Driving to work today and had to come off a back road (down hill with a left hand bend in it) that kind of acts like a slip road onto the busy ring road.

CLICKY

Anyway, came over the brow of the hill, turned left slightly to come round the bend and lost traction on all 4 wheels!

Started sliding down the hill on the wrong side of the road towards the busy ring road at an angle of about 75-80 degrees to the direction my car was pointing.

Went to brown alert and my LEET computer game racing skills took over subconsciously.

Opposite lock, 2nd gear, managed to pull the front end of the car to point down the hill and got traction and moved over to the correct side of the road.

Emergency averted

It was only after rescuing the situation that I was able to think about it. My reactions took over involuntarily Kinda cool.

Funny though, the first thing I thought (apart from the fact of how lucky I was that no one was coming up the road) was that I was lucky not to have to pay out my car insurance excess.

Must have only been going 10-15mph though. Made me realise how much winter tyres would help. Only thing is that I don't see the point in spending hundreds on winter tyres for a period that might last a couple of weeks every 15 years.

I've been having fun sliding around the local car parks - great fun!

It's funny though watching the number of people using first gear - you see them at junctions just spinning endlessly.

LOL, I was gonna put that in my post.

After recovering I got to the end of the road and there was a woman driver in a Renault Megane stuck in a bit of slush >.<

Swapping between first gear and reverse and revving the engine and dropping the clutch. Exhaust fumes flying everywhere and wheel spin galore. Eventually she slid (sideways) out of the way so I drove slowly past her in second gear straight over the spot where she'd been stuck.

lol, well done.
Although one thing . . .
Why were you above gear 2 doing 10-15 mph?

I don't see anything in the post saying what gear he was in at 10-15??

And 3rd wouldn't be unreasonable in a small car - you want to be in as high a gear as possible in snow unless you enjoy skidding, slipping and sliding.

That depends on how well you can drive.

Range Rover FTMFW!

Pah, one nearly tried driving over my car today. Ranger's FTMFF.

I saw one stuck in a snow drift today, and a little one-litre Corsa went straight through all the snow, past the Rangey, bipping its horn

My dad has a rear-wheel drive Transit, which has about 450 foot pounds of torque and 160hp. That's interesting...

Unless you have snow or mud and snow tyres, or better still studs, little more use than a front wheel drive car, in fact probably worse as the 4wd allows you to get up to more speed but when braking or cornering on snow, its next to useless. I'm not making this up, I had a 2.5TDi one for 3 months whilst my mate was doing some time for tax evasion, saw plenty of snow....was worse than my Peugeot 205, in fact when I put studded Colway remoulds on the front of the pug, for a laugh, it was like a tracked vehicle. Having said that, studded tyres and 4wd, now that would be worth having.

He said he changed down to gear 2 - therefore he must have been in a higher gear . . .

That doesn't sound unreasonable on ice.

Next time Oli, I'd recommend this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MPRmOUxRMY&feature=fvhr

Abandon ship, abandon ship.

*hits replay*

I really can't understand why they thought that was a good idea?