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I understand the theory, don't understand the rationale...
Posted by LDH (more from LDH) on Sat, 13 Oct 2001 13:41:42
In Reply to: Re: Salting roads...why??, Bryan , Sat, 13 Oct 2001 11:28:57
Everybody knows that salt lowers the freezing temperature of water. But it's not the only one -- so do a lot of other chemicals, almost all of which are more expensive and less corrosive than good ol' NaCl!

Snow on the roads is rarely a problem anywhere unless it gets very deep. I actually find driving on packed snow quite plesant and safe, but of course I have winter tires. Problem is that the snow is eventually turned into ice by the hundreds of cars passing by. Or it snows in the morning, gets up to about 40 degrees in the afternoon, then drops back to 15 that evening. Either way, that's when it gets dangerous. Graveling the roads keeps 'em drivable even for those without good tires.

My question (as should have been obvious from the first post) is not how salt works, but how policymakers rationalize salt use for this purpose. It's murder on both cars and roads and it's terrible for the environment. It does work pretty well, but is the cost really justified?

People seem to just take for granted that equivalent used cars from the North East are worth less (or at least less desirable) than those from the West. "Oh yeah, they use salt over there..." Are the winters in the East worse, justifying the difference? A question like that is laughable.

I mentioned a conspiracy between bodyshops and the government in the last post. While that was supposed to be a little humor, I'm now thinking that something similar might play a role. I just looked up some facts about road salt and found that over 60% of the salt used in the U.S. is dumped onto the roads. I'd imagine that the salt industry would take a pretty big hit if a State like Pennsylvania suddenly decided to stop using salt.

posted by 151.201.2...
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