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Six Life-Saving Tips for Safe Driving in Bad Weather

Locations in this article:  San Diego, CA

3. Don’t Overcompensate 

It seemed like the mantra of Wilfried “Willy” Wiedner, our professional German rally car champ/teacher, on certain exercises was “You opened [the steering wheel] too much! Make little movements!” followed by a demonstration with his hands that showed our way (hands rapidly circling an imaginary wheel) and the right way (a calm, cool quarter of a rotation). That’s all you need sometimes when driving on ice. It might seem like you need to crank the wheel, but in order to get the tires to catch and head in the direction you want, sometimes all it takes is a quarter turn of the wheel.

The common trouble spot people get themselves into when driving on ice is a drift while making a turn. If you are holding on to your initial wheel turn and your car starts to drift, just open the steering wheel slightly back up.

This initiates a totally new line for your front wheels to drive on and it helps you gain newfound traction. It is called counter steering and it is what you need to do to get out of trouble. But don’t get crazy with the wheel. You might think you need to turn 360 degrees back the other way when you get into a drift but that will only lead to more trouble. Just open the wheel up a bit, wait for the car to find traction and you should be OK.

4. Wait!

It seems totally counterintuitive but you have to allow the car to do most of the work for you when you get into trouble. When I felt like I was losing control, I would instinctively push the brakes or turn the wheel. Wrong. What I was doing was holding on to the initial wheel turn and pressing the brakes, hoping the tires would catch. That meant they never had a chance at getting friction and getting onto a new controlled (and desired) path.

Again and again Willy would wait for me after my run and make the little motion with his hands, reminding me. Sure you might be slipping to your doom on ice but your only chance out once you feel like you lose control is to just wait a second in order for the car to stabilize and do some work for you.

By opening the steering wheel up you have to wait for the wheels to find traction. You might still be going sideways but if you open the wheel up enough the car should respond accordingly. During that time you might freak out but it is very important that you wait and let the car do what it is designed to do.

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