if you aren't equipped for winter at all, why are you on the road? All people had to do was check the weather forecast/highway hotline to make the determination of whether to travel or not. If you don't have winter travelling experience, don't know how to handle your vehicle in snow/ice, don't have snow tires or at the very least have better quality all-seasons with enough tread then why make the decision to drive? What is so important that you can't defer your trip?
I agree---general rule is, "if you don't know what you are doing, don't do it."
But this seems to be superseded by "you don't know what you don't know", so drivers who have never experienced snow/ice etc. have no idea what it means, or what questions to ask, or what to do. So they default to doing the "usual." .....
Not only do they not know what they don't know, but they've all no doubt heard/read lots of comments from northern folks saying
"....a couple of inches of snow ain't not big deal..." So they think that since it isn't a big snow they don't need to worry.
Also, even in places like Anchorage, where driving on icy roads is an everyday thing in winter, people seem to forget over the summer. Every fall, on the first slippery day, I see lots of cars sliding around or in the ditch. After a day or so, winter driving habits kick in, and things get much better. In an area where most people have never learned proper winter driving, when icy roads come just at a high traffic time it should be no surprise that chaos results.
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