Fired is better than dead or alive but responsible for a family's death

Then it’s not a place worth working at

Another option is leaving earlier. Don't drive a car you can't see out of.

Fortunately, I'm in a leadership position at my workplace, and I say it's ok no matter what! No matter what happens because of lateness is not worth someone potentially hurting themselves or others.

I mean then don't get yourself into a situation where spending a minute cleaning the windshield will make or break you. Any nontrivial commute has that much variance in it anyway, so if you are routinely cutting it close, three late clock ins seems inevitable.

Better to be a smart feller

Yeah but the US is fucked when it comes to the working situation and workers rights.

I legitimately cannot imagine a scenario where you have time to clear this eye hole, but don't have another 30s to clear the rest of the windshield. It's pure laziness, regardless of how exploited your surplus labor might be.

I live about a 20 min drive from work, that's why I use my bicycle.

It's about 15km one way and takes me about 40-45 min. Normally the car takes 15-20 min, but in rush hour traffic it can easily be 30-40 min. So for my office commute the bike isn't even that much slower. And if there has been an accident or something like that, I could easily be stuck on traffic for over an hour. With my bike I get there in 45 min, no matter what. I love the fresh air, the exercise and the feeling of being outside.

In my city, the school buses only pick up kids that live more than 1 mile from the school. I live in a pretty dense (albeit still single-family) neighborhood, so almost everybody who goes to my kid's school lives too close to ride the bus.

It's amazing how the majority of the parents are apparently willing to spend five or ten minutes clearing the frost off their car windshield only to drive half a mile and then wait another ten or fifteen minutes in line at the car drop-off, when my entire round trip by bike is maybe ten minutes total.

Frankly, the "large portion of people" in my anecdote are just flat-out doing it wrong, to both society's and their own detriment.

The number of people who do have alternatives are a lot higher than many of them are willing to admit.

Yeah people will use bikes or public transit if it's a better option for them than driving. But decades of carmaker lobbying, terrible zoning laws and bad urban design makes driving the only available option for most Americans.
Cities who invest in good public transit and sensible urban design always see a huge decrease in car traffic.

Imagine having to leave your house to go to work.

My commute consists of walking down the stairs into my office. Takes about a minute unless there's a cat, in which case I'll be stuck for a few minutes giving him pets and letting him know he is a good kitty.

But then you miss on that cracking action.

Most (all?) automatics have a couple gears to manually select.

Look the ford pinto was peak engineering at the time, it was as safe as it got back then🤷‍♀️