a more thorough study needs to be done by the Feds or
a better job communicating what definitive study results recommend, with easy rules of thumb like “if you can see the lights of a shelter on the road from your vehicle and you haven’t seen a vehicle on the road in the last hour, then walk to the shelter’.
For what it's worth, every time I've seen first responders talk about adverse weather conditions, they say to stay with the vehicle if possible. Obviously if you're on the interstate outside of Los Angeles, you probably want to get the heck off the roadway no matter what. But if you're lost or trapped, a vehicle is much easier to spot than a pedestrian. If you're lucky enough that there's helicopters looking for you, being near the vehicle is going to drastically reduce the time it takes to find you.
> unless you're truly in no mans land without any reachable alternatives for shelter, it's best to lock up the vehicle with a note on the dash and make your way to a shelter out of harms way
The presence of anecdotes that conflict each other is evidence that it is hard to make blanket statements like the above although I would still argue that the default should be stay in or near your vehicle during winter weather related emergencies. Also any anecdotes about AI related disasters are off topic ;)