You're never really driving on icy roads. You might be out on them moving around, but you're really just waiting to hit something--at least, that's how I look at it.
Not too long ago, we had a rapid drop in temperature out here on I-94 in an area the service I work for does 911 coverage for. We'd gotten dispatched for an accident in the same location we'd just heard two other units sent just minutes before. While rolling up on the scene, we stopped at the first accident in the location and hop out and proceed up to the car. No patients. I walk over to the state trooper sitting in his vehicle and ask if he knew if anyone had called EMS. He directed us up to another accident further down the road. We notified our dispatcher, who, by this time, had sent all available units to the area. We stop at another multi-car pile up on the side of an on-ramp and were sent onward by fire because all occupants were uninjured. At that multi-car pile up, two pumpers and a rescue were also hit. We received an order to just drive and "find an accident with patients." My partner turns around at the edge of our district and begins heading back west. The roads were icy, so we were doing about 20-30mph... around the same speed as everyone else, just that we were running with our lights on. Maintaining that speed seemed safe, until we hit a particular spot in which we started to slide more than was normal for the time. My partner reduces speed to around 15mph, and we started to spin and drift towards a wall. His attempt at correcting the spin nearly made us flip--we two-wheeled it twice.
All of this on roads that looked just wet, had no snow on them, and at what should have been a safe speed. Obviously it's not a safe speed, if you have no control of the vehicle at the time, but on a giant sheet of ice, the only control you're going to have is if you're sitting still. We would slide if we tried to stop quickly even from idling speed.
