As a figure skater I can’t express how jealous I am of people who have guaranteed outdoor ice every winter! Skating on lakes is an amazing freeing experience.
And totally terrifying once you have seen someone fall through. It is a natural surface. Like skiing on a real glacier is nothing like a groomed run. No matter the prevailing conditions there is always some unseen spot that isn't safe.
A lot of it is just knowing how to read the ice and making sure it’s secure. About 10 days ago, the lake I live on was still open. A week ago, which had perfect ice, it was a little over 3” thick - which is borderline. People were out, but I didn’t trust it enough, so I stayed off. Today, the ice is a little over 6” deep, that’s safe for groups of people to be on and have some fun.
If I’m skating on my rink, I’m going to be pretty confident. I know the thickness of the ice and I know the contours of the lake bottom to know how to manage it. If I’m skating across the lake, then I’m either carrying a hockey stick or I’ve got my little ice picks in my sleeves.
In areas that get colder - like Minnesota, it’s pretty normal to be able to drive on the ice. In high school we got pulled over by the police for towing a sled behind the car on a frozen lake. It turns out that towing the sled was legal, but we needed to have something to prevent the sled from slipping under the car.
There’s also ways that you can take classes to learn how to drive on ice better. About a decade ago, I took a class with the local Audi owners club where they taught people how to drive on ice. You had to supply your own car (Audi or not) and acknowledge that your insurance does not cover you when driving on a lake. But aside from that it was a ton of fun and skill building. It’s still freaky when your car starts spinning, but its a lot less freaky when you’re on open ice and you know that you’re not going to hit anything.
And driving on ice isn’t some sort of edge case. For the residents of Angle Inlet, the 22 mile long winter ice road across Lake of the Woods[0] was literally a lifeline during the US/Canadian border closure because, for the most part, the residents had no other way to get to the rest of the United States.
There is actually a movie [1] about driving across the St. Lawrence River, for smuggling people.
Fun fact: I caused this to be shown at our Thursday Movie Night at Google. It turned out that on our DVD setup, everything looked black and you couldn't see anything. I took a lot of shit for that one.
Even in the coldest temperatures, ice moves. Gaps and folds form. Voids appear between ice and water. Unless you are on a swimming pool there is always somewhere to avoid, particularly once snow over ice is involved
