While the rest of the country is preoccupied with Britney’s new ‘do, we’re … well, we’re a little mystified by that, too, but more practically, we’d also like to know what’s up with the lack of cleared sidewalks here in the District. Though we reminded folks last week after our first big snow this winter that it was important for law-abiding citizens to keep those walkways in front of their abodes as ice and snow-free as possible, it seems that thought was abandoned by quite a few. The result? Sheets of ice all over the District. We don’t need WJLA to tell us it’s dangerous out there.

Since the snow is far past that fleeting “Oh, it’s so pretty!” moment, it’s gathering in dirty, frozen, grey clumps on the street. Our real concern, however, is the ice, be it in black or clear form. It’s getting to the point where just about any option is better than walking on downward-sloping, iced-over sidewalks, and we can count one DCist editor who found that walking on the relatively cleared streets this morning, side-by-side with the Metrobuses, to be a more sure-footed route. But with incidents like this one, where a 21-year-old woman, apparently doing the same kind of ice avoidance, was killed by a Metrobus, it seems that risking broken ankles and ass-first tumbles down slippery slopes are the unfortunate less-than-life-threatening choice.

The Post did some deep reporting Friday to tell us we’re most certainly in the grips of winter. Last week’s storm and the short, harried snowfall yesterday are a far cry from the Blizzard of 2003, but it seems like any time there is inclement weather of this sort, both the District and residents freeze up, leaving us with days upon days of nasty travels until finally getting things back to normal, or at least navigable, conditions.

Has the District started dolling out fines yet to those folks who haven’t cleared their sidewalks? Apparently not. In the meantime, do you have any particularly harrowing stories of traversing our city on foot, or fingers to point at lackadaisical neighbors making your pedestrian commute a slippery nightmare? Let us know in the comments.

Photo credit goes to OZinOh, used under a Creative Commons license.