The November 27 snowfall can in no way be called a natural abnormality. No weather forecasts are required to establish that snow is due this time of year. And its belated coming is no reason to procrastinate with the cleanup, especially since nothing like snow allows the road services to write off the fuel stolen during the year. Still certain sums of money spent on snow removal are sure to appear in financial reports as soon as November.
In fact, the first snowfall as usual left drivers one on one with the roads, which even in dry weather are difficult to master. As of November 27 highways to the west of the capital had a speed limit of 40 kilometers per hour. Cars moved one after the other through the snowdrifts as if somewhere in tundra, not in the center of Europe. The statistics will later show the number of people’s lives and vehicles claimed by this first snowfall. Paramedics and mechanics are certainly in for some overtime.
Could this have been prevented? Was it so necessary to try out our vehicles with roads slippery with ice and snowdrifts? According to humble estimates, twenty or so snowplows would be enough to minimize the suffering of drivers on a 300 kilometers long highway. But no such vehicles were to be seen on the 330 kilometer highway section form Rivne to Kyiv. I spotted the first such vehicle only on November 28 in the driveway of the Verkhovna Rada buildings. That this very stretch of road has the highest accident rate in time of snowfall seems quite dubious. But this is only an average driver’s opinion, while in the road service authorities’ opinion to start the road cleanup with the sidewalk on Hrushevsky Street is the right thing to do. Our drivers are road-hardened, and they will adjust. God forbid that one of our leaders might slip.
