This morning was crazy! I went to pick a pupil up for a 9.00am lesson and there was traffic everywhere queued up much further than usual.
The radio was going nuts over how many accidents there had been due to black ice! Some places were gridlocked, and they were saying it was the worst driving conditions since this cold spell began before Christmas.
They weren’t wrong.
All but the largest roads were effectively smooth ice. You see, last night it froze, rained, and froze some more. The temperature was hovering around the 0°C mark in Nottingham city centre, but I guess it must have been lower out of town because a 9 mile tailback was reported on the A46 due to ice on both carriageways. Even in town, I went round a roundabout on a slant as slow as I could (knowing it was black ice) and got some sideways movement.
A council gritter explained the problem for the radio news: it rained and froze, he told us. I’m not going into this again, but suffice it to say if they’d have gritted in the first place it wouldn’t have been as bad. Ungritted roads were lethal – and that was where the accidents were happening.
When I got to my pupil 15 minutes late she could barely stand on the road, and neither could I. To make matters worse, it was snowing and settling. So we rearranged it.
Oh, and there is no way any tests are going ahead while it is like this – so call the Test Centre to check.
EDIT 14/1/2010: And STILL there are people typing “driving tests cancelled today or not” into their search engines! Driving tests WHERE?
Look, you’ve got to get it into your heads: the world is a big place and you need to be a little bit more specific when using Google to find things; and as I’ve implied elsewhere, the Test Centre for John O’Groats does not tend to take the lead from the one for Lands End when deciding whether to cancel due to the weather or not (what it does is open the door, look outside, and then decides).
You need to phone YOUR local Test Centre because THEY – and ONLY THEY – will be able to tell you whether your test is going ahead or not. Their number is on YOUR confirmation letter or email.
Honestly! If your test DOES go ahead, this afternoon you could be out there on your own amongst real traffic… Come on! Get a grip!