Well, here we consider snow to be no big deal, as long as you know how to drive on it, and what to be careful of. If you never learn what to do when you start sliding, and never learn how your car handles, it's very easy to fuck up and hit something. However, considering that we drive on snow a lot, we also like to be a little crazy. My friends occasionally enjoy drifting around corners when it's nice and slippery. Hell, even I drift around some corners. But a couple people I know have ended up in ditches because of drifting, lol.
There's a big difference in driving on snow rather than on dry pavement, and if you don't realize how big a difference it makes, you can easily lose control.
I was driving on highway 400 (the big north-south highway in ontario that goes south to toronto) coming home from college in Barrie, and the roads were kinda weird. There was a lot of slushy sections, and some sections where it was wheel bare. I got up to about 120km/h (somewhat fast, and speeding, since the limit is 100). I was in the fast lane, and I hit a rather large patch of slush.... It's a god thing that I wasn't on a corner, or trying to move into the other lane, because I'd have been fucked. I hit the patch of slush, hydroplaned on it and dropped down to 100km/h because the wheels were no longer touching the road, and sliding in the slush, and the back end of the car drifted a bit to the right. That was scary as hell, and a good example of what happens when you don't pay attention to the conditions. If I had been on a corner or changing lanes, I would have gone off the road easily. I can easily picture someone from the south who doesn't know jack about how snow affects driving trying something like that. Hell, I still see people in the ditches and such when there are conditions like that, and most of those people are likely local drives anyway, lol.