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Driving in snow / ice…any tips?

Hennessey17

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I will add another suggestions

if you drive over any bridges do the following
-slow down BEFORE the bridge
-make sure you are aimed correctly for the exit of the bridge
-do NOT move the wheel, brakes, or gas while on the bridge.

i have driven on the highway in freezing rain / sleet many times over the years. The bridges were almost always covered in ice.

i cannot tell you how many crashes & almost crashes i saw due to the ice on the bridges.

people get used to decent traction on the road, but due to ambient air sucking all heat from bridges, they always freeze long before the road.

also +1 on the wildpeak at3w’s. They are awesome in rain & snow. (KO2’s are really good as well)

all of the Mud Tire variants seem to suck in the rain / snow.
The info about bridges is really important... it was one of the things they covered in Drivers' Ed before they ever let us near a car. I live a quarter mile from a highway interchange. Parts of it reach as high as 70' off the ground. Last winter somebody was driving too quickly and went over the edge (which is 4-5' high... so not an easy thing to do).

When in doubt, go slower... and if you feel slippage, take your foot off the gas... but don't brake.
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WagzDad

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The best way to avoid an encounter with a moron is don’t be there.
Brakes are not your friend. Even with antilock. Approach your brakes like you are only trying to get one pad to touch the rotors.
 
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cabnfvr

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Lots of good advice but I have to throw in one more. Brakes are your enemy! If you are sliding with the brakes on release them in order to steer. (ABS may allow you to steer. Depends on speed.) As mentioned earlier find a place to practice safely. A sloped lot with NO LIGHT POLES is excellent but don't do doughnuts. The po po have enough to do in this mess already.
 

J0E

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Going out just to drive around town in a snow/ice storm is a super-dumb idea, even if you’re competent and well equipped. Road maintenance folks will be trying to tow/sand/salt/plow/mitigate, and others will be trying to get a jump on the work day. The last thing the community needs is people out trying To develop new driving skills on snow and ice.
Tell that to the cops I've pulled out. On first stop of hopelessly stuck cop "no thanks, I'll wait for the tow truck". 6 recoveries and 2 hours later I drive by "I'll take you up on pulling me out". He sure was happy to be freed. I can only guess you've never been out in that situation. I've done hundreds of recoveries during and soon after a big storm.

A few years later I was driving fast (to the inexperienced, like an ass) and a cop flipped on his lights. I was surprised he as able to follow me quarter way up a steep hill, he had chains on. I came back down and he chewed me out but didn't ticket me. He thanked me for getting stuck cars/trucks off the road but told me to slow down.

Road crews aren't on every street, they're on at most 1/10th of 1% of the streets. Tow trucks can't keep up with demand. Salt, sounds like an east coaster. Another guess of someone who doesn't go out in storms?

Be a timid tammy or learn to drive on snow ice. You might have to rescue someone someday.

Friend of mine was stuck in his apartment building for 3 days which was up a very steep hill. No one was going in or out. I chained up all 4 and brought him food, a BBQ to use on the porch, and other supplies. He was very grateful but then asked "Can you get me a pack of smokes?" Sorry, I've got other deliveries. Lesson learned, he always kept an emergency smoke supply.
 

J0E

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The amount of people that think your diffs are going to grenade the split second a tire touches some dry pavement is hilarious. 4 HI is just that. You can go fast in 4WD. If you're one of those that thinks this you really need to brush up on how a 4WD vehicle with selectable diffs works.
It has little to do with the diffs, it's the lock in the transfer case that locks the front axle with the rear. Did you see my pic above? Driving on dry pavement with the xfer case locked puts a large unnecessary load on the entire drive line. What's the benefit, automatic spin out as soon as you hit ice? Unless you're racing, who needs the better acceleration? As mentioned, if you have the option that doesn't lock the xfer case, that's a different story.
 
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Stay away from cruise control, downshifting when headed up an incline can break traction.
 

Tushar

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One thing : If you don’t currently have 4H (auto) you would wish you did have that feature!
 

Dyolfknip74

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It has little to do with the diffs, it's the lock in the transfer case that locks the front axle with the rear. Did you see my pic above? Driving on dry pavement with the xfer case locked puts a large unnecessary load on the entire drive line. What's the benefit, automatic spin out as soon as you hit ice? Unless you're racing, who need the better acceleration? As mentioned, if you have the option that doesn't lock the xfer case, that's a different story.
I never said anything about dry pavement full time but if you hit a patch in the snow, it isn't going to do anything unless you're in an uncontrolled spin.
Anyway, you do you my friend. I've been driving 4x4 and bigger in the snow for a long time without incident.
Cheers!
 

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One thing : If you don’t currently have 4H (auto) you would wish you did have that feature!
I had it in my Grand Cherokee back in the day. Between my JK and now JL, no, don't miss it at all. Engaging 4WD isn't complicated.
 

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Tell that to the cops I've pulled out. On first stop of hopelessly stuck cop "no thanks, I'll wait for the tow truck". 6 recoveries and 2 hours later I drive by "I'll take you up on pulling me out". He sure was happy to be freed. I can only guess you've never been out in that situation. I've done hundreds of recoveries during and soon after a big storm.

A few years later I was driving fast (to the inexperienced, like an ass) and a cop flipped on his lights. I was surprised he as able to follow me quarter way up a steep hill, he had chains on. I came back down and he chewed me out but didn't ticket me. He thanked me for getting stuck cars/trucks off the road but told me to slow down.

Road crews aren't on every street, they're on at most 1/10th of 1% of the streets. Tow trucks can't keep up with demand. Salt, sounds like an east coaster. Another guess of someone who doesn't go out in storms?

Be a timid tammy or learn to drive on snow ice. You might have to rescue someone someday.

Friend of mine was stuck in his apartment building for 3 days which was up a very steep hill. No one was going in or out. I chained up all 4 and brought him food, a BBQ to use on the porch, and other supplies. He was very grateful but then asked "Can you get me a pack of smokes?" Sorry, I've got other deliveries. Lesson learned, he always kept an emergency smoke supply.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on almost everything you‘ve said, including your claim about the distribution of road maintenance teams during snow events. I can’t speak for other states, but the ODOT and local road teams in Oregon areas that get significant snow and ice manage to plow, sand, and de-ice most of the major routes in more populous areas before commuter traffic starts. The teams are out working the roads all night. I have no idea where you came up with “1/10th of 1%”, but in Oregon your estimate is off by a factor of roughly 100 in populated areas that tend to get snow.

I’m a cop in an icy, mountainous, climate. All winter, every winter, driving an unmarked all-wheel-drive police vehicle. I haven’t pulled “hundreds” of people out, like you — mostly because we have tow vehicles that can do that work more safely and without my department incurring the liability — but over the last thirty-plus years I’ve helped a lot of people, and I’ve been sent to a LOT of crashes, all of which were worse with speed.

We respond to crashed know-it-all expert drivers almost every week in the good weather, and many times per shift when the weather turns icy. Audis, Subarus, Suburbans — you name it, physics still applies. Everybody is brilliant right up until they’re on their roof or buried up to their door handles in the snow. (In another thread I told about a Christmas Eve many, many years ago when I came down from extremely heavy snow on the pass into what I thought was rain and wet pavement. When I stopped to piss and unlock the hubs on my pickup I discovered I’d been driving on solid ice — so slick I immediately lost my footing. I caught myself on the door and had to hold onto the truck to piss. After I peed I drove up to about 25 mph and hit the brakes. I locked up and slid about three truck-lengths. After that I drove the rest of the way at about half the speed I had been traveling Before I stopped to piss. I didn’t leave that experience thinking I was a brilliant driver who negotiated miles of ice at higher speeds. I left it feeling like an idiot who was damn lucky I didn’t end up crashing into the river.) (With very rare exceptions, Oregon does not salt its roads, but many states do, and since the OP isn't from Oregon, I listed salt with the other mitigation techniques. I have no idea what they do in NC.)

Training, experience, and skill matter, as do the vehicle and the tires, but good judgement and a hefty dose of humility are more important. Recommending people go drive around in bad weather is terrible advice.

Most police recruits are between 21 and 31 years old. Most are healthy, fit, males who arrive at recruit training thinking they are “good drivers” — probably because they have survived their teens and can drift their cars, or whatever. But most — about 48 out of 50 —- are actually lousy drivers, and they prove it on their first day of EVOC training.

We give new cops a tremendous amount of driver training that starts in the classroom with an introduction to concepts of risk/benefit analysis and an emphasis on safety and survival. They’re also introduced to the physics of vehicle handling (and crashes). They also watch videos that explain ABS and show slow-motion vehicle handling dynamics under braking and cornering. Training moves to the EVOC track and skid-cars after less than a day of classroom material.

On the track the recruits get active, real-time, coaching in skid cars that simulate full-slick conditions, so they‘re repeatedly coached into skids and then talked through recovery tactics in a variety of different conditions, first at very low speeds and then faster speeds. They alternate between classroom, video, and track, with coaching at every phase. Then they ride with and coach each other, so they learn to feel the vehicle movements under their butts and recognize the control inputs that cause them. The training builds on prior lessons over many weeks as the recruits get faster and better. They also get the opportunity to run the EVOC course in a variety of different police vehicles, with and without electronic intervention, so they learn to feel the differences in vehicle weighting and handling characteristics.

Most recruits go from lousy drivers to competent over the 26 or 27 weeks of initial recruit training, but driving, like shooting, is a perishable skill, so it has to be refreshed periodically, even if they’re driving 30,000 to 40,000 miles per year.

I’d never suggest that police recruits come out of their training driving better than you do, because I don’t know you or your training or experience, but I can say that good EVOC training is transformational for almost all who get it. Most importantly, it’s 1000 times more effective than nights of “self training” by spinning around the frozen ski area parking lot as I did as a kid. In fact, that kind of play can actually train BAD habits, like over-correcting, spinning the wheel, and crossing-over hands. My childhood parking lot play taught me the feel of a skid, the effect of brake lockup on steering, and the value of four-wheel drive, but it didn’t teach me how to optimize control inputs to drive through a skid or avoid a crash.

I thought I was good driver when I was 25, but when I started EVOC training more than thirty years ago it was immediately obvious that I wasn’t. I’m better now, but I’m not unique, invincible, or bulletproof, and I have seen a LOT of very capable drivers crash (or get struck by others who lost control): I encourage my kids and friends not to test their luck when they don’t have to.

I’ve been trained and coached by some truly exceptional drivers over the years, and I have well over 1,000,000 miles under my belt. Nobody who knows me would accuse me of being a “timid Tammy”. To the contrary, most would say I’ve signed up for more than my share of risk in this life, but I’ve never heard anybody at my agency, AST (Alaska State Troopers), RCMP (Royal Canadien Mounted Police), or Michigan State Police suggest that high speed driving on ice can be safe or sensible. In that regard you stand alone in my experience. Perhaps there are others who winter in Hawaii who would agree with you, but most of us who are called upon to do it for a living treat it with great humility and respect, and subject each such decision to a risk vs. benefit analysis. We go because we have to, and at speeds calculated to mitigate risk to everybody sharing the road. We don’t tempt fate and drive fast just to show we can. That’s idiotic. I don’t think you’d find anybody who has survived a career dealing with the consequences of speed on ice who will agree it can be done safely and consistently with little risk.
 
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Tushar

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I had it in my Grand Cherokee back in the day. Between my JK and now JL, no, don't miss it at all. Engaging 4WD isn't complicated.
Agreed ! But the 4H PT is not full time unlike the 4H Auto. It makes life way more easier as compared to 4H PT. Plus no speed restrictions
 

Dyolfknip74

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Agreed ! But the 4H PT is not full time unlike the 4H Auto. It makes life way more easier as compared to 4H PT. Plus no speed restrictions
There is no speed restriction in 4hi. Manual states it should be 45 or less to engage but no speed restriction. Now, in saying that, if you can go that fast, then you really don't need to be in 4hi, but if you hit 46mph, your driveline won't spontaneously combust.
 

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