We need a public information campaign around driving in snowy and icy conditions - Jayne Dowle

On Tuesday morning, there were reports of at least 100 vehicle accidents across afflicted regions of the UK, including a double decker bus turning over on a road in Somerset, with some of the injured passengers reportedly requiring surgery as a result of their injuries.

Now, I’m the last person to advocate any kind of state-sponsored nannying, and I do think that – sometimes – the Met Office whipping people up to heightened states of fear over the weather forecast brings back the bad old days of Covid lockdowns.

I had to go to Manchester on Monday. My parents had been poring over the gloomy predictions and were convinced I was going to be stranded in a snowdrift in Hathersage overnight – I wisely opted for the train, just in case. In the end it was a bright, sunny day and the only delay was caused by train staff shortages.

However, I do think that whilst being simultaneously fearful and also, heedless of the danger of treacherous conditions is a recipe for driving disaster. Whilst motoring organisations such as the AA and RAC routinely issue advice on how to prepare your car for winter, I’ve found drivers need to dig deep to find anything on how to prepare themselves.

There should be a widespread public campaign to inform and educate us on how to judge our own confidence, driving aptitude and psychological readiness to venture out in snow and ice.

The big question, and police forces across the country have been asking this in recent days, is to ask yourself – “is your journey really necessary?”

It’s amazing, even with the culture of working from home now firmly embedded in the British psyche, how some people are determined to set off to work – when they’re fortunate enough to have a warm, safe alternative workspace at home – when they know they are about to take their life in their hands.

I recently had a fierce argument with a friend who runs a large department in a public body. She makes it a point of principle to always drive the 20 miles across two motorways in West Yorkshire to get to work, even in heavy snow. It sets an example to the others, she says. But what of one of those ‘others’ was her son or daughter, terrified on a treacherous M62 in a tiny car?

Perhaps I have been scarred – or scared - by my own first experience. The day I returned to work after maternity leave for my baby son, Jack, we woke up to a thick blanket of the white stuff.

I strapped him into the back of my Golf in his cosy snowsuit and reversed off the drive. Or rather, I didn’t. The back wheels of the hatchback whirred and groaned and refused to budge. I was 35 years old and I’d never experienced this before; driving in a freak snowstorm in London.

I ended up melting the accumulated snow and ice with a shovel, kettlefuls of hot water and liberal doses of salt – an old trick from my steep childhood street which suddenly came to mind. How I got Jack to nursery and myself to the office I can’t recall. I just remember being petrified as I nosed the car around visible patches of ice and tried not to think of lorries skidding into us.

Since then, and even though I’ve been back in Yorkshire for 20 years now, I’m still very wary of bad winter weather. When we came ‘home’ I quickly realised that living at the top of a very steep hill on the edge of the countryside, the Golf was no longer fit for purpose year-round, so I swapped it for a Freelander.

Even with the four-wheel drive option, I was super-careful, especially when I took a job in Huddersfield. In winter, the A635 could rapidly turn into a scene from that US reality TV series ‘Ice Road Truckers’.

I was teaching part-time at the university and I would email my students, telling them that if they relied on driving themselves to class they must stay at home. It was technically against attendance regulations, but one of the organisations we worked alongside in our public relations module was Brake, the Huddersfield-based road safety charity. I’d seen enough horrendous photographs of dead teenagers to make me quite without conscience.

Well, after more than a few snow-related motoring skirmishes, I’m still here to tell the tale. And so are my children.