Without saying this is wrong, I will say it's not at all practical.
I grew up in the northeast. Abrupt and unpredicted snowstorms are common, and some of them are dense enough to drop visibility laughably low - 10-15 mph would offer visible stopping (and be a fairly acceptable speed for a crash regardless). People don't want to take six hours to get home, so they keep driving. If the roads are decent, they keep driving at ~30 mph or faster to make decent time.
So now you have a situation where all the other drivers are exceeding their visibility. If you drop down to 10 mph, you get to be the obstacle they hit at >30 mph when you loom up out of the snow!
The result is that everyone goes 20 mph or faster, because everyone else is. Yes, that's stupid and dangerous. No, there isn't any 'safe' behavior available if you get caught out on those highways.
Wow, I had no idea the situation was that bad in the northeast. That's honestly terrible for a supposedly first-world country. Here are the solutions I've enacted for myself in no particular order:
- Don't live in the northeast.
- Don't drive in bad weather conditions.
- Don't organize your life around automobiles such that you can't manage daily life without one.
Those are all pretty reasonable answers, honestly, and a lot of people who leave the northeast do it in general protest of the winters. Moving closer to the coast will also preserve you from much of this.
All I can really say is that I've definitely been on the road at moments where I realized that 100% of my options were dangerous accident risks. At that point you mostly try to minimize likely crash speed (if everyone goes 15-20 on a divided highway, probably no one will die) and look for an exit.
I grew up in the northeast. Abrupt and unpredicted snowstorms are common, and some of them are dense enough to drop visibility laughably low - 10-15 mph would offer visible stopping (and be a fairly acceptable speed for a crash regardless). People don't want to take six hours to get home, so they keep driving. If the roads are decent, they keep driving at ~30 mph or faster to make decent time.
So now you have a situation where all the other drivers are exceeding their visibility. If you drop down to 10 mph, you get to be the obstacle they hit at >30 mph when you loom up out of the snow!
The result is that everyone goes 20 mph or faster, because everyone else is. Yes, that's stupid and dangerous. No, there isn't any 'safe' behavior available if you get caught out on those highways.