Snow and staying at home

The BBC is reporting that motorists in Derbyshire and other places “have been told to keep out of their cars because of Easter snow”.

My Swedish friends are always amused over the immoderate reaction to very moderate falls of snow in the UK. The slightest dusting leads to shops closing early, police solemnly advising motorists not to travel unless necessary (it is never explained what this means) and of course school closures. If schools in Sweden closed for 10 cm of snow it would be hard for anyone to get an education at all.

Part of the difference is of course that people in the UK expect to be able to drive around on the same tyres all year round: winter tyres, common in places with a similar climate to that in Britain, are not so much unpopular as unheard of in the UK. Accidents are then attributed to the failure of road authorities to grit the roads early enough rather than to the use of what in the rest of Northern Europe would be called summer tyres.