Not over the guardrail but the right rear was a couple of feet up in the snowbank against the guardrail.
Unknown but it was 8 AM so while possible, unlikely. The 3 things the trooper told me were that she was being transferred, didn't remember what happened and had studded snow tires. That last part was after he asked what happened and I told him the car started to cross the line and when it didn't start back I hit the horn hard but it just kept coming. Could be she did hit the brakes and the studs marked up the pavement. Of course the studs on the tires would be obvious on the car but I can't think of a reason he would have mentioned that in context with his agreement that she crossed the line if he had only seen them on the car. Like I posted, the road was clear. I don't run studded tires because:
- They are worse for stopping on wet and dry pavement than unstudded and frankly, the number of days in a year the roads are NOT clear of ice and snow is really very few.
- They are useful in a very limited temperature range. The farther below freezing it gets, the harder the ice and the less 'grab' the studs have. They really don't do anything in snow, that is what the snow tire tread pattern and rubber compound is for.
- They cause a lot of damage to the roads. A 4,000 pound car with studded tires will wear a road more than a loaded semi weighing many tens of thousands of pounds.