You’re making a lot of assumptions that are baseless and rather silly.

People pay attention to the weather but this is was an absolute freak storm that some of the people who died in their cars were not old enough to have ever experienced.

Leaving the car is the last thing you’re told to do here because 9/10 it’s better to stay put. Especially in blizzard conditions, in unfamiliar landscape. Could they have found a house? Maybe. Could they also have died getting turned around and lost in 0 visibility? very likely

You’re discounting that many people were traveling home for the holidays or going home from essential jobs (a nurse) rather than just jumping out to the store for a head of lettuce or whatever.

No amount of snow plowing is going to clear roads during an ongoing blizzard with the snow conditions what they were. Not happening here, not happening anywhere. It’s just physics.