The two days that all students at Klein Oak missed school have affected us all. While the weather was out of the ordinary, people questioned the use of missing school on those days, because the weather didn’t appear to be anything we couldn’t handle. However, the safety precautions taken on those days were everything but useless.

The biggest reason of all is that Texans are not used to snow or sleet. One might point out that people in other states drive out in the snow on a daily basis, but we aren’t that other state. It starts being “jacket season” when it gets in the sixties, so can anyone expect that we prepare our vehicles for travelling in snow? Most people can go without changing their tires as recommended to handle such conditions here, because we do not expect anything out of the ordinary, save for scattered thunderstorms every once and a while.

In addition to situations that we don’t expect, we have to worry about things we don’t even see. If it sleets in the middle of the night, much like it did on Friday, Jan. 24, and melts on the road and the temperature falls back below freezing, a layer of ice could form on the road which is referred to as “black ice.” It’s called black ice because it just looks like a normal road. If drivers are going as fast as they would go in normal conditions on a winding road, they could slip off the road in a matter of seconds.

Now, if one did take it upon themselves to go out in the weather, the chances of getting into an accident is significantly more dangerous, since road surfaces are slicker and easier for a motorist to lose control of their vehicle when driving. The likelihood of a someone in a car crash dying in that car accident is one in every 303 victims, as provided by the National Safety Council on injury facts of 2011. And while that statistic might seem rather low, it all changes when someone becomes a part of the statistic.

While a lot of people would rather not miss school, as the risk of having to make up those days is always a possibility, it is not worth taking the risk travelling to school under dangerous conditions. Someone can always make up homework or a test another day, but not everyone is lucky enough to walk away from a car crash.

The “ice-pocalypse” of 2014 was real and anticlimactic, if anything. The roads were slippier than normal. The roads weren’t as safe to travel on than people might have thought at first glance. And it was definitely not worth travelling on just to get to work or school.