I don't have a car in Seattle, but even when I lived in ABQ which was MUCH less extreme than Santa Fe, I had flares in the trunk of my car. Did I ever use them? No, I never even had so much as a flat tire (for all the time I drove, I never even got a ticket, haha). But by God they were there, along with blankets and enough water for a couple of days and a little bit of nonperishable food, because everyone grew up hearing those stories about the woman who was stuck in her car for three days after a blizzard and survived by drinking melted water as it trickled through the window, or whatever. Or the people who went hiking out in Joshua Tree with a bottle of water and died of heat stroke. It just gets drilled into you.