Driving in snow / ice…any tips?

[Blade1668]

Well this is late and 7 pages late at that.
#1 don't be stupid when driving. I seen quite a bit of good information already covered. ABS brakes are "good n nice" but don't always "help or work out" some times you need to F###ing stop not be able to steer. Ice all bets are off on stopping or steering. Of all things slow down and remember where the hills, bridges and shade on roads are... Think black ice. Do keep distractions out of the mix texting, phone, music / radio (can be too), ECT. Drive with sense, no matter how good you are ice can negate it.
Now another tip: get bag(s) of cat litter and or sand bags not only for putting on tires/ road it adds weight to back of vehicle... weight on main drive tires helps, a big reason FWD and AWD do good in snow more weight on drive and steering tire's.

Now for the Jack A@@s that drive so damn slow when the F@##ing road is clear but cold get the F### out of way or off the F###ing road.

Back in "dark ages" when I had Driver's Ed in school we had ice storm and still had to drive. Fun stuff...

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[Tushar]

*55. Thanks for the screenshot.

So @Dyolfknip74 & @ConqSoft what you guys are saying is that there is speed restriction to shift into 4H which is 88 km/h (55 mph) but there is no speed restriction once you are in 4H ? One can cruise on 100Km/h on highway if needed be ?

 

[ConqSoft]

So @Dyolfknip74 & @ConqSoft what you guys are saying is that there is speed restriction to shift into 4H which is 88 km/h (55 mph) but there is no speed restriction once you are in 4H ? One can cruise on 100Km/h on highway if needed be ?

That's basically what Jeep says...

 

[Dyolfknip74]

So @Dyolfknip74 & @ConqSoft what you guys are saying is that there is speed restriction to shift into 4H which is 88 km/h (55 mph) but there is no speed restriction once you are in 4H ? One can cruise on 100Km/h on highway if needed be ?

I've done it lots.

 

[Tushar]

That's basically what Jeep says...

Hmm, hope that’s the case as I was almost ready to trade in mine to get that new 4H Auto transfer case as its super scary to drive it in 2H on highways here in Calgary. It also fish tails a lot. Plus shifting to 4H is pain & then downshifting . I mean I can do it but explaining the whole process to wife is another level pain too. I think you just shift it to 4H Auto & literally forget about it in winter season . Wish dealer educated me properly on diff between Command trac & Selec trac when I was in buying process.

 

[2mnycars]

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.

I truly appreciate your comments here. I was a ski instructor for over 35 years.

Here I schedule my travel on snowy/icy days. There are so many unskilled drivers, with unprepared cars covered in snow so they can't see, and no snow tires. So I go to work early, then stay late. That way I'm not following white knuckle drivers, and I have a better temper.

In another lifetime I was property manager at a Canadian Police College. During a strike period there were no instructors or cadets around. In the classroom where new cadets were taught how to drive the most common comment on class cards were that the student didn't look far enough ahead...

That helps me heal a bad habit I have...

thanks for your notes....

Ontario, Canada. Snowtires on all my cars.

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