What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Parazine]

Well down here in Rekkersland the sun is shining and there's no salt on the roads

Here in the south of England, the temperature is actually above freezing today! Unfortunately, the roads are absolutely plastered with salt from the last week or more so my Seven is firmly locked in the garage... 

[Dave Mann]

Given the government's obsession with climate change I don't understand why they mine, distribute and spread 2,000,000 tonnes of salt on our roads every winter, then when the thaw comes it turns all the freshwater streams into salt water streams.

[Tony Griffiths]

I knew that somebody must have studied the safety/environmental/efficiency/cost equation of this - here's one such: https://www.ausableriver.org/sites/defau...._park.pdf
In Switzerland https://bioapplied.com/where-has-all-the...ngredient.

Another solution is studded tyres. My son had a set on his car once and, boy oh boy, were they fun; one could drive on sheet ice as if the road was just wet. Snag - not everybody has them. One evening, in France, driving in deep snow on a mountain road, a people carrier overtook us, lost control, slid across the road, struck the Armco barrier, bounced back and then, just as we thought it was back under control, went across a bridge. Bridges in winter can be deadly - with a much colder and often icy road surface. This time, after a 720 spin, the car embedded in the last 5 metres of a barrier that was protecting a 200-foot drop. The car contained a man, a woman and three children - and was on summer tyres.

[Duncan Grimmond]

I think I’m a bit more concerned about agricultural slurry and chemical run-off than rock salt. Having been the fool behind the wheel when I hit an unsalted patch of ice I was fortunate to coast sideways at all of 3 mph approx and T- bone my modern onto the pointy rubber protrusions on a Suzuki front bumper. Less than a second elapsed and I can still see the event in slo-mo!

[Dave Mann]

I got plenty of practice driving our Seven in the winter of 1962/3 on untreated roads.

[Tony Griffiths]

Ah, but David. We are the crazy ones who go out onto snow-covered roads deliberately, just to have fun and find out what our cars can do. Watching news reports of the average Joe not coping with just a 1/4" of slush, you can see what councils dump so much salt - without it, there would be utter carnage!

[Steve kay]

The Clee Hills Trial had road and trials section conditions this year which were really not at all bad. No snow, no floods, not much farmers’ seas of mud. The one challenge were a number of frost hollows. A couple were clearly visible, giving ample warning in time to get to walking pace. A couple were not, but then cadence braking and sensitive opposite lock is so much fun on a cold January morning.

[Dave Mann]

Not so crazy as some who jump in the car fire it up and are off peering through a hand sized hole in the frost on the windscreen. I used to enjoy driving the Seven in snow but not now with all the salt about. What do they do in Switzerland Tony your link doesn't work? It did prompt me to see what effect the salt has on the environment, it's death to amphibians, releases heavy metals from the roadsides, affects the vegetation and the ground water so much for HMG diversity.

[Steve Jones]

We live on a main A road and from around November to March it's salted pretty much every day. Sometimes twice a day. The stuff gets everywhere and it's impossible to keep anything free of it. My Sevens stay inside their garage I'm sad to say.

Steve

[Reckless Rat]

Knowing where you live, Steve, I sympathise.

Whilst we don't get much salt on the roads here, they do treat them, just not very often. Usually only when there is snow forecast which is rarely. However, what does the damage down here is the sun and its UV rays. It plays havoc with gel coat on paint, cloth upholstery, rubber and the perspex lenses on headlamps. I've had to re-polish the headlights twice on the Mem'Sahibs little Peugeot 107 as it lives outside all the time. Most of the older moderns round here look like they've got cataracts.