I have seen clear ice on the roads a few times and it is very difficult to deal with even if one is experienced.
Shortly after I got my DL at 16, I was driving one of the family barges through the Connecticut countryside, getting in a little practise, with my mother riding shotgun and my two younger siblings in the back seat. Weather forecasting in the 1960s was not sophisticated enough to tell us we were going to get caught in a freezing ice storm 20 miles from home.
We did not complain, or blame the government for failing to forecast the storm.
My mother, exercising her executive authority, bullied me into pulling into a service station, where a pimply-faced lad of 19 or 20 years, volunteered to drive us all to our home, in his car, on the sole condition that my mother keep absolutely quiet the whole way. That was a tough pill for her to swallow.
It was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. He was a damn good driver on ice. (And my mother damn near wet herself.) My dad had to drive me back the next day in his car to pick up my mother's car, which we had left at the service station.
We did not blame the government for the fact that we had to abandon our car overnight. But Americans were made of hardier stuff in those days.
(That last crack was not directed toward anyone on this thread, BTW.)
