Two weeks ago, the TTAC Black Friday Special was all about Corvette crashes. Not just any Corvette crashes, however. We’re talking about the very special kind of Vette crash that happens when you’re just driving along and… something happens to make you jam that accelerator down and lose control.
What’s that something? Experienced Corvette-ologists know that common provocations to throttle-based havoc include:
- the presence of your daughter’s sexy-ass friends, particularly if one of them is named “Sharona”;
- hearing the chorus of the famous Golden Earring song, “Radar Love”
- but worst of all, when somebody has the son-of-a-bitching nerve to drive up next to you at the stop sign in another Corvette!
From there it all goes downhill… but TTAC is here to help. When Corvettes attack, just click the jump to find out what to do.
Why do Corvettes (and other high-power rear-wheel-drive cars) suddenly “fishtail” under acceleration? It’s simple: The driver sends enough power to the rear wheels that they begin to spin. We intrinsically understand that a spinning rear tire has less accelerative traction, but did you ever consider that when the rear tires are spinning, they aren’t generating very much cornering traction? Imagine that someone is doing a standing burnout in a Corvette. As the back rubber is smoking, you could run up to the Corvette, push against the fender, and move the back end sideways. If you’re strong enough. I’ve seen it done at the midnight-dickweed-street-race events I attended back in the late Nineties. Spinning rear wheels won’t keep the back end in line, if something acts to throw it off.
Most dragstrips are perfectly level from side to side, plus they are straight. So it’s not unusual to see someone smoke from the beginning to the end of the strip without too much trouble. Real roads, however, have curves, and they have camber. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve personally experienced a “fishtail” because I spun the rear tires underway on a road with a lot of camber. The street in front of my subdivision is viciously crowned, and if I’m driving my Town Car on ice there, any rear-wheel spin whatsoever immediately prompts the whole back of the car to slouch towards the Bethlehem of the ditch. There’s a constant force acting on the car, you see, that wants it fall into the ditch. That force is resisted by your tires. When you are driving along a high-centered road, you are actually constantly steering up towards the crown of that road. Lose your traction, and you will find out.
Front-wheel-drive cars have the same problem, and if you’ve ever owned a Neon SRT-4 with a big-boost kit or something similar you’ve seen your nose slide towards the ditch when the front wheels spin. It’s much easier to fix that problem. Take your foot off the throttle and you’ll recover.
Even where the road is relatively flat, you might still be applying some light cornering load to the rear tires of your ‘Vette when they break loose. You might be jockeying for position in the lane, you might have a crosswind, the road may be veering off to one direction or another. In the case of the “Thanksgiving Turkey” video, I think the driver on the right was looking at the one on the left and ever-so-slightly steering towards him as a consequence. People tend to steer the car in the direction of their eyes. That’s why road racers avert their eyes from in-progress crashes. Or it’s why they should, anyway. In practice, half of the time we just drive into the pile and then moan like Nigel Mansell at the next drivers’ meeting.
Alright, so here we are. For whatever eminently avoidable reason, we’ve punched the throttle on our Vette, the back wheels have started spinning, and the view through our windshield has lurched dramatically as the nose of the car points towards a tree/Jersey barrier/schoolbus full of children/thoroughly freaked-out dude in a Chrysler SRT-8. What do we do next?
This is what most drivers do: they wang the steering wheel off in some freaky direction to “save it”, then they jump off the throttle and step on the brake. It’s basic $299 triple-A driver’s-ed training. IF BAD THINGS HAPPEN STEP ON MAGIC SAFETY PEDAL. Taking that course of action causes a few things to happen:
- The rear wheels get their traction back.
- The front wheels get an extra load of traction thanks to the nose pitching forward over them.
Thank God. We’re in the traction zone again! The car is now going to go exactly where it’s pointed, no drama.
Except.
Where’s the car pointed, and which way are the front wheels pointed? Well, we know the car is pointed at something bad. That’s what freaked you out in the first place, right? So now you’re still pointed at the tree, except instead of fishtailing past it with the car headed generally straight, you’re now in an excellent position to drive right into it. And sometimes that’s exactly what happens.
If the driver has applied any steering motion during the fishtail, however, when traction is regained the Vette will make a max-g dart in the direction of the steering. That’s not trivial. If the driver was steering away from the skid, he’s going to shoot straight into the wall, pronto. If he’s been counter-steering, the car will dart back in the direction from whence it was sliding. This is where the oscillation begins.
Look at some of the Vette videos and see how the car just starts rocking wildly back and forth. That’s the driver trying to keep up with the oscillation he’s set in motion. The Vette heaves in one direction, so he throws a wild steering correction in. It’s too much steering, so the traction limit of the front wheels is briefly exceeded. When the steering recovers, the Vette flings in that direction and the guy swings the wheel again.
This video shows a mild form of it at the 0:40 mark, just to show that this issue isn’t exclusive to Vettes or high-powered cars:
The waterboxer 911 slides the tail, so the d00d cranks the wheel too hard to correct. When he gets his traction, that “correction” yanks him right off the track.
And here’s a Vette vid from Black Friday showing the oscillation/correction:
Note, also, the fact that the telltale flash of brake lights precisely coincides with the moment that the car gains traction at the nose and biffs its traveling companion.
So now we understand what not to do and why we don’t do that thing. What’s the correct course of action? It’s something you’re going to have to practice to get right. If you have a winter season where you live, congratulations. If not… go out when it rains, do it at low speeds in a large parking lot with nothing to hit, or join the SCCA and go autocrossing.
We practice like this:
Alone on an empty road with nothing to hit, we increase power until we feel the rear wheels start to spin. Listen for the revs to suddenly jump as the traction limit is exceeded. Needless to say, you’re going to have to turn “Radar Love” down for this one, and listen to the engine. Alternately, you can watch the tach, but that’s the second choice by far.
When you know the rear wheels are slipping, practice modulating them in and out of traction with your throttle. I do this in my Lincoln a dozen times a day when it’s raining or snowing. Break them loose, bring them back, break them loose again. Get a sense of what that feels like. With that mastered, you’re ready for the next step.
Do the same thing while steering lightly around a curve or driving on a crowned road. When the back end slips, apply the gentlest correction possible and restore your traction, using the techniques of throttle reduction you learned in Step One. Don’t ever touch the brakes. Well, I take that back. If you’ve pitched off the road at high speed and you’re headed for a giant iron spike aimed right at your head, you can hit the brake just so the coroner finds you that way.
I’ve just written a nice reminder poem for you to help you remember, along the lines of what children used to be taught in Catholic School:
I must, I must, I must not brake
Or I will die before my children wake
For my younger readers:
Middle pedal mashing may seem merry
But you’ll lose that chance to nail Katy Perry
If you want better rhymes, tell TTAC to pay me more.
Apply mild correction, reduce the throttle until you feel the back tires grip. If the car swerves a bit, relax your hands on the wheel and let it catch up with itself. A Corvette, like most modern cars, wants to go straight and if you will TAKE YOUR STUPID HANDS OFF THE WHEEL FOR A SECOND it probably will. By “take your stupid hands off” I mean “relax your grip”, but ask anybody who’s driven on a track with me: I love to play catch and release with the wheel. And I love to play games with the lives of my passengers. (This statement is not endorsed by NASA, TrackDAZE, BMWCCA, ACNA, or the LPSG.) Seriously, though, your car knows the right way to go and it will self-settle a mild oscillation. Try it yourself, in the parking lot, in the snow, and see.
So there you have it! Just remember to be careful. It’s like bullfighting: the more you do it, the longer the odds become against. Even the best get it wrong:
Living is the snow belt I quickly learned the brake in not your friend. (The hand brake is another story) When things start to go “not as planned,” foot off gas, clutch in. So far I’ve always stayed on the road.
Fun article.
……65corvair…clutch in for sure, especially downhill, and even more particularly in a high-compression rear driver, with diesels being the worst offenders. The rear-wheel-only braking phenomenon is lurking at the crest of every hill. In really icy, hilly circumstances, automatic diesels can become practically undriveable. By the way, how was that namesake Corvair on ice?…. sounds like it managed to keep you out of trouble, despite Mr. Nader’s musings.
I don’t understand the diesel connection here.
@rpn
I had a bit of difficulty to find the right words in english. Anyway what I mean is when you put the clutch in, you interrupt the drive and you can get some of the same weight transfer problems you get when you push the brake (with an RWD car: tankslapper and then the risk of overcorrection).
The reasoning behind the low gear I think is you put more torque down on the road, but then of course too much and you start spinning…Anyway if you’re really driving on a road that’s covered with ice like some of the roads were last winter you don’t want to go out of 2nd gear either way.
I just got through doing upwards of 85 on the southern State Parkway/ Wantaug Parkway and Meadowbrook Parkway in my 300cSRT8supercharged. Moving so quickly that everyone else looked as if they were standing still. For the life of me, I can’t understand why Corvettes keep doing this.
300Cs are heavier and thus have more grip, plus perhaps you’re just more skilled.
Jeeze, Bigtruck: Wantagh Parkway….
I don’t know if clutch in is always your best option. In some ways it suddenly voids the traction of your tires the same way braking does. I learned select the lowest possible gear for the speed that you’re doing (maximal traction) and stay away from the brake and the clutch as much as possible. Drove around on some very icy roads last winter in an RWD car and didn’t understand what all the fuzz was about (that said maybe you don’t till you do).
Voids the traction of your tires? Not sure I follow that one.
Anyway, it generally isn’t the best option if you know what to do with the throttle, but it’s not a bad idea because it won’t make the situation worse.
Using a lower gear doesn’t provide any extra traction, but the traction limits will be more obvious and I suppose that may contribute to better awareness of road conditions.
Braking is fine, but only do it in a straight line with the front wheels also pointed straight, unless you actually want the car to rotate. And don’t depend on always having plenty of traction available for braking unless you’re running studs.
@rpn
The comment by me posted above should have been in reply to this one…
Cool. I’ll reply here.
I see what you mean if you go directly from applying lots of power to putting the clutch in. I just saw it as being minor relative to the effect of either braking or sudden throttle application/release. I think we agree that gentle throttle corrections are the best thing you can do with your feet to bring a car back in line.
As the first car I drove after getting a drivers license was a 78 Volvo 242, and the next 3 or 4 seasons old Ford Sierras, and I live in Norway, I hear you loud and clear. I’ve never gone off the road sideways in any rear-wheel.drive car ever :) The roads in Norway are also of such high standards that in the winter some of my beaters (with spiked winter tires found behind the local gas-station) would start to fishtail when applying ,what I though was gentle throttle, doing 55 in 5th. In the worst car, regular winter driving was like playing with a pit-bull. All fun and games as long as you made NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS :) (yes, in the worst conditions you can almost feel the wheels going in different directions when putting the clutch down…)
Edit: Roundabouts can be great training btw. Just don’t let the cops catch you doing sideways laps :P A drunk mate of mine thought me how to drift properly in his BMW 520. Go inot roundabout a bit faster than usual, clutch in, put revlimiter to use, cjhoose 2nd gear, drop clutch again, control with throttle. After just a few tries I could do a full lap. DON’T DO THIS IN TRAFFIC!!!
Surprisingly few people know how to steer a car with the throttle. I blame this on drivers ed courses entirely focused on parallel parking, and too many shopping mall parking lots with islands.
Driver’s Ed, if it can do anything, is supposed to ram it into your head that you should avoid situations where you need to know things like, eg, throttle-steer.
Most people can’t drive like Jack, and a lot of them, if you tried to teach them, would end up doing something stupid anyway.
What this means is that we need to put systems and processes in place such that people don’t need to be like Jack. This means safe, early and easy transitions into understeer, no unexpected chassis motions, slow and slack steering, etc.
Think about a computer: most people can’t program one, nor properly admin one. We know the trying to teach people to do so is a path to failure and frustration, so we build systems they can’t screw up and we’re all the better for it.
The soft bigotry of low expectations…
I’ll add to the, the demise of Sunday Blue laws. I’m old enough to remember when Sundays were mandatory days off for retail businesses, and the parking lots were available for all sorts of practice. And it was a lot easier to set up an autocross.
“hearing the chorus of the famous Golden Earring song, “Radar Love””
I thought I was the only one with that problem.
Luckily when that song came out, I owned a 40 horse VW Beetle.
A beetle on icy rural roads is a perfect way to learn this car control. On ice or hard packed snow even a beetle can spin the tires at will, and with the tendency to oversteer in a rear engined car you have to quickly learn to do the minimum required countersteer to prevent the oscillation.
This really needs to be practiced so that the reaction is instinctive. Just reading about it is certainly not enough.
I was talking more about the 40 horses. I only got the thing stuck in the snow twice in the 4 years I drove it (it then moved to my sister). Once I high centered it over a snow back going across the road at the end of my street where it joined the main road. The other time, got stuck on ice so slippery you could almost move the car with your finger.
I learned how a light touch in the winter was the way to go. Don’t gun it, don’t hit the brakes hard unless you know you have the room to correct.
I’ve alway hit the empty parking lots after a snowstorm doing bootleg turns. Loads of laughs and you learn something. Bought my 1st automatic with AWD and traction control after 37 years of driving a stick. Goes good in snow, but I miss the ability to do it myself.
As a youngster I found out my B13 Sentra had a limiter set to 110mph while listening to Nine Inch Nail’s cover of Queen’s “Get Down Make Love.” Since this was before the speed limit in Florida changed back from 55 to 70 this induced a bit of lightbar panic on my part.* :)
I remember getting the back end of my Saab 96 to oscillate one evening on a snowy road when I was seventeen… I took a corner way too fast, and the back end let loose. My attempts to get control back led to the rear swinging in ever-longer arcs until I did two 360’s in the road and backed into a snowbank (probably at about 15 mph.) The Saab was unscathed. My ego was not…
http://media.kgw.com/images/070110+speed+murray+fatal+corvette+one.jpg
……….a snow covered parking lot is a fabulous venue for Car-Control 101, AND the most fun a guy can have with his long-johns on. Just make sure you’ve seen it before the blizzard………if there are any aisle berms hidden under the white stuff, you’re in for an experience no amount of skill will get you out of……bent rims, and maybe even a rollover.
miss those days of snow covered p-lots, clutch in handbrake up backend out, so much fun… My first car’s brakes were so bad that there was no point in hitting them in any emergency situation, best course of action was to take foot off the gas, countersteer if necessary, and relax hands if it results in an overcorrection.
Back in high school, some 30 years ago, I drove a collection of ancient dodge battlewagons with big block motivation and skinny bias-ply tires all around. Oh, and drum brakes. After the second trip off-road I quickly learned some technique. A friend of mine decided he wanted in on the high horsepower club and got himself a battlewagon. First night out he decides to light up the tires. We go sliding one direction. Knowing his propensity for screwing up a bowling ball, I repeatedly yelled out “foot off the gas, don’t touch the brake, countersteer” repeatedly. Needless to say he didn’t listen and we slid across 5 lanes of traffic, oscillated back across the same 5 lanes of traffic, and then, because he enjoyed the experienced, he did it twice more before I convinced him to stop. Pretty much a miracle we survived as his car had no seatbelts (and later I learned, no brakes). A few months later he loaned it to a girl he liked and she did the samething, only she added a telephone pole to the mid-section. She survived, the car didn’t. Fun times.
Jack,
As a corvette driver, I have been attentively reading your articles to insure that I don’t end up as one of the subjects. One additional point that you haven’t mentioned as a cause of spins and skids is shifting. I’ve analyzed the ZR1/SRT8 crash several times and I’m pretty sure the cause of it was a missed downshift by the driver. I think this is a big cause of crashes in large v8 / manual transmission / rwd cars, because the torque of the engine breaks the wheels loose if you have the RPMs too low on the downshift. A key indicator of this mistake is when you see a car spin for no apparent reason. A proper downshift or a spin under acceleration will both be accompanied by loudness of engine, whereas the missed shift will be a spin along with no apparent engine noise. In the ZR1/SRT8 crash, the zr1 spins and there is no corresponding ZR1 rev noise.
Soon after I got my corvette, I missed a casual 2-1 downshift at relatively low speeds and proved the point by skidding and invoking the traction control. Fortunately I learned the lesson in relative safety, and I hope other corvette owners do the same.
-Michael
Missing the gears while downshifting in a Honda S2000 at 100-120 mph will end in 500 feet skidmarks , banged up guardrails, loads of dirt on the road, a banged up county limit sign (which is on 8 foot tall poles) a totally smashed up S2000 (one rim was missing from the spokes which were still on the hub) and (luckily) a bruised douche and his bruised girlfriend… Don’t ask how my fathers neighbours son learned this… I think it’s best if his insurance company doesn’t know exactly how ‘his rear wheels suddenly without warning locked up’ either :P
He actually bought a C6 Corvette for the insurance money, but he hasn’t crashed that(yet).
You don’t need a high-output engine to experience this. My only four-wheels-off experience thus far resulted from a poorly rev-matched second-gear downshift in my Miata. The wonders of torque multiplication ensure that this is just as easy to do in a 116-hp hairdresser’s special as it is in a 505-hp Zed-Oh-Six.
Just because you got the money to buy these high power cars, doesn’t mean you have the ability or the discipline to control them, perhaps it’s time to dial down the HP a bit now!
An interesting point. However, in a world where Camcord V6s are pushing in excess of 270-300hp (albeit driving the FRONT wheels), the only way this will happen is when we start driving glorified golf-carts called EVs.
The downside to this is, in about ten years high school kids will only be able to afford these Camcords, as EVs won’t become affordable to the masses (or I should say, battery replacement) for decades. Then you’ll have a problem; too much power and little ability to control it, unless they’ve been playing A LOT of Forza and GranTurismo.
I’m all about V8 muscle, whoever desires and can afford it should be able to get it. Just make sure you know how to use it.
To quote former Obama staffer Kal Penn (aka Kumar from ‘Harold and Kumar’) ‘Just because you’re hung like a horse, doesn’t mean you have to do porn…’
The hilarious part is they all have traction control that does this anyway.
Your 500hp Vette is really only putting down whatever it takes to light up the tires, provided you’ve got the sense to leave it on (or in “Sport”).
I do the winter parking lot dance yearly, and I’m frankly surprised at how much my RWD LS430 is set up to understeer rather than oversteer.
I would like to believe that stability control makes RWD as safe as FWD, but it does so at the expense of forward traction on loose pack snow where slight slippage is desired. I’ll pick AWD or FWD for winter any day.
I have fond memories of spinning and learning to control a beater, 5 speed Plymouth (Mitsu) Sapporo in snow covered lots. Great way to learn how to control a car. Bonus: Tapping the occasional snow drift doesn’t do too much damage.
With proper packed snow and temp conditions on the lot, it was possible to spin the vehicle like a top. Probably took 10K off the clutch life doing crap like that.
Jack,
I know you’ve towed a trailer with a race car and tires. How would you recommend reacting to an oscillating trailer?
Hit the separate trailer brake or accelerate the tow vehicle. either will fix it.
I wish I learned this in Driver’s Ed.! S10’s with iron 4.3 V6’s up front and tall/stiff 1500 pound springs out back like to slide around in the rain, off the road I go after over-correcting hard and hitting the brakes after the axle jumping around sent it sliding. I ended up talking to my High School Physics teacher and found out the right way, in addition to all the forces at work/weight transfer/traction etc.
Parking lots are great for learning in the snow/rain and we have plenty of empty ones around here in front of abandoned stores. Unfortunately they’re also police-magnets and so much as driving through one in the rain/snow gets you nailed for reckless driving/trespassing around here.
Isn’t it funny how doing the responsible thing will get you hassled by the police?
I’ve told my kids who drive that the first time it snows every year, they should head to a parking lot and relearn how to slide and catch a car in the snow.
There’s a certain lazy and gutless subset of police who find it easier to harass honest people than to risk finding an actual criminal.
Like other tight-knit professions such as law, clergy, and medicine, the honest majority protects the incompetent and malicious.
Yeah. I can just envision a cop seeing someone practicing on a parking lot in the snow. You KNOW how that is going to end….with the cop going home that night thinking he’s saved the neighborhood from a hooligan.
Back in the day (40 years ago) I had cops pull up when I was doing my usual first-frozen-day-of-winter-car-handling-practice. Never got a ticket, once I explained to the office exactly what I was doing and why. And mentioned that I figured it was better here than all of a sudden in traffic. Every cop I said that to, agreed. And warned me not to spend too much time there (little matter of a neighbor calling it in, at which point he’d have to respond).
Times have changed.
I suspect that once it’s determined that the driver of a vehicle out sliding around in a big, deserted parking lot in the snow isn’t drunk or stoned (especially if they’re alone), even the most dimwitted, bored cop with nothing else to do wouldn’t give them too much grief about it.
You’ll also be in trouble if the steering wheel isn’t centered when you lay down the power. In this event, look where you want to go rather than where you’re headed, or your steering inputs will, alas, be too late to catch up with the car. Now is a good time to hear ‘Twilight Zone’ inside your brain box.
@ Mitchw-
As the bonehead in this classic Chevelle so aptly demonstrates LOL:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tkP3sbp4Ns&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0%5D
Some of you blame poor Drivers Ed, I blame the near universal nature of FWD. My first car was a 1982 Chevy Celebrity and it did teach me about FWD handling, but it didn’t teach me about low traction handling mostly because it hardly had the power to overwhelm traction.
My next car on the other hand was a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass with a 307V8 Quadrajet and positrac thrown in for extra “education”. That car taught me quite a bit about how to handle things when the situation got hairy.
Keeping it floored and riding out the slide is a whole lot safer than trying modulate it unless you know what you’re doing. It does look cooler and alot more fun but drifters will let off the throttle completely when they’re ready to have it snap in the other direction but are ready to ‘catch it’ with more full throttle. If anything, you want the rear to ease back in line gradually and it’ll do that if you keep it floored.
It’s been years since I’ve owned a fast, RWD car. Now with Jeeps, one time I had death wobble at 45 mph. Rather then braking, which can also worsen it, I hit the gas and drove through it. Once I got over 50 mph it stopped and I then braked and drove it back home (slower!) on side roads.
It had alternated between snow and rain a few nights ago, making traction an occasional challenge on my morning commute. I assumed this before I left and took it easy. Leaving town, I picked up a hitchhiker – a pleasant young woman of 26, possibly under the influence of mild narcotics, with a destination along my ideal path to work.
Coming down a moderate grade, a sweeping left-hander known for freezing slick with runoff, the back end started out. (I was aware of the likely hazard, following this route to work each day, and had slowed considerably in anticipation.) I stayed off the pedals and corrected gently, at perhaps a twenty-degree angle to the road, avoiding the worried gaze of an oncoming motorist as my aging Volvo estate remained entirely between the lines, my path clear ahead through the passenger side of the windshield.
My ephemeral companion was vocally complimentary of what seemed a perfectly normal maneuver in my head – I simply reacted as I thought best, with little drama or fuss. Perhaps she was correct in her subsequent assertions, and some higher power truly does watch over my car. Truth is, I’d just as soon not count on it.
What I’m really saying is that it’s hard to beat a Volvo 740, shod with well-made snow tires, as the first car of a young person in a wintry clime.
“I picked up a hitchhiker – a pleasant young woman of 26, possibly under the influence of mild narcotics, with a destination along my ideal path to work.”
The story almost became “Baruthian”… almost.
…..”almost Baruthian”….my thoughts exactly…..but it was a great “hook”, and we did read the rest of the otherwise straightforward tale.
Can we please have Part II for low-powered RWD sedans with dialed-in understeer default? Thanks!
Detroit Freeways are notoriously slick in the midst of December snow and ice storms….
One day a few years back on M-39 South near Ford Road on glare ice, I was tapped from behind by a driver apparently intent on using my bumper to arrest his slide…..
Thus dispatched from whatever tenuous hold on traction its tires had, the car (a 1976 Ford Torino Elite….a luxurious pig if ever there was!) began to its inevitable yaw to the right, its gi-normous (and heavy) tail swinging toward the median wall.
Amazing how the mind speeds up, so that life seems to slow to that Neo-in-the-Matrix crawl, in those circumstances…. As my mother, ensconced in the maroon-leather passenger throne, wailed like the proverbial banshee….my brain had time to think, (in my dad’s best “here’s what you do, son” voice, “If you lock up the brakes, we are dead. Turn into the skid and stay OFF the Friggin’ brake!” I whipsawed the wheel to the left, all the way to ‘lock’, then reversed, it cranking again on the tiller all the way to ‘lock’ on the right, then again to the left, and so on, oscillating the car back to a straight path using ONLY my arms…I remember thinking how the steering wheel felt and looked like a fly-wheel as I cranked it one way, then the other….in less than 5 seconds (it seemed….still seems!…like minutes) the car returned to a straight path. I, and the guy who tapped me, pulled to the shoulder and ventured out into the sleetstorm to see if he’d done me any damage…of course a light tap would do no damage to the massive chrome bumpers which Ford had hung on that Elite. With a nod and a “Guess we’d better get the hell off these roads!”, we got in our cars. My mom looked at me closely, still startled, but no longer afraid….”I guess your dad taught you very well….” It was the nicest compliment she could have said to the 21-year-old me, at the time….
She never again questioned my driving skills.
Living in FL I’ll never be able to drive my 350Z in the snow to learn so I guess I’ll have to “play” in the rain. And that has already happened… on the first day of ownership in fact. I was not used to how closely spaced the gears were in the gated shifter and downshifted from 5th to 2nd (instead of 4th) while exiting a highway. Thankfully the car’s stability control system kicked and saved my butt. Honestly I didn’t I was in that much trouble despite the rain slicked 35 mph sharp turn off ramp as I was slowing down and braking already. The revs jumped (prime indicator of no-grip situation) and the back end twitched sideways but no drama.
I have had my pickup truck do that before and its much worst since its natural condition is understeer, thus when it snaps over things get ugly and the truck rolls and pitches like boat in rough seas. Years of playing Gran Turismo has taught me that powering out isn’t as easy as everyone thinks. Jamming the brakes isn’t the answer either as that just makes the rear even lighter. Lifting off and counter steering, then applying enough throttle to maintain speed seems to work. The key is doing everything very smoothly and slowly. I think most people over react and that’s how they get in trouble. They are unaware of the weight of the vehicle and how difficult it is to redirect it once things have gone wrong.
The transition in road condition can be pretty sudden & frightening in Florida.. lots of oil on the road, light rain, clueless drivers in SUVs..
..speaking of which one of the most frightening moments I’ve had in any car was on a calm, nearly strait suburban road in my wife’s Subaru Forester in light rain.. started into a slight, sweeping turn in the road and the car lost any sort of grip without warning. Ended up in the next lane and mostly going with traffic, so no harm done. Just couldn’t believe it had happened to a heavy, slow moving AWD car with decently grippy tires..
…..”lost any sort of grip”….sounds suspiciously like a case of serious aquaplaning. Even in a relatively light rain, heavily truck-rutted highways will form long twin puddles. Hit them square on at even legal speeds and you’re in for a sphincter-tightening experience for sure. Very unpredictable, and a difficult thing to “practice” for.
My worst experience with the “motorboating” nightmare occurred around 1973, delivering a 2 year old LT1 Corvette out west. Having earlier in the day averaged ungodly speeds across Wisconsin (including my first and only aircraft patrol ticket), a sudden rainshower made 30mph a knuckle-whitening nightmare. Those half worn out wide-oval Tiger Paws and the ‘Vette were about the worst combo imaginable on the most rutted single lane highway I’ve ever seen……I tried driving half on the paved shoulder, but, even there, unexpected pooling would provoke 30 degree yawing from time to time. I actually had to pull off the road and let traffic by on occasion, something I’d never had to do before (or since). It was the ultimate aquaplaning training session, but I can’t say I came out of it an “expert”…..the shifts are just too unpredictable and varied. I went on to race competitively a few years later, and even welcomed a wet (but not rutted) track, but I’ve never forgotten that ride from hell in the Midwest.
I live in fear of the day something gets the back end of my truck seriously loose. Diesel lump up front, Crewcab long bed (21+ feet long), open differential, 22-year-old steering… It can be a handful on dry roads. Something tells me if I ever lose it, I’m not catching it.
The key is doing everything very smoothly and slowly.
I agree for the throttle. But steering corrections should be done very quickly, with an equally quick turn back to center when the front has caught up. You’d be way better off doing a few extremely quick corrections than one big one that’s too slow in either direction.
An understeery nose-heavy chassis just makes it easier to control. The problem with the truck is that it has a lot of suspension motion to amplify the effects of sudden weight transfer, and not a lot of weight over the back end to accommodate ham-footed throttle manipulation.
Here’s a good countersteering demo for anyone interested (Yellowbird – Nordschleife). Or just watch some in-car F1 footage!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Thomd4BQg
It takes quick hands to pilot that car!
There is a similar problem with motorcycles (and a lack of proper education). When you lose traction at the rear, the correct way to deal with it is to maintain throttle and slide through. If the slide is minor and the bike is properly setup, this is completely drama-free. If it is a real badun, you need luck and/or serious talent to stay in one piece.
The problem is most people cut the throttle mid-slide or apply brakes.
Applying the brakes will do one of two things – break traction even more and instantly drop the bike onto its side, or immediately straighten the bike upright and send you right into the opposite ditch. You cannot apply the brakes on a bike when it is leaned. Period.
Cutting the throttle induces the most feared reaction – a highside. The rear wheel is sliding then suddenly regains traction. This violently pitches the bike from a lean into a full upright position. In so doing, it throws you off like a bucking bronco. I’ve seen people ride out a highside (my dad managed to stay in control on a sandy corner right in front of me) but most of the time you are getting tossed into the weeds. At high speed a highside can have enough force to throw a rider 20 or 30 feet through the air. Lots of videos on the net can attest to this.
Makes a fishtailing car sound downright pleasant, don’t it?
That brings back a memory of pulling away from a traffic light on my BMW R100S and discovering a wet road, causing a fishtail, a mild tank slapper and scared rider. Fortunately my initial reaction was to minimize inputs and ride it out.
Two wheel dynamics can be interesting, even on a bicycle. At the last cyclocross race I was at there was a very muddy off camber and I saw several people break loose their wheels and do a 180. I just found my self sliding a lot and doing my best to keep the bike either accelerating or turning and not both at once.
As someone who got his license in the 90s, I can’t vouch for Detroit battlewagons, but a 3/4 ton Suburban plus all terrains is an excellent learning platform in the snow.
Enough torque to crack them loose, enough length and polar moment to keep everything from getting out of control too quickly.
The same sober mental head space that applies to motorcycles absolutely must also be applied to cars, especially anything with sporting pretension or about to be used in a vigorous manner, and that is this:
If you fail to respect the equipment for even a second, it will kill you.
People, even seasoned pros with hundreds of hours of track time under them, need this reminder. Failure to do so results in youtube videos and worse.
If AC/DCs ‘Rocker’ comes on, you are doomed. Just ride it out and if worst comes to worst, say hi to St. Peter.
The MAGIC SAFETY PEDAL is the clutch, not the brake. If you don’t understand this basic thing then you shouldn’t be driving one of those things without an E-Nanny.
i was recently in a situation where someone cut me off going about 40mph slower than i was going. they were in the right lane behind a school bus and decided to jump out into the next lane over, right in front of me.
there was a reasonable amount of traffic, so trying to steer around him would have got me hit. instead i slammed the brakes, trying my best not to lock them up (no ABS), which inevitably initiated severe fishtailing, followed by my attempt at correction (at this point going slow enough to not need the brake), clutch in, and attempting to countersteer. i couldn’t stop the oscillation, and eventually i spun out. luckily the whole experience happened over 10 seconds or so, plenty of time for everyone around me to get out of my way and slow down.
what should i have done differently?
edit: this is a fox mustang with a manul.
First you get on the brakes hard til it starts to get sideways then rapidly bump the brakes without letting up completely between pumps. Better than ABS with a little practice. Once you pushed in the clutch, you shifted the car’s weight forward and it acted like a pivot. At that point, it’s better to let out the clutch and give it gas in the appropriate gear, if you can. Might have also over-corrected. In a panic, people steer past straight ahead, which might get the rear behind you sooner but the extra momentum will snap the rear in the opposite direction that much faster and further towards ‘180’.
thanks for the response. it’s actually an ’84 svo :)
Nice! Mine is real tail-happy especially with aggressive down-shifts. If empty parking lots are great for learning a car’s handling limits on ice, why not for wet pavement or even just dry?