit of foreshadowing, he was so aggressive while reversing that he continued to spin up the rear wheels, while he backed away from the intersection.
This genius among men clearly graduated from the Jeremy Clarkson School of Driving, where the answer to every question or problem is, "SPEED AND POWER!" From his starting point about 200 yards from the intersection, he went full throttle, building speed slowly (owing to the wheelspin) but surely. He cut the wheel hard right, about where you normally would to turn into the apartment complex, but when it came time to straighten his course, the the driver immediately lost control of the truck's rear end--charitably assuming he had any measure of control to begin with--which continued to rotate, despite a desperate attempt to countersteer. After about an eighth of a turn, that rotation came to an abrupt end, when the rear, driver's side quarterpanel made contact with apartment B1's mailbox.
Now, you'd think that would be the end of it. The driver has caused property damage, so it's clearly and obviously time to stop and get help, right?
Oh, you poor, deluded fool.
With one wheel in the grass, this guy figured he'd have the traction necessary to build momentum and get up the hill at last. After gingerly balancing the dismounted mailbox on what was left of the frame that once held it, the driver got back in his truck and true-to-form, went full-throttle. Again, his rear wheels spun up, and finding no traction on the grass (or rather the mud, since the grass was quickly uprooted) or the road, this guy found himself sliding slowly backwards towards a stop sign and a telephone pole.
Fortunately for those of us who enjoy the use of electricity and telecommunications technology, the stop sign was the point where the numpty finally gave up and called for a tow.
