Driving
While easier to drive across in the winter than land, roads over water present a great danger to anyone using them. Speeds are typically limited to 25 km/h (16 mph) to prevent a truck's weight from causing waves under the surface. These waves can damage the road, or dislodge the ice from the shoreline and create a hazard. Another hazard on large lakes is the pressure ridge, a break in the ice created by the expansion and contraction of the surface ice due to variations in temperature.
The roads are normally the domain of large trucks (e.g. tractor-trailer units), although lighter vehicles, such as pickup trucks, are occasionally seen, as are snowmobiles.
Use of ice as the main construction material allows unusual construction techniques: to make a ramp to get the road over a step such as the shore of a lake, for example, lake water is pumped out and mixed with snow to make slush, formed into the shape of the ramp, and allowed to quickly freeze in the intense cold. Worn and damaged roads are repaired by flooding with shallow water that freezes into a new surface layer.
Read more about this topic: Ice Road
Famous quotes containing the word driving:
“There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The beast exists because it is stronger than the thing that you call evolution. In it is some force of life, a demon, driving it through millions of centuries. It does not surrender so easily to weaklings like you and me.”
—Martin Berkeley, and Jack Arnold. Lucas (Nestor Paiva)
“The greatest part of each day, each year, each lifetime is made up of small, seemingly insignificant moments. Those moments may be cooking dinner...relaxing on the porch with your own thoughts after the kids are in bed, playing catch with a child before dinner, speaking out against a distasteful joke, driving to the recycling center with a week’s newspapers. But they are not insignificant, especially when these moments are models for kids.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)