Unfortunately, my bike commute only happens occasionally now that I work in the 'burbs - which, at least here, is where all of the new office complexes are moving.
Or I could just get in my car with a light jacket and blast the heat. Rain, shine, snow, blizzard, whatever. I'm good.
When the snow is cleared you are generally fine with normal tires on bikes btw, because you can just go a little slower.
Come to Copenhagen or Amsterdam. We bike in all kinds of weather, backed up by great public transport.
I've scrapers are not a burden to carry in a car, but they do cost money, and require physical effort to use.
You should visit Copenhagen in the winter, and enter a dimension of slush, the freezing/thawing cycles make it extremely unpredictable to ride or drive in. Actual steady freezing temperatures are so much easier to deal with.
Also distressing was the number of people convinced that all wheel drive made their car safer in the snow.
I'm not very experienced with this stuff, but one of the issues is having sufficient traction to make it up hills, and all-wheel drive is superior at that. If you have to roll back down a hill and try again with a running start, that may be doable, but that makes things more chaotic and unpredictable on the roads (compared to making it up the first time). In an ideal world, other drivers would be attentive enough to handle it, but in reality not so much.
Also, more generally, because static friction is greater than dynamic friction, any time your tires lose grip, you have less control over your car at that moment. All-wheel drive means tires are less likely to lose grip when accelerating / applying thrust.
The most important thing you can do with a car is brake and turn, as those affect safety the most.
All cars brake with all four wheels, drive type has absolutely no effect at all. All modern cars have enough braking power to slide on clean concrete, let alone snow and ice. The only thing you can do to improve braking distance is to change your tires.
Steering is only affected by drive type when you’ve got the hammer down, as you may be asking the front tires to propel and steer the car at once (this is partly why FWD cars often understeer). But in a snowy situation you won’t be driving flat out, so which wheels are driving will have little effect on steering, and zero effect if you’re coasting or braking.
What AWD is great at is getting you off the line in low traction scenarios, which is convenient. It also means that you can get an AWD car up to speeds that are unwise in the present conditions (remember that steering is two wheeled in almost all cars).
The only real advantage that AWD has is that AWD cars are typically heavier than their two wheel drive cousins, and weight absolutely confers safety in snow.
> The most important thing you can do with a car is brake and turn, as those affect safety the most.
Yep, I could notice that when I was leaving north of arctic circle. Each time my driving mates ended up in the ditch (failing to turn on a crossroad), it was with a 4WD. I tried to explain to them that 4WD does not help to brake and turn (especially when their 4WD land rover/cruiser is 50% to 100% heavier than their regular car), to no avail :-(
Luckily most of the landings happened in the snow banks and were relatively smooth, but the lesson was not learned :-( But hey! they finally get to use the 4WD to pull back out of the ditch :-)
That much insulation seems utterly counterproductive for hot-weather exertion, though it probably would at least protect from sunburn.
Also, my Asian nose doesn't hold glasses very well. Once while biking in the summer (with sweat dripping) they fell off in traffic. I was basically blind. It was terrifying.
Thus, contacts.
Don't waste your time. Pro-cyclists are the most biased and privileged people I've ever met. Just get on your bike, it's so easy! forgets that some people have bad knees. All you need is some goggles when it rains! forgets that people wear glasses. Just wait for the snow to be cleared! forgets that some cities don't clear snow. Just buy knobby tires! forgets that smaller people will struggle with the extra weight. Just wear a face mask! forgets that some cities ban face coverings and certain demographics get looked at strangely if they wear balaklavas
I just find your hatred for cyclists utterly bizarre. Did a cyclist murder a family member and you need revenge, or what?
What I disagree with is the idea that we can build a society around cycling. I was lucky to be able to live close enough to work and be abled enough to do the ride 5 days a week. And I was lucky that, on days with bad weather, I could work from home because of my job as a software developer.
As I started to look outside of my own life, I saw that not so many people were lucky. Actually, most people weren’t this lucky. How would I ride to work as a construction worker, with all my equipment and rotating job locations? How could I do this as a nurse, where I would be on my feet all day working odd hours? The more and more I considered all the ways people participate in society, the more I realized that the very narrow constraints of cycling just don’t work for most people.
So sure, build the cycling lanes and bike racks, I’m not asking you to rip those up. There are many people who can cycle and we should accommodate them. But that’s it - Just accommodate them. Don’t try to uproot the core structure of our way of life. You’ll want the roadways when you get old and injured can’t ride any more.
People use this same logic when others suggest eating healthy and exercising.
"And if someone works three jobs and has ten kids? Hmmmm? Then what?? Gotcha!"
Begins to reek of someone using the condition of others to rationalize why they themselves can't be bothered to do something. Not to mention the fact that you're more privileged in a car than on a bicycle.
Cycling really does attract the same nonsensical aggressive reactions as eating healthy and exercising.
As opposed to a bike: "This thing has a very constrained set of operating parameters, therefore I use it occasionally when the situation fits best"