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.

 

Time to put in a heated driveway? lol

Look on the bright side, you're getting a new nose for your van. You could cut the trees down if you really wanted to.

 

Gotta hate that when that happens! Could have been worse-coulda been a Cross! Cheer up, its a Governement Motors vehicle. Based on the results of that other crash referred to, the tree would have had some serious damage to it if it had been the Cross! Happens to the best of us. I once backed out of the garage with my Explorer, but unfortunately forgot to raise the door! Doh!

 

Mike - we gotta move to Florida. I had my Z-28 many years ago. It was pretty, and I had this light pole in the shopping center lot I parked next to every day that gave me some protection from other cars in the lot. Every morning I'd line up next to the pole. Well one morning we have a bit of ice and I get on the lot at work. I'm doing 5 miles an hour,no more. I line up the pole, tap the brakes and the car just kept going, in 5mph slow motion right into the pole. I feel your pain!
Pat

 

13, You don't know how many times I've wished I could afford to do that, I can't even imagine what it would cost to heat.
As for the Van, it's got over 270k on it and it's my "work" van. I can live with the slight damage, just hope it didn't throw my right headlight out of wack.
Actually I spent over $1100.00 last summer having a dozen "telephone pole" sized trees cut down, and half of them were along side of the driveway. Just not the one I hit.
5' off the driveway (as you're going down the hill), the terrain drops off rather suddenly about 8' below the driveway level, and it's covered with lots of undergrowth, (smaller trees). About 15' beyond the edge of the driveway, my neighbor has a stand of 30' pines running the length of the driveway, so my options were limited.

Pat I know what you mean, I've got to figure out a way to get out of here.
8 months out of the year we love where we live, but starting in December, it can be a pain in the asp.
Your "slow motion" analogy was right on, I even had time to attempt to try and throw it into reverse (don't try this at home) but all I got was click,click,click,click,click.
Any other time I would have ridden it down the hill and swerved off the driveway at the bottom just before reaching the road (there's enough space at the bottom where it flattens out) but today (as luck would have it) there were a couple of "County" work trucks just 25' to the left of my drieway, and they were filling pot holes as they slowly creeped closer to my driveway. I didn't want to take a chance of coming anywhere near them so I bailed out at the top of the hill, about 150' away and 10' above them.
They probaby got a good laugh out of it, because they were watching me the whole time.