WIHM (Women In a Horrible Month)

Winter anyplace north!  This particular one in 2017 is a killer in many ways. Because of freezing rain (aka: ice, aka known as black ice) on roads and sidewalks, the number of vehicular accidents has escalated this year as has the number of pedestrian injuries.  In North America's north, meaning Canada and the Northern United States (Mexico is, of course, part of North American but immune to such weather), the news is full of '100 car pileups on Highway --', and injuries and fatalities on city streets. In January, some hospitals in Montreal, the city I live in, reported dealing with 5 times the number of snow and ice related injuries as the previous year, and another hospital's ER was at 165% capacity due to injuries from falls. People are breaking everything in the way of bones but particularly, one hospital said in the same newspaper article, wrists.

What statistics exist for past winters point to older people and older women as racking up the highest number of injuries from slipping on the ice. 

I work at home and don't like to go out when there's ice on the sidewalks. But if I must leave home on such a day because I need to shop for food or go to the post office, I UBER my way around the city. More than once I've asked an UBER driver to help me get to the car or from the car to my front door because the sidewalk between was an ice skating rink--one UBER driver, a 30ish man, slipped and fell before he could help me across the sidewalk!  

So, women (and men), what can you do to guard your safety this winter and every winter during icy conditions, short of staying indoors until spring? There is a good solution (besides rock salt, which you can only put on your own property and only when the temperature is above -13C or 8.6 F).  I bought these little miracles when I first came to Montreal and would die without them (and also succumb to the cold without my polar mittens, another immediate buy on arriving, and another story). 

What, you ask, is this magic cure for walking on ice?  Clampons! 

There are many types of clampons, from the style I've linked here which is similar to what I own, to heavy-duty ones with chains and spikes for the Arctic.  Most of us just need them for day to day traversing our world of ice. In this link, the clampons are rubber, which fit easily over shoes and boots, with rubber guarded spikes on the soles.  It's a good idea to remove them from your boots and shoes when you're indoors, since the spikes are metal and can damage floors. But outdoors? Yay, Clampons!

Clampons

These are also Clampons but a different design so you strap them onto your boots and shoes.  Called:

Ice Claws

B#23