Since moving up next to the Canadian border, I’ve begun listening to CBC radio. The large broadcast antennas throughout Vancouver, BC, make it easy to pick up a signal all of the places we routinely drive. While we usually don’t listen to the radio when there are two of us in the car, I almost always turn the radio on when I’m driving alone. Of course, I can receive other stations, including American PBS, there is something about CBC that appeals to me. Sometimes I go to the CBC website for local news. They provide good regional coverage and their website operates without a paywall, so I can read all of the articles I want without having to subscribe and have a fee deducted from my credit card. For the most part, I have not succumbed to paywalls even though it means that all I can read of some of my favorite news sources is headlines.

It was from CBC that I learned of self deicing roads. I have already observed that road crews use different techniques here than were employed in Rapid City where we lived for 25 years. Out here road crews are out with salt sprayers before storms. They leave a sticky residue on the surface of the road that seems to last for several days. If we don’t receive any precipitation, the salt dries into white lines on the pavement. Then when snow falls, it turns to slush before it can form ice that adheres to the road surface. It seems to work fairly well when temperatures are relatively warm and less so when it is below 10 degrees. However, weather is mild here and it isn’t below 10 degrees very often.

I don’t know what kind of salt the road crews use around here. Plain old sodium chloride - rock salt - is the most common deicer used on roads. Magnesium chloride and calcium chloride are also used in some places. Both prove to be fairly sticky and cling to the road surface. All of the salting products are highly corrosive, making hem hard on vehicles and infrastructure. The products can also kill vegetation and trees alongside roadways. Runoff from road salt has also been found to threaten the health of freshwater lakes.

There are a few experimental areas where engineers have incorporated salt into the asphalt mix when the road is built or resurfaced. This salt is then released when the road is icy, making a self-salting road. The process is quite a bit more complicated than it sounds on the surface. Careful additives need to be included so that the salt releases only at appropriate temperatures and at an appropriate rate. Another problem with incorporating salt into road mix is that if not done properly, is the substance creating voids in the road that quickly weaken and break up. Imagine potholes filled with highly corrosive chemicals that not only jar your teeth and cause mechanical failures in your car, but also spread corrosives on your car to speed up the formation of rust and cause additional problems.

The American Chemical Society, in its journal ACS Omega, has published a study on a carefully designed road surface material incorporating salt. This study used sodium acetate salt, which is less corrosive. The salt is encapsulated in small polymer spheres that are mixed with asphalt. The polymer capsules have tiny channels that release salt at a veery slow rate, so the roadway will remain ice resistant for at least eight years.

It seems to me that the process might have some positive benefits for Canadians, who presumably know how to drive on slippery roads. I have no solid evidence of this, but am making the assumption based on the amount of snow that falls on Canada, which is more than we get around here. We are already noticing different quirks of Canadian drivers. Alberta drivers tend to dart in and out of traffic and cut you off when driving on the freeway. On two lane roads they seem to wait until there is approaching traffic before passing a vehicle. I wonder if the accident rate in Alberta is higher than other provinces, or if the Alberta drivers we see are from less populated places where they can survive such dangerous behavior. British Columbia Drivers tend to drive precisely six miles per hour faster than the speed limit. That would be ten kilometers and I guess they think it is close enough.

In general local drivers around here don’t seem to have any slippery road skills at all. They seem to drive on slippery pavement the same way that they do on dry pavement. That means that there are lots of cars sliding into the ditch because they are simply going too fast for conditions. It also means that there are plenty of freeway accidents caused by drivers following too close to one another. Having lived most of my life where driving on slippery roads is part of life, I instinctively increase following distances. On the freeway around here, that makes room for another driver to merge into the traffic, forcing me to slow down to create the required space. Without a doubt, the biggest hazard of slippery roads around here is other drivers.

Yesterday morning when we drove to work the roads had about 3 inches of slushy snow on them. We had no trouble driving in our car, which has all wheel drive. I did hear the chatter of the ABS breaks at one intersection when i approached going just a little bit too fast, but I adjusted my driving accordingly. There were several folks who simply stayed off the roads. The schools had a snow day and only one other church employee was in the building when we arrived. Some stayed home all day due to snowy conditions. Still, we had to deal with quite a few drivers who didn’t know how to control their cars and saw a few in the ditch on our way to work.

I suppose that conditions were improved by the salt on the roads, but I’m wondering whether an investment in self-salting asphalt would be worth the cost around here. It doesn’t snow that often, and salt on the road doesn’t do anything to improve driver skills.