The Grover Wheel

Having lived all my life in the snowier parts of America, I have seen some seriously difficult driving weather. But no weather seems to produce accidents like winter. Every time there is a bad storm, I drive by car after car in the ditch or crumpled into another vehicle. So many of these accidents could have been avoided by following a few simple rules.

Know your limits. This is the first rule of driving in bad weather. Know the limits of the car and how hard you can turn, brake, and accelerate. Test your braking capabilities on a snowy side road where there’s no other traffic. Try braking hard and seeing at what point the car starts to slip and lose traction. Leave more room between your car and the car in front. Snow and ice significantly reduce the traction available to you. By leaving more room to maneuver, you increase your chances of being able to remain in control.

On the road, keep your movements gentle. This doesn’t mean doing everything in slow motion, sometimes you will have to move quickly to correct a slide or begin braking, but don’t be jerky. Much of winter driving is driving at the edge, or beyond, of your car’s grip. Being abrupt on the steering, brakes, and throttle means you aren’t giving the various parts of your car’s suspension time to adjust to new forces. This means it’s easy to run right past the limit of grip and get into a slide before you know what’s happening. Racing legend Jackie Stewart once likened the behavior of a car at its limit to a dog. If you are gentle as you approach the dog, it’s not going to bite. But if you jump up and surprise it, the dog will react badly. Cars, due to something called shock loading, react like any mechanical component when a force is applied suddenly instead of gradually. Even a slightly slower application of steering or brakes is infinitely better than a sudden spike. To summarize, you don’t have to slow down like a grandmother, only be a bit gentler with your inputs to get the best results out of your vehicle. Avoiding sudden jerks of the wheel and pedals is a great way to improve your driving in all conditions and avoid slides.

However, sometimes sliding is unavoidable. It’s extremely helpful to know how your car will react in a crisis before you reach a crisis situation. It’s a great idea to practice sliding in a snowy open parking lot so you know how it feels to lose control. Think about it this way, you wouldn’t run a marathon after only jogging around the park. If you don’t know the limits of a car, and how it handles at those limits, you are at a serious disadvantage when conditions suddenly deteriorate. I remember vividly the first time I spun my car. My Dad had taken me to an advanced driver’s education course at a racetrack to learn how to handle emergency maneuvers. As a car fanatic, I had already taken driver’s ed, learned the manuals, studied the science, and watched countless videos of people drifting cars. But the first time my instructor had me throw the car into a real slide, I ended up facing the wrong way down the course, orange safety cones buried under my car. My brain didn’t register anything, it had all happened too fast. My heart was pounding and, had we not been practicing in a wide-open parking lot with only traffic cones as walls, I would have wrecked my car. But, because I continued to practice, slides like those don’t faze me anymore. In fact, when the parking lots are slick, I do them for fun. I now know how a car feels when it starts to lose traction, and my body knows what to do to turn and correct the slide.

So how do you stop a slide? Most people have heard “steer into the slide” and think they know how to handle a slipping vehicle. But the reality is more nuanced than a simple correction. For example, let’s say that you are turning right and the back end of your car has begun to slide out to the left. The procedure for catching the back and correcting the slide goes like this: first, you will steer into the slide (this is called countersteering). This is where the diagrams in your driver’s ed classes skip to the last step “the vehicle will straighten out and you may continue on your way.” This is very likely not going to happen unless you are going very slowly. More likely, as you steer into the slide (meaning, for a right turn, you turn your wheels left to match the direction the rear of the vehicle has begun to slide) the momentum of your vehicle will “load” the suspension on the left side of the car. This causes weight transfer, and it means that the weight of your car is pressing down more on the suspension on the side you are steering into. This means that when your rear wheels begin to regain traction, the suspension will want to bounce back and push the weight of the car to the other side. This can, and usually does, result in the car wanting to slide quickly back in the opposite direction to the original slide. This was what happened to me back on that driving course. I set up a slide to the right, caught the slide, and was completely unprepared for the violent counter-slide back in the other direction. However, because you read this article, and practiced in an empty parking lot, you will be prepared for this. You will know to begin steering back to straight before the car is pointing straight. This lets the momentum of the car catch up with the direction of travel. In fact, if the slide is violent enough, you may have to countersteer in the opposite direction from the first slide to slow down the back end as it comes back into line with the car.

If you fail to steer back at the correct moment, or miss the second countersteer when it’s needed, you will often experience a second slide in the opposite direction to the first. But if you followed the correct countersteer procedure and were simply a bit off in your movements, the second slide should be much less abrupt than the first. Follow the same steps as before: countersteer to correct the slide, begin steering straight as the car comes into line, and be prepared to countersteer in the opposite direction if the back end comes into line too quickly, and you will be fine!

Remember, all of these things happen much more quickly the faster you are driving. So keep aware of road conditions and know how your car feels when it begins to lose traction. The easiest way to stop a slide is to drive within the limits of your car’s grip so it never slides at all. However, you should still practice sliding when it is safe to do so. This will allow you greater confidence and experience when a slide does occur. While many accidents (particularly in bad weather) could have be avoided if drivers knew where the limits of their vehicles were in all weather conditions, and knew how to keep their vehicles within those limits, there can still be sudden unpredictable changes of condition like ice or standing water. Many more accidents could be avoided by drivers knowing how to control their vehicles after the limits of grip had been exceeded.

Have any more questions about winter driving or sliding? Message me in the comments and I will try to reply with the answer!