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I knew I had to do it at some point and I heard a lot of horror stories about driving on slippy roads, and of course it never applied to me until it happened.

A few days ago, I was turning right at some traffic lights, road was empty except for me. The turn is over 90 degrees, so it requires a good line and a suitable speed. I'd taken the same line on this exact corner hundreds of times before, I do it at least once a day. It had been icey for a few days and I accept full responsibility (as I should) for not compensating for the winter-conditions as much as I should have.

I came round the corner, was almost at full-lock, my car carried on going the direction I was going in before the turn. Brakes went on but to no avail, and I slid off and my passenger-side wheel hit the curb and went up it. Wishbone was bent, tie-rod on the steering rack was bent, and the anti-roll bar was bent. The latter can be bent back, the wishbone and the tie-rod are long gone. It was quite a bump, I took this after I bought the new parts:



Parts hardly cost me anything, less than 50 quid in all. Got a lucky escape, I think, could have been a lot worse.

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David

A lucky escape and a cheap lesson.

Ice is very 'uncontrollable' and sometimes the very best drivers are caught out and can do little or nothing to prevent the crash.

The 'golden' trick is to know that ice may be present at the earliest possible stage. This knowledge can come from a range of sources:

- knowledge of low temperature. I'm very keen to have an outside thermometer in my cars and I especially like ones that 'bong' when the temp is low enough for ice. (+2 deg C air temp, I'd suggest) Of course having to scrape ice off the windows in the morning might be a bit of a clue!

- steering feel. Good steering goes noticably 'light' when grip drops. I go out of my way to choose cars with 'good steering'.

- tyre noise. Tyre noise almost stops when driving on ice. If you hear tyre noise dropping it's a strong warning signal.

- previous ice on road. Once you have met one bit of ice, there will more than likely be more.

- Appearance of road surface. You can't see so-called black ice, but you can always see frosty white ice.

- frozen puddles. See frozen puddles; expect ice on the road.

- Test grip. When conditions might be bad, test your grip by braking or accelerating and checking for skidding. Do this long before you actually need to stop.

Learning steering feel is best carried out on a skid pan.

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Paul Smith
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