Being a Northerner in the South, I just shake my head at some of the bizarre things people do with their vehicles. Riding around getting high with your friends in your car, smashing your front bumper through snow plow piles crossing streets? Bet you enjoy the $8k in damage to the electronics in that thing when you realize the plastic bumper and radar are destroyed and falling off. Taking a gravel shovel to your car’s hood to dig it out? Yeah there’s still a car under there, you’ll remember when you see the paint damage. Put a tarp over your car? Good luck getting it off when it’s encased in a 200lb ice shell. Even the folks who stick their wipers straight up… what you think that’s gonna do exactly? Not save you any time, that’s for sure, now you gotta carve the ice around them carefully instead of just scraping across it in one movement, and the wipers will be too warped to be useful until they warm up, which you can’t do because they aren’t touching the windshield.

Just leaving the car be and then starting it for a bit before pushing the ice off is fine… hell I’ve deiced my car with a piece of cardboard and a credit card plenty of times.