I was born and raised in the Florida Panhandle. There are plenty of people up North who know little about Winter driving.
When I lived in Kansas, several locals told me 4wd was no advantage on ice. Never having driven on ice, I assumed they were right.
One day heading West out of Wichita, I noticed all the traffic on the interstate was creeping along at 15mph due to solid ice.
After a few miles, traffic thinned out and I had not noticed any real problem so I sped up to around 25. Finally remembering what my friends had told me, I took the truck out of 4wd. Maybe 5 seconds later the truck began to slide. This kept up until I put it back into 4wd. The sliding stopped tho I did keep the speed down.
BTW, having driven on muddy dirt roads all my life, I noticed driving on icy roads was very similar and I subconsciously corrected the same way.
“There are plenty of people up North who know little about Winter driving.”
Believe me, I know. They were the people who always managed to slide into me while I was waiting at a red light. It happened to me 3 consecutive winters. Twice at the same intersection.
I'm a northern boy, but my first introduction to driving on slick surfaces was Arkansas gumbo. I agree snow and ice have much the same effect on driveability. The benefits of learning on Gumbo are that you cannot slide downhill into trouble.