Say you’re skidding right? As in, your car has gone into a skid because you’ve hit some standing water or black ice. And let’s assume that it’s the back end that’s coming round. The advice in this situation is to ‘steer into the skid’.
Now, what I understand by the phrase ‘steer into a skid’ is if the back end is slipping to the right, then you, the driver, should also turn the wheel to the right, in the hope of bring the front and rear of the car into line.
However, whenever I hear this piece of advice given out — as I did just now, on the radio — it’s almost always qualified by something along the lines of ‘it might feel weird’ or ‘it sounds counter-intuitive’.
But why? Why do they always say this? In effect what you’re doing is turning the steering wheel in the direction you want the front tyres to point, which is the basic principle of all steering. So why in a skid situation should it feel strange to do that? Is it just the case that it does, and I would understand if I ever went into a skid? Or have I misunderstood what ‘steering into a skid’ means?
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FOR THE LAST TIME: BREXIT MEANS BREXIT!
After Brexit we must steer in the opposite direction to current advice. Useless EU directives that are “counter intuitive” will be no more.
Intuition (OK, mine anyway) says “Arrgghhh!!! I’m skidding, that’s not the way I wanted to go!!”. The intuition then tells me to try and point the car in the direction I want to go. What you’re supposed to do, as you say, is to turn the wheel to match the direction the car wants to go and my brain has already concluded that’s not the best thing to do.
Yes, that.
Plus the fact that most times getting into a skid will have involved some form of steering input in the first place. Steering to the right round a slippery roundabout for example means that if the car skids it will move to the left. Since that’s usually the direction of a pavement, barrier, trees and other things you’d rather not hit steering into the skid can feel wrong.
I’d just like to say that I think this thread is a disgrace and you should all be ashamed.
Gimme a chance. See below.
LOL
Look, it’s simple. Everyone knows that women can’t drive properly, so that’s 50% of all drivers need hand-holding and reassuring advice for something as uncommon as skidding. Add in all the drivers under the age of 30, irrespective of gender, all of whom drive like idiots anyway, and are young enough to have been taught to drive by instructors also young enough to think it’s OK to teach pupils to hold your car on the foot brake at junctions, and to block change down from top to first on coming to a halt. So that’s what, a running total of around seventy five percent of all drivers who are in need of explanatory-words-of-one-syllable? Then there’s all the older drivers who have Audis and BMWs, all of whom drive like complete morons, cocooned in their Bose environments, surrounded by air-bags and without any consideration for other road users at all. Giving a final total of 99.9% of all road users who cannot cope with a simple skid without patronising advice couched in baby-speak. The rest of us (that’s all the emergency services drivers, racing and rally drivers, Top Gear presenters past and present, plus you and me) already know how to react in the event of a skid and find it perfectly logical.
This is great stuff. My road-safety seminar is writing itself.
I don’t know, but I once got some good advice for cycling very fast through a forest. The advice was “See the gaps not the trees.” Apparently if you see a tree in front of you you think “Hey there’s a tree, I’d better avoid that” and your brain starts shifting through Strategies For Not Hitting Trees. While it’s doing that, stupid big dumb blancmange that it is, you hit the tree. It’s quite funny to watch because that indecision – the frozen brain just going “TREEEEEEE!!!” – can guide your laser-like into a trunk which it would be much easier to miss.
In an extremely similar vein, I was given excellent advice regarding swimming lengths in the pool. It was this: don’t concern yourself with how fast you swim the lengths, think instead about how many strokes you take to do so. Try and reduce that number as much as possible.
I same re: posting.
“strokes”
*hurrrrrrh*
After a series of private messages and a concurrent eye rolling, why-oh-why, this-is-why-I-don’t-post-there-anymore discussion on Facebook, can I just apologise for suggesting that sudden arboreal stops might be funny in some circumstances. I now realise tree-related trauma is never a laughing matter.
My piece of great advice was when driving up to a roundabout, never look at the cars on the roundabout until you are at the front of the queue to enter the roundabout. This avoids that moment when you go because there is plenty of time for the car in front and you to go only for the car in front to not move and you rear end them. Works for me.
If you never look at the cars when driving up to a roundabout isn’t the next thing you hear “crunch, bang”?
My Dad, who taught every single person in Aberdeen to drive, gave me the same advice. I, of course, ignored him hence that fateful day in Norwich when the nervous 80 year-old driver of an ancient Renault found herself in the middle of a roundabout hotly pursued by an angry young Scotsman shouting “why didn’t you go, you silly old bat?”
*dons pedant hat*
I actually said “never look at the cars ON the roundabout until you are at the front of the queue to enter the roundabout”
He did. I was there.
Ah sorry – I thought when you wrote “up to” you meant “up to”. Thank god Gary was there…
How easily a slight misinterpretation could have led to carnage.
No. I meant up to.
I believe that the counter-intuitive bit refers to rear wheel drive cars, where the instinct would be take your foot off the throttle, but you should actually give more throttle. Conversely, taking your foot off the gas in a front wheel car is the correct thing to do. You steer into the skid on both occasions. It does come naturally to give a flick of the steering wheel into the skid – but don’t put full lock on.
I take no responsibility for any losses accrued as a result of taking this advice, as I am totally unqualified to give it.
And here we have the answer – twice.
‘Instinct’ and ‘come(s) naturally’.
Very best of luck if you have neither.
Look, Richard Jobson may be a bit of a tit, but’s that’s no reason to want to try and run him over…..
Tee hee! If you swerve at the last seecond he might only be Grazed By Your Opel*
(That’s the comedy-value name for a Vauxhall, UKAWers)