You know, it's pretty damned bad when you can't even get out of your own driveway without hitting a tree.
.
About 8 or 10 of you here know what my driveway looks like, with a 25 degree (maybe even steeper) pitch in the first 150' or so).
I've been navigating and hand shoveling my own little highway (all 330' of it) ever since we moved here on April 1st. 1984. So I've had lots of practice at going up and down it in winter.
Well thanks to GM's fantastic anti-lock brake system in my Extended Chevy Van, I just did about $500.00 damage to the front end by not being able to stop the darn thing before I even got to the steep part of the hill!
When going down the hill, (if there is the slightest bit of snow on the driveway) I simply creep up to the "crown" where it's not flat, but only gradually descending, at about 2 or 3 mph. Then I come to a complete stop and put it into neautral, where I keep my foot on the brake as I very slowly coast down the steepest part of the hill. As the van starts picking up speed it's only a matter of a few seconds before the tires start to skid, and then the anti-locks take over where I'm left with nothing but a "solid" dead pedal, and no matter how hard I press it's not going to come to a stop.
So today I steered off the driveway, hoping to get just the slightest bit of traction on the grass and wound up still not being able to stop, or steer it around a telephone pole size tree.
Now even though I was still only doing less that 3 or 4 mph, I figured my massive chrome bumper would absorb the impact. Nope. Since the tree was leaning just enough toward the house, the hood, and grill took the biggest brunt of the injury.
I feel kind of silly even mentioning all of this, especially after somebody wound up losing their XF in a head-on with a teenage driver just yesterday.....but it still really ticks me off.
Now the thing is blocking half the drivway, and I can't back it up because it's on a down-grade and it's too slick. Even if everything dried out, the right rear tire is still in the grass, so it's just going to continue to spin and bury itself.
I really love winter.