SafeSpeedv2 wrote:
I think I would say 'did you start to react sufficiently as soon as you saw him manoeuvring ?
In snow/ice you just have to be going so very slow to allow for all icy dicey moments !
I too would have said go for the handbrake as it helps build friction and as soon as you reach tarmac (etc) it will grip nicely and of course it will help to bring the back end round a bit too. A rally technique is that you get some braking from it even on the ice. I might well have pumped the brakes too (if not held a braking force too) depending on steering and where I hope to go if it becomes an option.
The car was already going down the hill slowly probably over 150ft away, at that point the road surface was pretty good, I had tested grip before starting down. The car appeared to be slowing for the queue about 100ft in front of them then started turning into a drive, I was off the throttle in 1st and the car was holding speed so at that distance I did not foresee a problem. It was only when the car started to roll back out of the driveway that I tried to stop, even then I thought the distance was plenty given how long it had been taking to stop on the worst sections until then. What I should have done was start braking as soon as I saw them start to turn rather than thinking about what they were doing, I thought there was plenty of room and I could stop in around a third of the gap easily so reacting immediately really did not seem necessary and I had actually started braking in plenty of time.
I could not really use the handbrake because if the car had started to spin I could have hit any number of cars parked on the right hand side. This was in town btw, up until then the last half hour and two miles had been in nose to tail traffic. I did pump the brakes a bit to see if I could feel any change, over the last few days I have experimented with braking in this car and found that the shortest stopping distance is usually obtained by pressing the pedal and modulating so that the abs is just activating continuously. Press harder so that the system actually starts to kick back hard against the pedal and the stopping distance increases noticeably. The only other thing I might of tried is putting the car into reverse, it is something I have thought about as a last ditch effort before but I have not practised it so doing this did not occur to me at the time.
As it happens I ended up turning around too, the road was completely jammed up, and even with a little wheelspin did not have much problem getting back up the road. I suspect that the left side, going down, was much icier than the centre as this road does get parked up at both sides at the weekend.
Definitely do not get enough practise driving in this stuff down here.