The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department’s response to complaints about its road-clearing efforts during last month’s ice and snow was refreshing.

The agency acknowledged it didn’t get the job done, and set about making changes to improve.

“We did not achieve desirable or even acceptable results in some areas as our crews worked to clear highways during the recent winter storm,” Scott Bennett, the agency’s director, said of the mid-December ice and snow.

“We are aware of and frustrated by the unsatisfactory conditions that persisted too long in some areas. We also know situations like this create perceptions that can only be addressed by improving the results we achieve, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The complaints from motorists, and those who would have been motorists if roads conditions had been better, were many and strong in mid-December. That went into overdrive when a photograph turned up on social media showing a clear U.S. 71 on the Missouri side of the border but a highway covered in snow and ice as it entered Arkansas.

The Highway Department quickly invested in new equipment to fight Mother Nature and spoke with officials in Missouri to learn from a state far more experienced in difficult winter road conditions. Arkansas continues to promote better driving through chemistry - using concoctions that help prevent ice from bonding to road surfaces so that plows can scoop frozen precipitation’s aftermath away.

Arkansas also purchased new, heavier dump trucks that use “belly plows” mounted under the body. A new “tow plow” will be used on interstates 40 and 540.

All of the changes sound like steps in the right direction. So will this refreshing acknowledgement mean the snow and ice has been conquered? Don’t bet on it.

Bennett is talking about doing the best job possible with the available equipment. But Arkansas can go years without debilitating snow and ice events, then see back-to-back years with difficult conditions and school closings. That moderate weather we love in Northwest Arkansas also means it doesn’t make sense to spend a fortune on, or have Missouri-style expectations for, snow and ice clearing.

Predicting how to fight winter road conditions is not a precise science, and it’s made even more difficult by Arkansas’ presence between the warmer south and the more frigid north. When Northwest Arkansas gets snow, there’s often other sections of the state getting ice. We hesitate to hold people in the business of building and maintaining roadways responsible for predicting weather conditions, their impact on road surfaces and the exact time their trucks need to be at every mile of highway to prevent conditions from getting dangerous. Even meteorologists trained to foretell the weather can’t be so precise.

But, a better response is possible and desirable.

Time will tell, but at least the Highway Department is gearing up to be able to fight the good fight.

One more note: We hear, time to time, from those who want to criticize an agency over road conditions. Almost without fail with each storm, someone gets all worked up only to find out they’re blaming the wrong people. For example, why bash a county road department for bad conditions on a state highway? Why gripe about the highway department when there are poor conditions on a city street?

No need to make the situation more icy than it needs to be.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/15/2014