It's really interesting because that's something they definitely don't teach you when you first learn to drive. Growing up in Florida, I learned to pull over and turn on emergency blinkers if the rain gets bad enough. The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others. Or maybe I would have learned eventually after a few close calls with skidding. Or maybe I would have never learned until it's too late. I wonder if the different responses to averse conditions you've observed is a function of the different experiences we've had as drivers. You might be a more experienced driver than some of those around you.
And pulling off through a patch of heavy rain is one thing. There are a lot of issues with pulling off in heavy snow unless you can really navigate off the highway to a safe location. Sometimes there aren't great solutions.
Hazard lights are almost never used by folks when driving, when you really should turn them on anytime the conditions are forcing you to not go the speed limit, IMO. The other lizard brains will see blinky lights and hopefully put down their phones so they don't rear end you.
People mostly only turn on their hazards when they're a hazard to other traffic (which is the whole point, IMO) Even if you're the slow guy on the road your speed still probably doesn't warrant this hence why you mostly only see it when people are going a speed of zero.
I would hope the other folks would recognize that conditions are such that you're slowing down rather than have a bunch of arbitrary blinking lights on the road.
It's funny because when I lived in Texas, we just turn on windshield wipers on full blast, put the hazard lights on and drive around at 15mph. (This would have to be an epic downpour though.)
The only time people stopped was when it was hailing.. and then they would hide under bridges if they could.
I remember driving past Charles de Gaulle Airport when it rained so hard we couldn't see past the end of the bonnet (hood). Everybody just stopped until it passed.
> The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others.
Did you ever hydroplane in a car, even ever so slightly? That experience teaches you to slow down or stop and wait for the rain to be over pretty quickly.
