How good are American roads?

> Interestingly, I expected cold places to have lower road quality in general due to things like freeze-thaw cycles and the impact of road salting, but there doesn’t seem to be much correlation. Plenty of cold places (North Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota) have good-quality roads

Not sure about those states in particular, but I have anecdotally noticed that some of the places with the harshest winters do some of the least road salting -- because salt is mostly usable for light to moderate snowfall and the people who live in the harshest climates are often better equipped to drive on hard packed snow.

Also depends on where you're looking. Cities will have worse roads because they're always digging working on gas and water lines, some of which leak. That disturbance of the ground will make things a lot worse than some rural road where the ground hasn't been disturbed since it was created.

This is somewhat true where I’m at in Canada. In the city, half the people have proper winter tires, the other half “wing it” with whatever they can afford/put-up-with.

Regularly see accidents all winter long from goofs sliding straight across multiple lanes of traffic or going off into the ditch. Only some of us are prepared.

We don’t salt, only drop sand grit and gravel sparingly. Our roads become ice rinks or snow piles for a decent portion of the winter.

Your comment about us being “better equipped” made me chuckle as I spent this morning watching my neighbours play slip-and-slide in the cul-de-sac cause they opted to not put their winter tires on.

As someone who grew up in the mountains, their behaviour is downright dangerous in my opinion.

> opted to not put their winter tires on.

Heh. At least they have them, and/or know what they are. I have been met with "they make tires just for snow?" when talking about snow tires in the US before.

Hah! Yup! Heard that one before from Californians, Texans, New Yorkers, and Arizonans in my travels.

Ignorance can be the death of ya! Thank goodness most of them aren’t trying to drive up here!

> ... because salt is mostly usable for light to moderate snowfall and ...

Perhaps more important - salt's effectiveness fades as the temperature decreases. Sand and gravel do not have that problem. So if you're running the Road Dept. in an area where serious cold ain't some rare event - why would you bother with salt?

EDIT: I know the "melt to pavement, solar heating finishes the job" tactic. Which can work with heavier snowfall, if you plow/shovel before salting. Colder weather inhibits both halves of the melt-&-heat. (Plus the further north you are, the shorter & slantier the sun's rays get, even on clear days.)

In (most?all?) of BC winter tires are required by law, and salting the roads is illegal due to the horrific damage the run off does to the environment.

This is the truth. They’re digging out under a massive overpass in my area right now to fix water main and gas piping issues as we speak.

Road is all torn up and patched up. It has been a boondoggle of construction cones and heavy machinery for months now.

> Not sure about those states in particular, but I have anecdotally noticed that some of the places with the harshest winters do some of the least road salting

Salt isn't effective when it gets really cold so it tends to be applied more around freezing as opposed to below. It also depends on the road surface temperature as well, heat of the sun melts off snow and that freezes at night. So you'll find salt has to be applied intelligently to the conditions, on bridges for example, which I suppose would come from experience.

I also observe southern states seem to use more rubber instead of rock in their road surface. So that might be a factor on how robust they are to wear.

Because the goal is to get the road surface exposed so it'll heat up and melt off the snow during the day. And then the residual salt will leave a residue which will help prevent refreezing.

You mean to tell me dumping literal truck loads of salt into the water table is a bad thing? Why does everything that works well have terrible consequences.

CA, TX, AZ yeah, yeah, yeah but hang on.. New Yorkers!? I hope these are the ones who live in NYC without a car.. otherwise that’s completely insane. Upstate NY gets tons of snow. Buffalo famously so.

That only works in places with relatively milder winter climates. In harsher climates, salt stops melting snow, and the surface temperature of even exposed road may stay below freezing even during the day.

I've lived in Michigan most of my life and only people in the remotest places have snow tires. City folk just use the same all-weather radials all year round and maybe keep some chains in the trunk for emergencies.

Nobody lives upstate, relatively speaking. New York State’s population is 19.5M. 8M live within NYC limits. Another 8m live on Long Island and 2M in the counties just west of NYC. So around 1.5M for all the upstate areas combined compared to 18M in the metro area.

Yeah. I'm familiar with the harsher climates aspect.

The salt isn't really for the snow, it's for ice. Temperatures above like 10F, the sun will still cut through an untreated road surface and glaze over. Even with snow, because the top layer will still freeze, that nice crunch you get. The hazard is you have a smooth surface that your tires can't grip onto well when the sun goes down. I know it sounds counter intuitive but snow will still melt on very cold days because without wind you get a localized heating effect from the sun.

The nice thing is, ice gets increasingly grippy the further down you go. It's the around freezing temps that get you. And bridges since rather than the ground holding temperatures, now you've got an air conditioning going on under the road. That's why salt is so useful over say grit because it changes the freezing point of the water.

> goofs

Can confirm, definitely Canadian!

We just had a massive first snow dump in Regina here. 15-20cm in 24h. It's treacherous out there, I was in 4HI all morning trying to get around.

The more obvious reason is that colder places do not get as many freeze-thaw cycles. It simply stays frozen for a few months. In contrast, much of the northeast experiences many more freeze-thaw cycles since even in the winter it is warm enough to thaw the ice on some days.

I've lived in WI 40+ years and winter tires are a waste of money. Unless you're in the mountains somewhere or going off-road, they're just an extra thing to buy.

The average driver today knows shockingly little about their car. It's an appliance. They put gas in it, take it to the dealer for service when the message comes up saying service is due, and that's about it. Checking tire pressures, tread wear, brake wear, oil and other fluid levels, or opening the hood for any reason is not something they ever think about.

They make their payments and trade when the warranty expires. It's an appliance.

I think you are double counting Queens and Brooklyn in that estimate of Long Island because between the Metro areas of just Buffalo and Rochester is over 2 million people not counting places like Syracuse and Albany.

Yes, New York like most States is full of dozens and dozens of counties with less than 10,000 people but they add up and while the city proper of Buffalo is like 1/10th a single Borough in population, it too has suburbs and exurbs. Even the area around Fort Drum is just over 100k people.

That's amusing to me. My spouse and I fix all our appliances, cars included.

0F is defined as the temperature that salt on ice reaches. Regular salt is used a lot in Minnesota because it works fine most of the time and is cheap. It doesn't work on the coldest days, so about 15F they start adding in salts other than NaCl. Below -15F they no longer have a salt that works at all - but those days are rare.

My Grandpa worked for the MN highway department until around 1995 when he retied, so my information is a bit out of date, but chemistry doesn't change that much so I doubt it is very different today.

Very much so - WI and other northern states know how to clear their roads. While you will need to slow down a little more while it is snowing it doesn't really matter because someone else will not have winter tires and so force you to slow down to that speed even if you have them. And even if you have them they are better than summer tires, but they are not that much better, you still need to slow down on ice.

Winter tires are very important in places where they get bad weather but don't clear the roads. Those are not generally places people live though.

The new suburb I live in they put all that beside the road not under it. That is what the space between the road and sidewalk is for.

>yeah but hang on.. New Yorkers!

New England too. At best only a minority of people use snow tires here.

Which should beg the question if these things are as magical as the internet cheerleaders say they are then why doesn't everyone in these sorts of states have them.

The sentiment resonates with me. I'm the only person under 50 I know that changes their own oil, let alone performs other routine maintenance like air filters and break pads.

Californians? I'd be curious to know what parts of the state they are driving in because I cannot imagine living in CA with a car and not going to the pretty places.

Winter tires are one of those things that are very poorly marketed for some reason. Magical? No, but very, very good. I drive a RWD car through Minnesota winters and I was completely blown away by the difference the first time I got a set of winter tires. That said, you really only notice the difference if the roads haven't been plowed yet.

Yeah that there, that's getting to be incredibly uncommon.

And it's not hard to see why.

I had a GE washing machine start misbehaving one day. It would fill the tub, do a few spins to try and balance the load, start to spin up for a few minutes, stop. Try and balance the load, spin for a few minutes, stop. Then eventually just give up, without even draining the tub before unlocking the door.

Me knowing appliances pretty well, I already had the knowledge the service manual is probably tucked away inside the shell. Strike one going against most normal people, they wouldn't know to do that. Open that up, see how to get into the diagnostic menu and translate the error codes and run some tests.

Ok, so now I know it's a speed sensing issue. The speed the motor is reporting and the speed the tub speed sensor isn't making sense for the fixed gear ratio so it thinks there's something unsafe going on. That's a decent safety issue, but looking at the tub as it spins it's probably just a sensor issue.

The tub hall effect sensor was like $20 shipped from the GE parts website. Quick and easy to swap out. No dice, still not wanting to spin up. More reading online, it's likely the main motor inverter board. Well, that's pretty deep in the machine, could also be the motor assembly itself which would be covered under warranty, let me call a GE service guy to come.

Service guy comes, he plugs some wireless adapter into a hidden USB port, fumbles with it for a few minutes with an iPad with a shattered screen, gives up diagnosing the issue. Writes up an invoice proposal for $900 worth of parts and labor for him to swap out a ton of things, or a referral code/discount coupon for me to buy a new unit.

I decline the order. Surely not all this shit is wrong with the thing. I find the inverter board online from a third party site for <$100, was available from the official parts site for not much more. Start unplugging it a bunch, and notice the motor hall sensor pin wasn't seated very well. I don't want to put it all together again just to find reseating/gluing the connection together didn't solve the problem, so I just put the new inverter board in. Put it all back together and it's just fine for <$100.

I imagine it was just a loose connection for that sensor. This is probably still a perfectly functional board on my shelf. I'll keep it and the other sensor in case some other issues happens in the future. But it could have been just a loose connection that sent this nearly $1000 unit to the scrapyard if it wasn't for me bothering to look. It could have been an exceptionally cheap part. And the final fix I accepted was just somewhat cheap part.

In the end people generally don't care to actually fix shit, and I imagine the majority of people would have just thrown up their hands before looking for the service manual, called the tech, he would have made it obvious a new unit would be a better deal, and they would have taken it.

Wait, Canada don't have regulations about having winter tires of some kind? Wow, that is odd.

Honestly, tire tech has come a long way even in the last 10 years. Some current 3 peak rated all seasons can outperform some of yesterdays best snow tires.

Canada is a federal state like the US, and it similarly delegates much of the power to regulate driving to the provinces.

I think you and I had a disagreement the other day. It's nice to see we also agree on things.

Because if you believe you can get by without them, why shell out the money? And you generally can get by without them if you live relatively close to an urban area.

To be fair I feel like this requires being a homeowner so that you have a garage to work in

It also tends to corrode any sort of metal in the structures that it’s on, which also contributes to poor road quality from the article. And it corrodes the cars traveling on it as well.

I don't have a garage.

British Columbia mandates winter tires on highways going through the mountains, and chains for trucks. I wish other provinces would put in similar mandates, because it's a bit of a clown show on the roads right now in Saskatchewan.

I did something similar for a dryer. Even identified the part that failed.

I bought the part-number equivalent part and the prongs didn't fit in the slot. I spent 45 minutes carefully filing down/snipping the prongs to fit the enclosure. Been 5? years without an issue.

It would be weird if someone in upstate NY hadn't heard of snow tires, but it's not insane to not use them. I spent most of my life in Wisconsin (obviously a place with lots of snow and ice), and frankly snow tires just aren't necessary in most winter driving scenarios. All seasons will do you just fine 95% of the time, and for the other 5% you should consider chains instead of snow tires anyways. Or of course don't go out, which is the actual best option most of the time. Almost nobody back home has snow tires because they just aren't worth it.

Not sure when snow tires became more mainstream but I started driving in Michigan in the late 80s and didn't know a single family that used snow tires. Where I live now snow tires only make sense for those who live in or visit the mountains regularly. The valleys are mostly at or above temps where snow tires wear quickly or become less effective on wet surfaces.

I'd imagine most Californians are using chains or other traction devices rather than snow tires. Snow tires would be awful in the Bay Area or pretty much any of the state's main cities.

Do you own a home? Every apartment I've ever lived in prohibited doing any car maintainance on the property.

Winter tires are not cheap. I'm in Alaska and recently paid $1400 for a new set of studded winter tires for my F-150. And the tires I chose were one of the lower cost options available.

So I totally understand why folks who can barely afford to put gas in their car are driving around on all-seasons year round (and ending up in the ditch frequently).

Yes, and my unique qualification for owning a 1100 sqft home was “no HOA”

Does BC allow chains instead of winter tires? Oregon does for cars and light trucks. WA seems to be more of a free for all but also tends to completely shut down their passes more often than Oregon does.

This works well in suburbs with modern setback rules. It doesn't work so well in established urban areas where buildings often go right up to the sidewalk which goes right up to the road.

Cold places see a lot of freeze-thaw cycles in fall and spring - before and after the hard freeze. I don't know how they compare, but it isn't clear cut.

> $1400 for a new set of studded winter tires for my F-150

The F-150 and maybe the studs play the biggest role here. I kept it below $400 for my small hatchback, even though I went for Conti (but it was before COVID).

When I rented a room, I did my auto maintenance on the curb. Now that I have a home, I still do that because I don't want oil stains on my driveway.

I get that some people don't have space for an oil pan, but tons do. Brake pad replacement doesn't require anything besides the jack from your car and a socket wrench.

As a Californian living in the central valley, where we never get snow, I had never heard of snow tires until I lived in Germany, where seemingly everyone had them in winter. Nobody around here has them or even sells them.

When we go up into the mountains in winter, either the roads are cleared and we can drive on them with normal tires, or it's snowing heavily and we put snow chains on the tires and drive slowly. I've only had to use snow chains a couple times in my life because I generally only go into the mountains when it's not currently snowing, which is most of the time.

Climate change has made the climate drier here, the mountains get a lot less snow than they used to. It also helps that real winter with snow storms only lasts about 3 months.

No garage. I have a driveway, but do most of my auto work in the street because I don't want stains on it

Ehh, I almost never use winter tires but I still disagree. Some people are simply not good or attentive enough drivers for me to believe they will be fine without winter tires.

It doesn't work well here either. It frees up the roads a little, but as someone who bikes on those "shared use" sidewalks there are regularly "yellow vest people" blocking the sidewalks.

Many localities have co-op community workshops where you can use their space to work on your car. They may even have a lift, common tools you can use, and someone there who might know enough about car repair to help you. Or not, but check into it.

Did you get the part on Amazon? I've had really bad luck with third party parts from Amazon. I always pay a bit more for OE or OEM parts now.

There is also old-fashioned community. Most people know a friend or family member with a driveway.

I don’t remember. Probably.

I've often heard the cold climate given as the reason for the terrible roads in Quebec, but you clearly notice the roads getting better as you cross the border out of Quebec into Ontario for example.

I generally try to avoid Amazon as much as I can these days. Unless I know some supplier only really sells through Amazon I try and buy directly or use another retailer. Far too hard to tell if I'm buying something legit or not.

Once upon a time (more than 5 years ago), I bought a small Bluetooth USB on Amazon that also required some manual work before I was able to stick it into a normal USB port... it was very slightly more massive and careful filing took care of it.

One would expect that there is nothing more standard than USB-A. Nope. There is an exception for every rule.

The Quebec road industry has historically been corrupt.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-roadwork-indu... and many many other reports.

Some people are just built different.

> In the end people generally don't care to actually fix shit, and I imagine the majority of people would have just thrown up their hands before looking for the service manual, called the tech, he would have made it obvious a new unit would be a better deal, and they would have taken it.

Is that the conclusion to this whole story?

Sure, pretty much. A hired tech didn't bother understanding the deeper issue would prefer me to use his coupon code to buy a new unit of great cost to me. Chances are a simple reseating of a connector and additional support would have prevented several hundred pounds of otherwise perfectly fine materials going to a landfill and cost me almost $1,000 for a similar replacement unit.

And if I didn't have enough knowledge and determination past a standard consumer it would have been trash. Sadly most consumers and support techs don't care enough.

The difficult of dismantling some of these things to fix things is a significant issue though - you have to have the time and interest in a lot of cases, and at the end of the investment might still have a non-functional item.

i.e. if I spend 3 days figuring out my washing machine, I'm trading leisure time (bought at whatever my salary rate is) for the cost of the machine. If the machine is a nightmare to open up and close, then I don't really blame people for just buying a new one.

A bunch of this can obviously be mitigated: right-to-repair is a good start, but we also need incentives for serviceability - the example you give of being able to actually get diagnostic data is one area (IMO: that should just be legally mandated as open-source, make it a national security policy - which it is IMO). Firmware blobs for chips should also be public - i.e. I've got a few things where the microcontroller is dead, I can source a replacement, but there's no way to get a copy of the onboard programming.

And then obviously, if we could somehow encourage design which means components are easy to remove, that would be great (i.e. logic and control boards should always be mounted accessibly).

Studs added about $150 (for the set) vs the price for the studless version of the same tire. Truck tires are definitely more expensive than those for passenger cars, though.

I live in the southeastern US. I am aware that winter tires exist, but you simply can't buy them here off the rack. You have to order them. For our "snow", which happens once every 2-3 years, you don't even need them. In an ice storm, you just stay off the roads for two days. The heat from the sun is sufficient to melt it even if the air temperature never gets above freezing.

What you need here are tires that can handle huge amounts of rain. Which, in the western US, is not an issue.

Yep, in New York the pothole season is early Spring rather than winter, for example.

I mean, I get it. I'm a nerd that enjoys tackling problems. But the normal response I've seen from appliance techs have been the same. They seem more interested in the commission of selling a new unit than actually trying to fix the current one. In the end my unit probably could have been solved for less than an hour of his time to just jiggle the connection of the hall effect sensor on the board, but he couldn't even be bothered to figure out it was the sensors that were the problem or actually try and make the repair.

I've had similar experiences with other appliances over the years. It's not just a GE thing.

I think so, but nobody uses them other than people exploring remote in unplowed places.

On regular roads theyre too inconvenient and make you go too slow. Slap on quality winter tires in November and you’re good to go with no more effort.