>>>> - If your car skids, turn into the direction of the skid.
>>> Correct, but you have to be careful not to over-correct, lest you hit a
>>> dry patch on the road and spin the car.  I did that and ended up in the
>>> ditch, once - after doing a 360 in one direction and then a 720 in the
>>> opposite.
>> Well, the incidents I whitnessed today all happened at around 5 MPH or
>> less.
> 
> Yeah, it doesn't take much.  I spun out going onto a motorway, hit a 
> patch of black ice while accelerating, and then overcorrected.

I mean, I don't support you're that likely to spin the car when it's 
barely moving to start with. Just slide into the curb, really. (Or into 
some expensive car, at least...)

> Experience is a good teacher, but some things shouldn't need to be 
> experienced. ;-)

Like practicing how to repair a punctured lung using only a coat hanger?

>> So not "OMG, I'm skidding, MAXIMUM BRAKES!!" then?
> 
> Exactly.  Yet a lot of people's instinct is to slam on the brakes.  It's 
> not always a conscious thing, though - and it's the sort of thing you 
> have to be aware of as it happens.

Yeah, well... some people don't seem to realise that this is even the 
wrong response.

>> We're talking about hilly country roads that go on for miles without any
>> junctions.
> 
> Well, having driven on country roads such as you describe in England, I 
> observed that they rarely have long straight stretches; going fast on a 
> slippery winding road also doesn't help.

Well, it all depends.

In Switzerland, the mountain roads are under snow for half the year, and 
nobody seems to care much. OTOH... snowchains?

>> Jesus, people don't know how to drive in the snow... And this is...
>> England?? O_O
> 
> Well, your weather tends to be pretty moderate; driving on snow and ice 
> is something that can improve with practice, but in England you don't get 
> a lot of practice.

I guess that's the thing. When I was a child, it used to snow *every 
year*. As in, the whole country would be under perhaps a foot or so of 
snow for at least a few weeks every single year. There was so much snow 
you could actually build a snowman.

These days, some years there isn't even any frost, let alone *snow*! 
Every time I see a snowman, it looks very anemic - because nobody can 
find enough snow to do it properly! ;-)

Which reminds me... the last time it really snowed properly, I was still 
at school. It was about, I don't know, 30 cm or so, varying from place 
to place. Anyway, being very bored schoolkids, somebody starting rolling 
snow, and... well I think we used the *entire* football pitch. Do you 
have any idea how much snow there is in an area that large??

By the end of it, half the school was rolling this boulder of compacted 
ice along. We rolled it down the hill - Jesus, if anybody had been in 
the way, they would have been killed! - and we dumped it into the school 
pond. Man, it was like a nuke or something! One hell of a splash! ;-)

It took about 4 weeks for that ball to melt completely...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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