Vehicles, the Silent Vicitms of the Blizzard of 2011

In my driveway sits a van up to its front axle in hardened, ice-covered snow. It will sit there for a few weeks until the predicted thaw, because the snow is too icy and the incline too steep for even the local tow truck drivers to get to it.

At the height of the blizzard of 2011 I drove it to where I normally turn around, but lack of visibility and deceptive snowdrifts caused me to sink it 6 feet off the mark. (Ironically on the day I got it stuck I saw three cars off the side of my street and thought to myself "Amateurs, Ohioans are supposed to know how to drive in snow.")

Even the most seasoned veterans of Midwest winters have fallen victim to this blizzard's hammering. Highway 77, which runs from Lake Erie to The Gulf of Mexico, is littered with cars that were abandoned when they slid off the road, were involved in accidents, or ran out of gas waiting for visibility to improve This morning on the ten mile stretch from Canton to Akron, I counted four disabled vehicles. The last of the heavy snow fell two days ago, salt trucks with blades have long since done their duty, and this is not the part of the state hardest hit. (Mathematically speaking that means hundreds of vehicles met the same fate on just I-77.) At this point those vehicles wear the orange badge of shame: tags from state troopers that mean they will end up in impound lots already brimming with vehicles.

Impound fees are the least of what will become of those cars, some will be totaled by insurance companies and replaced by their owners, some will required body work, some will need engine work, and some will remain in the holding lots until fees are too high for owners to rescue them. Those cars will be auctioned this summer in what I predict will be a banner year for used car salesmen, whose stock often comes from those auctions.

My own van, although not abandoned, will sit, forsaken for now, for a sedan that has better tires and sits on solid ground, one of thousands of still and silent victims of the blizzard of 2011.