Thread: Bad car wreck...I'm lucky i'm alive.

Originally Posted by Grayscale

...plus maybe you guys can give tips on what to do when you hydroplane or something heh.

I will tell you how my dad taught me to drive. While I was in high school and taking drivers ed I would come home and my dad would take me out in his S10 (stick shift) to learn to drive. During the winter it snowed about two feet and most everything was closed for a few days. So my dad took me (I was driving) to our high school parking lot (daytime; big empty parking lot; no light poles) And told me to have fun! I spent about 45 minutes doing donuts and what-not in the snow and ice. When I was finished, (read: scared *****less) he asked if I though I could control the vehicle should I ever lose control of it.

To this day I have never lost control of a vehicle. The only other thing to remember is if you have to slow down quick or if you start to hydroplane, put the vehicle in neutral and take your foot off the gas pedel completely to stop the engine from trying to propel the vehicle forward.

This last piece of advice is highly debated (vehicle in neutral) and you should get other people's opinions because I am by no means a professional driver however, It has been my experience that this is what should be done (read: I do it).

Originally Posted by aultl

This last piece of advice is highly debated (vehicle in neutral) and you should get other people's opinions because I am by no means a professional driver however, It has been my experience that this is what should be done (read: I do it).

My friend failed his behind the wheel test because he coasted up to a stop sign in neutral In other words, you shouldn't put it in neutral according to Cali laws

Thanks for the info aultl! I am not very familiar with his car (it's an M3) and I'm used to my nice little ford thunderbird, so I wouldnt have thought about it. He's got an SMG II tranny, so yeah. But it is fun to drive . Err was, he's probably going to give it back to the dealership cause he was trying to get rid of it anyways, to expensive. I actually heard you were in some instances supposed to accelerate a little bit to allow the wheels to catch up to the water. Is this in anyway true?

Ol33l: Was he driving a manual?

Originally Posted by Grayscale

Ol33l: Was he driving a manual?

Manual 92' Nissan 300zx targa non-turbo 2+2 with beige interior and broken A/C.

This sounds like one for the Mythbusters

My car likes to loose rear traction, especially on rainy days. Cause: 10% tire thread up back That's what happens when you spin your tires too much (tread wear, especially with only 1 wheel traction). I sometimes spin my tires for 3 seconds in the rain, and that's only at 2000rpm. I don't try to hydroplane, but I did loose rear traction on dry ground doing a sharp 90º turn at 30.

i agree with aultl ... this was in fact the way i learned go with the slide ... it was in a 91 s10 5 speed in a parking lot full of snow in a state pa so no one was there. its my whole philosophy on driving ... by constantly driving like the dumbass that i am i continually gain knowledge on how my car reacts and where its limit is. by knowing this in times of an emergency or adverse conditons i know how to react. ( yeah i know this wouldn't work unless you had been hot rodding your dads bmw all the time but oh well!) i drive anywhere between 65-95 averaging 80 on 30 miles of gravel everyday to school and now i feel like i can take on any slick road going at least 45.

as to giving it gas to catch the wheels back up ... in my opinion its a no go. any change in direction, using the gas, or braking uses traction. in a given situation we only have a certain traction budget represented by the traction circle. traction inside the circle we can use, outside we can't. pretty much what the water snow ice etc does is shrink the size of our circle to almost nothing.


learned about it while thinking about scca stuff. in theory as long as you never change direction or speed, you can go in a straight line at any speed on any surface.