It's not just in the US. Denmark had a snowstorm about a month ago and it was chaos because people take stupid risks. Large numbers of people drive around on summer tires as well as the majority of both trucks and busses.
If people only put themselves at risk, fine. The issue is when trucks and people who felt compelled to drive on summer tires, in a snowstorm, during covid, block the roads and prevent the remaining population from getting home safely.
a big part of it is how prepared both the government and the people are. In fairbanks, alaska we recently had a much larger storm and although many people lost power for a couple of days and most of the town was stuck at home we recovered pretty much immediately after the snow stopped falling. For many town along the coast large winter storms are normal so they recover even quicker.
If people only put themselves at risk, fine. The issue is when trucks and people who felt compelled to drive on summer tires, in a snowstorm, during covid, block the roads and prevent the remaining population from getting home safely.