Winter Driving Techniques / Stories

In order to help breathe new life into the forum, i figuired I'd add another thread. Share your cool winter driving techniques / stories here.

I'll start with happened to me on the expressway the other morning (6 am, still dark): I was going South on rural US-27 near my house (mid michigan) it was shitty with about 2 inches of really wet slush snow that happened been plowed yet (god bless our road commision) and me along with everyone else was doing about 45 tops. I had been following the tahoe infront of me for about 10 miles without passing. Finally, I decided to overtake and go to pass - cept since the left lane was travelled so much less, the amount of slush in it was huge. I got up next to the tahoe, I was doing about 55, only to get sucked off to the left towards the median. I ended up fishtailing back onto the road, but then was going towards him to fast, so i ended up going back towards the median. I had to decide A) Median B) Tahoe, or C) if i'm lucky keep it in between. so after about 10 seconds of fishtailing i managed to land it in the middle of the lane and pull past him, only to discover there was a semi infront of him whose draft was now brutally throwing around my weight-reductioned-grand am. I didn't want to have another median mis-hap, so I was forced to slow down and pull back in behind the tahoe. A completely useless attempt at passing - all it did was help burn off the calories from my scrambled eggs. Lesson learned: slush sucks.

okay so this is my first year driving a stick in the winter, i still havent perfected the stop and going into first i give it alot of gas not alot around 2 1/2 rpm and iam scared that this winter when it starts to snow that i will do nothing but spin my tires... how can i teach myself not to give it so much gas? you know what i mean? or is that somthing i just have to figure out myself? if you can help or have any advise get back at me. pm me if possible...
thanx britt

Ease up on clutch first until it starts to grab THEN start to add a bit of throttle and progress with it until you've completely engaged the clutch. Don't do it to slow or you'll eventually smoke the clutch, but don't do it to fast or you'll stall. Practice makes perfect, because it's all in the coordination between your left and right feet. If your stopped on a hill, when you are ready to move use your hand brake to keep you from rolling back until you begin to move forward.

Or... get a Subaru! :) Seriously, though, easing up on the gas is something that's not really all that hard to do, especially in a FWD car like a Civic. Your clutch isn't going to take any damage at all; it's designed for that kind of around-town style driving rather than high performance. Now, if you drove a Corvette or something, I'd say take it a little easier. Your car doesn't have the power to do major damage to the clutch with that kind of driving. My Saturn and my Mustang both lived many miles with their original clutch (Saturn is still going after 110k), and I lived in one of the rainiest cities in the USA, so I was constantly feathering the clutch on starts.

So in college we borrow a guys 1975 Chevy Nova POS to go "pick up a pizza". Snowbanks abound, and we hit a curve behind one of the University buildings that has a layer of ice under 2" of snow. Poof. Front end in the snowbank. So there we are, digging with our hands at midnight to free this beast from the 4' of snow it's buried in. High centered, too. Dang. So dig dig dig. Go to start the car, starter won't engage. So rock paper and scissors to see who crawls under to remove snow from around the starter. I win, ha. So Tom crawls under, cursing all the while to remove the snow. Car starts but wheels spin and can't get it to rock out. So more digging. Hands red and raw, we finally take our shirts off and put them under rear wheels for traction. We escape. Pizza is cold on return. Downplay dirty shirts and shrug while returning keys.

LMAO wow.... you poor poor bastards... lol that must've really sucked

That is why I carry an entrenching tool in my trunk

Yeah - it's fun, NOW. But then it wasn't. Heh.

Well i took my cars out on parking lots and practiced controlling skids in rain sleet snow ice.

I learned how to power around to counteract skids and its saved my ass more times than i can count.

That's the best way to learn, by practicing in a safe and controlled environment.

Amen to that. Buy some old, used tires and go party in a deserted parking lot.

#1 winter driving technique of mine: REALLY GOOD FINNISH SNOW TIRES.
Scary winter scenario. Five lane highway (two lanes either direction, paved turning lane) around a nice, extremely gentle righthand sweeper on a slow downhill.
Lady (meh, mid-50's, rich) pulls out in her minivan to join my direction of traffic. She's doing about 5 mph or so, so I figure she was gonna stop in the median. NOPE. Right in front of me, still doing the 5 mph, with no signs of speeding up.
I stand on the brakes, and go sideways (driver side leading). Countersteering like made, I stand on the gas (front-driver), and jump in the right lane as the assend comes back around.
Then, I just laid on the horn when I passed, and let her know she was number 1.
I was shaking for about an hour.

handbrake!

I'm an absolute terror in my '93 Impreza winter beater - the car is FWD, rear tires are treadless, fronts are wearing thin, the car has very little traction but man is it ever predictable in spins. I like can't help flip the handbrake going into turns in my neighbourhood. Tons 'O fun.

Steps for Good traction:
-Rev to 6,000-7,000 (higher if you engine is capeable)
-Place in 1st
-Let Clutch out completely, jerky and fast.
-oops, forgot the parking brake
-Rev to 6,000-7,000
-Drop Clutch agian jerky and fast
-Traction has been obained

lol, no. really i have never and probably never will drive in the snow. Florida :) . But driving in the sand is the same. Learning the art of feathing the clutch with out burning it is esincial. also, start the vehicle out in 2nd from a stop. dont engine brake, coast around corners, FWD will experence extreme understeer and RWD will xperence extreme over steer.














or just yank the E-brake, Rola'Costa' St!l3!!!!!111!!!One

i work at tenaya lodge near yosemite, and in the winter the road up there is a terrible and dangerous thing. well one day last year i was cruisin up there in about 4 inches of fresh powder(and still snowing). well the highway patrols weren't out and the chain requirement signs weren't flipped, even though they usually flip them because we have a lot of retarded tourists from LA and other sunnier parts of Cali who can't drive in the snow...plus this road is like Kart heaven, some flat turns, some banked turns, long straights followed by sharp turns, and other general fun stuff in the summer. well i was following this big AWD truck, and he was kind of cutting a path for me when he started to fishtail around a turn. he eventually lost it not more than 200 feet in front of me. as he was turned sideways in the road, taking up both lanes, i had three options, hit him, hit the side of the mountain, or fly of a fifty foot cliff. my initial reaction was to dive(as fast as possible without spinning myself) into the other lane. well he had locked his brakes so he had no control and was spinning very slowly...and i just inched by in the other lane as he came close enough to a 180 that i could squeeze by unscathed. i didn't stop for that retard...he had a big truck with 4WD and i had my 86 stang with normal all weather tires. i got to work just fine, but that guy freaked me out sooo bad.

handbrake!

...but man is it ever predictable in spins. I like can't help flip the handbrake going into turns in my neighbourhood. Tons 'O fun.

You and me both! '92 Talon, FWD, and I e-brake every turn I can--I love sending that thing sideways :evillol:

But like someone else said, first snow every winter, go find an empty parking lot and practice. Then when it happens for real, you'll know how to correct for it.

Ahh, I drove 3 years in Wisconsin weather with an 86 fiero gt, talk about having fun. Mid engine, rear wheel drive, no power steering...doesnt turn real well and every little patch of ice seemed to make my car spin....This year I drove my MX6 which was nice with front engine/drive, but I never got around to switch from my lo-pros to winter tires....So for me, The e-brake was used more than the peddle....(and it was usually in parking lots woo hoo until the police came....twice....).

LoL that sucks. What'd the police do / say?

i love driving my mustang in snow... lots of fun, gotta love downshifting to stop you.

I was born + raised in Orange/San Diego County, so we barely had rain and certainly never snow.

Had my Golf two years though, and plenty of snow here in Arizona (go figure). It boggles my mind that people can't drive in it .. certainly no one taught me, but the first time on the highway, I had enough sense to slow down, whereas I saw literally 30 trucks/SUVs (mainly) flipped over or in ditches on the side of the road :eek7:
After I got into town, waiting to turn into Wendys/Exxon (dining hall closed at 6pm Fridays, so lame) ... huge extended cab duramax diesel-type Chevy coming at me tries to turn right into the exxon at full speed / regular braking in 2 inches of snow ... slides right into the planter and blocks the entry instead :sunglasse

Always see people spin out going only 10-30mph here in town during snow too, its not that hard ... idiots!

the best strategy for driving in snow... be patient. thats it, thats all it takes. and dont try to run over snow drifts lol.

YES patience is virtue. =D Well.....my story:

I was racing my frends corolla in my escort, and there was a medium left turn. that day roads were covered in snow and ice, so we both slided on it. I wanted to catch up so i gunned it. The rear started sliding out, and i didn't counter steer in time because i thought i was gona understeer into a ditch. So i end up spinning around, and on the opposite lane then ending up in the grass/snow half the cars ass off the road. I see a snow plow coming fast right towards me, so i had to gun the gas and get the hell outa there! Definately scary.

I guess winter driving you just gota take it as it happens. What i mean is don't panic and jerk the wheel when you slide. When my dad drives on the highway/interstate, he starts sliding the car ALL over if noone is beside us.................the tail literally is 45 degrees most of the time.. everyone in the cars flipping out or screaming haha. But he just grins. Definately scary!

LoL that sucks. What'd the police do / say?

Lol, everytime the police came they didnt really care that we were doing slides...we were trying to drift in a figure 8 around light poles in a parking lot most of the time behind where we worked (no cars ever went through there)...The cops would come up to us with lights on and say that someone called it in and that we had to go somewhere else or stop.

sweet. I wish cops were like that around here :). Wow, speaking of winter fun in parking lots, I had an awesome experience a few months back. I came to our high school parking lot late at night for an orchestra concert - there were a few cars in one end, and the rest of the parking lot (a good 3 to 5 acres of smooth concrete) were completely open, with a fresh 2 or 3 inches of snow ontop :) I had some wickedly good fun - and noone had even driven through any of it, so I could see exactly what I had done. It kicked ass.

Two lane road. Guy in a Dodge Durango cuts me off, in the snow... I started speeding up to pass him and he kept speeding up to not let me. As we aproached a sharp curve i downshifted and hit brakes...He continued, coasting, through the turn, then hit his brakes halfway through. He fishtailed and wound up in a ditch...I pulled up next to him and asked if he had a cell phone, and he didnt....I told him i would call for help when i got home....When i got home, I got laid, took a dump then called for help....if he didnt cut me off i would have went home, got laid, called for help, then took a dump....

#1 winter driving technique of mine: REALLY GOOD FINNISH SNOW TIRES.

You must have Hakka's? I agree there is absolutely no substitute for good snow tires. So far (knock on wood) I haven't had any real incidents on snow and I do push pretty hard on the backroads. However I always run on snow tires.

well learning how a car behaves on slippery surfaces is important, but still sometimes the car reacts differently than what you'd expect from it... just 2 days ago we had the first minus temperatures over here and I was coming home late... the is a long right turn which is wide and I love to powerslide through the whole turn during the winter ( have done it in my 518, and my 320 in the past) so now I have the 325 which doesn't require much to get sideways... so seing the small icey surface I thought I'd give it the first go for the winter... the problem was that the road wasn't completly covered with ice so there were only spots that are slippery... I tried to ignore this fact and tried my famous powerslide that I have done so many times, the result was very heavy understeer instead, close to hitting the curb atlast it hit a dry spot so I got lucky... afterwards I wondered how this could happen, and the only explanation I have is that when I tried to get the tail out my fron tires were on ice and the rear tires on dry tarmac so they pushed the car forward instead of brraking the rear loose... luckily nothing happened, but mixed surfaces can be very unpredictable even if you know how to control skids... BTW has anyone seen the dvd the drift bible??? I got it 2 years ago... its a nice guide to drifting

i dont have th drift bible...but i can relate to driving in wisconsin. all i do through neighborhoods is really pull the ebrake since in a FF, you get no traction unless you're going 3mph. i end up pulling the ebrake and my neighbors have called the police on me for doing it. its either, hit your car, or pull ebrake and slide around the corner. they hate me for it....i used the brake today since i was lazy and diddnt want to do a Y turn to get into a parkin spot. no cars, go about 10 mph, e brake and wualla! 180 and get the spot. kids @ skoo that saw me thought i was crazy in 1st hr haha.

but there is nothin like going figure 8's in a parking lot, then the cops get called, and they can't eally do anything. if you're not bothering someone, or close to other cars. if they ask all you say is that you want to be ready to control your car when it decides to slip on the road so i dont hit anyone...they usually do say go somewhere else or stop...i never run snow tires, always running my summer "r" rated tires since i dont mind if my car slides a little...

reminds me, i saw a dumb ass in a jeep take a turn that i ususally powerside through @ like 55 and he took it @ 50 with snow....ne ran into a ditch and flipped sideways...dumbass....eitherway i called for help for them since it was like 2 min for my house...

Its an old post but. Lets bring it back to life. I know most of you run 2 wheel drive cars. But Just for your information 4x4 are worse then your cars in corners. 4x4's Only help me get going in low traction areas and deep snow. Other then that, they are not much help. Hell i have fun with it in snow. Up here when we get snow falls that stop the busses from running I get to have the whole road to myself. Picture this, A foot of snow covering the whole road, all fresh and white, And i get to blaze the first path across the whole dam thing. Just to be an ass ill zig zag the 4 lanes. Only problem is by mid morning all main roads are plowed :( Then its off to side streets and mall lots... wait the mall just upgraded to Hummers to patrol the parking lots. well they are H3s do you think they can catch me.

yes i think they might...and to have a mall have H3s...where do u live?

I have 0 winter driving expirience. My mom drove in the snow, ice, fog for 10 years on stick cars without ever getting in an accident (I am from Ukraine, we have real winters). She did have a few close calls. One time she hit a patch of ICE of a freeway and car spun 180 degrees while hitting a curb that kept it from going in a ditch, she was rolling down the freeway in reverse for about 200 feet before car came to a stop. Another time she was driving at night and her VW was not pulling in 3rd, she got out of a car and it was all ice. It seemed that she never gave car too much gas in the snow or ice, just enough to keep tires spinning. Slowly but cars were starting to move, I was always freaking out because I see cars all around us standing still and spinning tires while our car slowly crawls. Also in many occasions she used gears to slow the car down,I never seen her use rapid braking and rapid steering movement in winter.

I know this is not much about techniques, but it said you can post stories too.

I live in winnipeg, that is in Manitoba Canada. Nikitas good stories, it seems like she know how to drive.

how about pullign cops out of ditches on a daily basis.

seeing cops that cant drive in snow is great, we just got a charger in the local town, the car already hit the ditch 2x.
as for my story, getting up at 6am ,and driving on rt.31 and 57 in nw NJ, those are both major roads in the area, neither of htem had been plowed yet, so easily like 4inches on each.
i decide to go thru the intersectoin instead of the cut thru, figure it would b better.
well like with most intersections on highways there were traffic lights. i have a green light and begin to go thru the intersection. i drive a neon, so fwd, good in snow, not great but good. as i'm in the middle of the intersectoin. a tractor trailer comes flying by the other way and packs snow right in front of me, i went no where, make it short. i was there untill noon, till they plowed and i could move

There has to be a special thread for driving in snow? im sorry i was born and raised in iowa i dont see why its difficult although ill admit ive pulled many a moron outta the ditch. Even when im at work driving the big rig its no damn differant just watch the brakes a lil closer nothing difficult or fancy you learn to kick the rearend around to get around a lil better in places. that and if you own a truck your learn the value of weight distribution rather quickly.