Muskego Police Warn Ice is As Dangerous On Windshields As On Roads

If you've been running late in the morning and wanted to just hit the road, it's been a temptation to forego scraping your car windows and instead carve out a small hole to see through on the windshield.

The answer to that dilemma from the is simple: don't.

With overnight temps this week prompting frosty windows if you park outside, Lt. Dave Constantineau asks motorists to "try and remember where you stowed that ice scraper, get it back in the car, and worst of all, get up early enough to have time to scrape your windows.  It only takes a minute, but instead of standing outside shivering, it is really temping to just scrape a little hole to see through, and let the defroster do the rest of the work as we make our way to work." 

Constantineau said skipping the scraping only asks for trouble.

"You are begging for a tragedy.  At night or in daylight, if you cannot clearly see out of all your windows, you don’t know what is out there," he said. "In the morning, while the sun is rising, sunlight reflects off the frost to the point where you can’t even see shadows; and what are you most likely to run into in the morning, with those frost covered windows?  It would be kids, walking to school and waiting for the bus."

While he conceded that "scraping windows is a pain, an inconvenience, an irritating part of living in Wisconsin," he warned of ugly consequences. 

"Do you really want to have to live with the awful truth that you crashed your car, or hit another car, or ran over a child waiting for the bus, because you were in too big a hurry, or couldn’t be bothered to take the minute needed to have clear windows?"