Oops, lost control just a little bit

Yeah , bad spot to be turned around ! ...
 
So what lessons have you learned from that experience?
 
yeah you really have to be on the ball when one side of the car connect with slush like that, or just deep snow that do the same.
Driving home in the middle of a 2 day snowstorm in the first half of the 90ties i had to fight really hard in the 1 foot deep snow on the motorway, not since i passed cars and snow plows that only did kine 50 KMH were i did like like 90 cuz after all its a motorway with a 110 speed limit.
After 1 hour of driving and finally reaching sort of cleared streets in my home town i had to pull over as i felt strange light headed and chest pains from all that Dopamine and what ever rushed thru me for the past hour.
It was like a rally special stage, my steering wheel was constantly going back and forth to hold me on the strait and narrow, relaxe that for a second and i would have spun around i am sure.
 
yeah you really have to be on the ball when one side of the car connect with slush like that...
I think it just needs some practice, steering reactions should be automatic, with a little experience I don't think the OP would have spun the car. Needs to spend a few minutes sliding the car around an empty and slippery car park.
 
I use to always go practice in my car when we have gotten a little snow, but not much of that at least not this side of 2010.
Of course you need to find a wide open place with no other people or things to run your car into and then do slow speed, the car behavior are the same so #2 gear and running speed will be fine.
In the old days i use to go to the harbor in my home town, but no good places there anymore.
You cant go and be unsafe in traffic.

My Mitsubishi L200 with RWD only i could drift around roundabouts at 20 kmH max, and look like a pro :) as i was more of i idiot back then i also some times made a L turn in intersections using the hand brake, people often turn pale when a huge 4 x 4 come sideways towards them, even if it is at a walking speed and will never slide as far as their car. :p

Also when i moved to this town and going home from work, one place the road slant a little to the left, so pulling the handbrake while parked in traffic, and then when traffic move drive with the FWD car, then i would drive at 5 kmh in bumper 2 bumper traffic with the car at a 35 or so degree angle, pretty fun and still holding my lane.
Just let go of handbrake and the car would right itself at once.

PS. was drivng a just as small car back then ( fiat punto ) so room for the car in the lane even if it was a 90 degrees. :) some people shaked their head,,,, so would i, but still got to have a little fun now and then, and with a little skill and 5 KMH max you cant really do wrong even in bumper 2 bumper traffic.

Car owners associations here also have courses for advanced car handling, you even have to get one nowadays if you want a license, people really should do this once in a while as it will do wonders for their automated responses in a situation.
Here it is done on tarmac sprayed with a little water mixed with soap, so you can slide and spin ( your own car ) without flipping it. get pretty exiting when you are sideways in a truck with trailer and 20 tonnes or so :cool:
But soon you will be acting and looking like a pro, and so a much safer driver.
If it was up to me such courses was free and mandatory every 2 years or so,,,,,, but my kind of logic don't apply to much of Danish society.
 
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Out of the whole interstate, this was the only spot that had that much snow in Durham, they didn't get to this section yet looks like or they miss it. But my reaction was right, wheels turned to the other way of where you sliding into right? I mean I'm 39 years old and I had avoided alot, but I was heading to the barrier when I lost control and was trying to get away from it as I did at the end. Maybe I over corrected, but man it all happen to fast! PS: Didn't even use the brakes.
 
Out of the whole interstate, this was the only spot that had that much snow in Durham, they didn't get to this section yet looks like or they miss it. But my reaction was right, wheels turned to the other way of where you sliding into right? I mean I'm 39 years old and I had avoided alot, but I was heading to the barrier when I lost control and was trying to get away from it as I did at the end. Maybe I over corrected, but man it all happen to fast! PS: Didn't even use the brakes.
If you had kept the steering wheels pointing in the direction that you wanted to go at all times then you would just have moved left a little while you were in the deep part of the slush, nothing very dramatic. Not sure that you over corrected, the main mistake was that when the wheels got their grip back you kept the steering to the right so it turned right, you needed to turn back straight by the time the car was straight. Yes, "it all happen too fast", you need a little practice so that you can steer automatically and don't need to think about it.

Before that, you made the mistake of not following the existing wheel tracks, putting only one wheel in deep slush caused the problem.

Before that, I'm not sure why you were in the fast lane, especially when the other lanes where completely clear of both cars and slush, so perfectly safe!
 
What i am saying are, we can all do better.
I think my driving skills are all that :cautious: but it is probably just luck that i haven't trashed any of my cars or even been in a accident where i was to blame.
Though for may years when i was younger i was a really bad driver indeed, and where the only words on my mind was me me me speed speed speed weed weed weed and then money money money money in any way possible to fund that level of stupid.
So i have to keep it real and try to not have a too inflated opinion of my own being,,,,,,,, which are hard and i assume therefore completely ignored by many people for the same reason.
 
What i am saying are, we can all do better.
...
Even Formula 1 drivers crash regularly, far more often than most of us do!
 
I've had my share of spin-outs on ice and hard-packed wet snow which froze. Speed was always a factor but sometimes it was going too slow up a hill and the RWD lost grip. I once went downhill at 60 MPH on near-ice to make the crest of the other uphill at 5MPH. I knew that car wouldn't get there any other way. Black ice got me once at night going 70MPH. I thought I saw ice that the bottom of the hill, very gently started to brake, then lost it on the unseen ice I was already on. Just two of many and always lucky to not crash.

Best to have equal traction on both sides of the car to maintain your driving line, but sometimes it's unavoidable. More fun when like me one vehicle steers quickly and the other one slowly which takes two totally different steering inputs to keep the front wheels in line. That's really the key though- don't try to get back in your lane, just get going straight again first, coast down some speed next, then ease back over gently. And maintain that lower speed from there.

One of the best lessons I learned is shuffle-steering by pushing the sterring wheel up from the bottom instead of yanking it down from the top, moving your hands back as they reach mid-level on the wheel. This helps prevent over-correction a lot.

Phil
 
Even Formula 1 drivers crash regularly, far more often than most of us do!

Hmmmm , but don't they drive dangerously ?
Im rather confident that if they kept to the speed limit they would crash far less often .
 
Hmmmm , but don't they drive dangerously ?
Im rather confident that if they kept to the speed limit they would crash far less often .
Looking at the statistics for serious injuries and deaths, driving Formula 1 cars is one of the safest sports! Didn't used to be, but over the last couple of decades almost nobody has got seriously hurt, only exceptions I can think of are Massa who had a flying lump of metal hit his helmet causing serious injury (not dangerous driving, it just fell off another car), but he is still racing, and Bianchi who didn't take enough notice of the yellow flags and slid off the road into a recovery vehicle, then subsequently died. Being a marshal is more dangerous, but I think that is because they are amateurs and some of them either don't understand the risks or enjoy taking risks.
 
They say high speed ( i assume that mean over the given limit in a place ) are the reason for most traffic deaths here in Denmark.
If you look at the 16 - 18 old kids, then at that age it are common to have a moped to get around on, and some of them of course crash.
But the thing is, of those that die in that demographic group, then most of them have been driving on a tuned moped that go way faster then the 30 km/h limit for those.

When it come to Danes driving cars, there are no doubt they like to go a little faster than allowed, and drive closer than allowed, and slowing down for reduced visibility or snowy / icy conditions are not liked at all.

I know cuz i was the king of that.
 
Mostly empty multi-lane highway, and you choose the lane with snow and slush to drive in? :D

Yeah, I know, it's fun to splash through the muck. I can get away with it because I'm 76000 pounds heavier.

:LOL:
 
hehe yeah and as a car driver you do not want to follow in a semis tracks as it overtake slower cars in the snow, cuz suddenly the truck have pulled over again and you are alone in the foot deep snow with god know what kind of slush below it.
And then your steering talents really get on trial as now you also have to overtake the truck too as i found out that day going home from work.
And i couldn't go any faster as that would just have made the deep snow fly up over the hood of my car, and it was bad enough with the snow coming down from above.
I am pretty sure that trucker had a good laugh at that dumb-ass in the little white Opel.

O and i had Michelin all year tires on that Opel, never had true winter tires on it.

BTW later that night i had to do like 100 km/h to plow / slide thru +2 feet deep snow drifts across the highway, i could not see a thing for 10 seconds so i had to "steer" by what my ass told me.
So to get home i had to bypass several of the major roads into town that had trucks stopped all over all lanes due to a slight incline.
Only to find the area where i lived at the time was closed by snow, so all i could do was climb a curb and park my car at a corner of a building where the winds rotating had cleared a nice clean area of the sidewalk for me, and then walk the remaining 1/8 mile home.

That Saturday they even recommended to not go driving when i left the job in the afternoon as it had been snowing for 24 hours by then ( and it dident stop before Sunday morning )
 
That lane that I was in was cleared until I got closer to that area, after losing control it was cleared all way to the mtns. Durham didn't finish clearing that area... I not saying that I did not made a mistake, I know I made a mistake and I was glad that I got out of it without any damage. I have not been in a accident that was my fault, I have been rear-ended twice and side swiped once.
 
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