With the ongoing ice storm now kicking Missouri's ass and moving toward Chicago, and the crap I waded through last week in Western Montana and Northern Idaho, this seems like a good time to try to remind folks of what they forget every year and have to relearn; that shit on the road is slick: slow your ass down!
I regularly drive the most capable highway vehicle on the road for winter driving conditions: a tractor-trailer truck. I have, if needed, 8 drive tires for pulling traction and my two steering tires have more surface contact with the road than all four of your tires combined, but I'm regularly literally blown past by idiots driving twice my speed, idiots I frequently pass in a ditch within a very few miles. I no longer even bother to check on them, just call 911 and report their location, figuring if they freeze to death before anybody gets to them at least they won't reproduce further and add their obviously deficient genes to our rapidly shallowing gene pool.
PAY ATTENTION: If you have an SUV (or any other vehicle with all-wheel-drive) QUIT WATCHING JEEP COMMERCIALS!! 4WD will allow you to proceed when 2WD won't, sometimes, but it will NEVER allow you to safely proceed any faster. There are two kinds of traction that count on slick roads: drive traction and steering traction. 4WD will give you better drive traction than 2WD; it WILL NOT give you better steering traction, and in fact may well provide less. Any tire you "spin" will lose both types of traction simultaneously, frequently followed immediately by a loss of control.
The accelerator is your worst enemy on slick roads, followed closely by your brakes. Applying even slightly too much of either can cause a loss of traction, and thus control. To the maximum extent possible stay off of both.
SUVs have one other real weakness that shows this time of year; they are top heavy. Drive 50 miles on bad roads and notice how many regular cars you see that are rolled over, and compare it to SUVs and pickups. Cars almost never roll, when their drivers go too fast they just slide off the road or into oncoming traffic. SUVs and pickups, on the other hand, tend to roll over off the road or into oncoming traffic, which is always much more exciting.
No matter what you drive, the best single winter driving strategy is simple: slow your ass down. You simply cannot make your usual half-hour commute in thirty minutes, so don't try. Leave earlier and expect to arrive late. Put some emergency supplies in your vehicle, never let your tank fall below half full, make sure your cell phone stays charged and SLOW DOWN!!