My 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee is named Sharon — though it’s a boy car, if you’re wondering.

Sharon and I just drove up to UND from Minneapolis the other week in the midst of the first big snowstorm of the Twin Cities area this year, and we learned a lot about the unconscious “doublethink” attitude most drivers have toward driving.

I think there’s something not everyone understands about driving here in the winter: Just because the I-29 speed limit remains 75 mph when it’s covered in snow, it doesn’t always mean you should actually drive that fast.

The only rule that makes sense to follow is this: Drive as fast as you can safely manage.

For me and the other sane drivers on the highway home from the city, that (unfortunately) meant driving 30 mph for an hour and a half until the roads cleared.

It’s just nuts that people can simultaneously believe that preserving their life is of utmost importance while also being cool with driving way faster than their car can possibly handle on slabs of concrete covered in ice and other hunks of metal skidding over it at upwards of 80 mph.

That’s fine on a nice day, but the days of nice days are over till April.

The interesting thing about Sharon is that he’s been recalled by the factory due to a nasty habit his model has of catching fire and exploding if rear-ended by a small enough car (It’s for this reason Sharon has a “valar morghulis” bumper sticker on his back).

Imagine how much trust I have to put in other drivers to not bump into my back end. Of all safety maneuvers they teach you in drivers education, there’s not a single tip on how to prevent someone from slipping on the ice and crashing into your back bumper.

But if it happens to me, I’m going up in flames. I joke about it with my friends, but the truth is if just one distracted, impatient or otherwise crappy driver doesn’t see me slow down to let somebody cross University Avenue, the skin will melt off my face before I can turn around and call him an idiot.

Though that might be an extreme-sounding example, it only takes the same amount of misattention or bad luck on a slick spot of road to send someone through a stop sign and into the morgue.

But for some reason, we choose to forget that driving is the most dangerous thing we do each day — though the same people who drive 85 mph through a foot of snow on I-29 are often the same people who say no to cigarettes, buy fat-free milk and take every kind of vitamin, supplement, and “good-for-you” thing our society prescribes.

Whether you think about it or not, you’re trusting everyone on the road with your life. If that unsettles you, get over it or lock yourself in your apartment, because there’s no getting away from it.

In the meantime, why don’t we start giving everyone a little more reason to trust each other? This starts with slowing down and chilling out. I know it’s cold, and your heater, like Sharon’s, may only work about a sixth of the time. But there are ways to enjoy those long winter drives to work — being thankful your skin is still attached to your face is a pretty good place to start.

Will Beaton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].