Somewhere along the way a portion of society got the impression that all-wheel or four-wheel drive prevents them from slipping and sliding on snowy or icy roads. Maybe it was over-eager automaker marketing departments giving this impression or just idiots who don’t get how physics work. Whatever the case, it seems to explain why this Subaru WRX driver in Upstate New York decided to blast around a slower-moving car on a two lane road, running smack into a snowplow.
Don’t pull a gun on the repo man.
The official New York State Department of Transportation on X shared the dashcam footage from the snowplow of that very incident and it’s definitely a Code Brown moment. In it you can see the plow traveling along a road with a good amount of snow accumulation and some ruts created by traffic going down each of the two lanes.
There are two sets of headlights in the distance, those of a commercial truck and some belonging to our WRX friend. You can take your own guess about why the Subaru driver thought passing on a snowy road was a good idea, but it obviously wasn’t.
You can see the moment the WRX driver realizes he’s closing the distance to the snowplow way too quickly. The front end of the Subie starts turning back to its proper lane of travel, but the rear is slow to follow. And so at the oblique angle the car hits the plow’s blades, with pieces of it flying into the air.
We don’t get to see if the other truck is able to slow down and not hit the mangled WRX as well. The NYSDOT account did make it clear nobody in the Subaru was injured, which is a relief, but it easily could’ve turned out far differently.
When driving in snow, even if you have an all-wheel- or four-wheel-drive car with snow tires you still need to slow down and not pass on two lane roads. That means your travel time will be longer, so plan accordingly. Ripping through the snow like this is fun on a closed course, but public roads are far too dangerous for this kind of behavior.
Image via X
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Note to self: don't try to pass when roads are covered in snow and slush.
— NYSDOT (@NYSDOT) January 18, 2024
Thankfully, no one was injured in this crash. pic.twitter.com/pO1haHGk1P
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