samandben wrote:
Cheers Mole!!!!
Would you be prepared to say what advice you would give to the youngest driver in your Family about his/her intention to drive in the sorts of winter conditions we've discussed here?
Tricky one! There's so much to learn and some of it differs with the type of person and the type of car. Let's have a go though:
1. My youngest is only 3 and he's a happy-go-lucky sort of chap. A lot can change between now and when he passes his test, but I'm guessing he'll think he's invincible by then. (Note that my second one (now 6) is a very different animal at present - MUCH more cautious by nature). Anyway, I think I'd be urging the youngest one to be cautious, above all else!
2. Cars are likely to be very different by then too - but again, let's assume he'll be driving an "old banger" (i.e. something brand new today with ABS, ESC, more airbags than you can shake a stick at...) Because of that, a lot of "advanced" driving techniques don't work very well (e.g. "cadence braking" is a bit of a waste of time in a car with ABS and "left-foot-braking" (or even using the handbrake) probably won't work very well in a car with ESC! All I could tell him is to follow his instincts if it all goes wrong (which would usually mean planting the brake pedal as hard as possible and leaving the computers to sort it out)!
3. Make the best possible use of the car's safety features (seat belt, adjust head restraint to correct height, plenty of antifreeze in the screen wash, no additional gizmos (Ipod, sat-nav, phone holder etc) in the airbag deployment zone).
4. A decent set of winter tyres on some old steel rims. Hell, he'll probably not want his mates to laugh at him for not being cool and having 18" alloys with 300mm tyres but hopefully he'll be bright enough to realise that it's better than crashing!
5. ANY manoeuvre that involves the car changing speed and / or direction is where things are most likely to go pear-shaped. He'll need to anticipate that at every bend, junction and incline.
6. Cars are ALWAYS heavier going downhill than they are going uphill! (It's a variation on the laws of physics brought about by the application of "sod's Law")! I live in a hilly part of the world and if you try to go up a slippy bit, you generally just fail. If you try to go DOWN a slippy bit, things can get really dangerous! If he feels the car starting to run away with him and he's got his foot on the brake with the ABS hammering away but isn't slowing down, head for the long grass sooner rather than later. It's the only thing that's likely to stop him without hurting too much and it only gets worse, the longer you leave the manoeuvre!
7. Cars are just lumps of metal than can be fixed/ replaced, people can't! (a bit patronising, I know, but teenage lads value their cars so much -and not their lives)!
8. All the usual stuff about equipment, - thermos, sleeping bag, clothing, boots, shovel, tow rope, torch, warning triangle (can't believe they're not a legal requirement here!) etc...
9.I'd encourage him to drive jerkily and harshly whilst on the easier bits of road with no other cars around. Modern cars are such cosseting environments that it's easy to forget how cold it is out there. Planting the throttle (only in a straight line!) in a low gear will get the wheels spinning and the traction control cutting-in early. Similarly, braking harder than necessary gets the ABS cutting in. If he does this periodically it will give him a lot of information about what's happening at the tyre contact patch. It MIGHT just give him a bit of warning that he's on the really slippy stuff before it becomes a problem. Then, once he knows he's on a slippy patch, he needs to slow RIGHT down and drive as if he was driving in bare feet and the pedals were red hot!
10. I'd hope to have spent a few hours with him in such conditions before he went solo. I'm not at all averse to skid pan training but I'd never want him to feel over-confident as a result. I've never come across a skid pan with a 1-in-5 slope to it and dry stone walls about one-and-a-half cars apart. In conditions like that, I firmly believe your options (once it starts to go worng) are VERY limited. The trick is stopping it going wrong before it happens - plenty of people have said that already! I still believe that the biggest benefit of the skid pan would be for him to learn to recognise the feeling when it starts to go wrong. That's extremely valuable, I think - perhaps more valuable than car control (which is great if you have the space to do it)!
11. Use ALL your senses - especially hearing. Don't have the radio on when you could be listening for changes in road noise or engine note as it starts to break traction.
12. Don't feel pressured into going any faster / closer to other cars than you feel safe. Don't follow another car down a slope until it's going up the other side.
That's my first dozen anyway. I'm sure there's lots more stuff I've forgotten but at least it's a start! As you can see, it's very specific to the place I happen to live, the kind of car I think he'll be driving, and the kind of teenager I think he'll be! 15 years from now, I might look back and see just how wrong I was!!!!
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OPr rather the outside .. leaving succulent :cloud9> meaty flesh per all accounts as known to me on hearsay. 
Perhaps others would like to drive the question forward? I had thought of some kind of summary of what I've seen as the most significant contributions. No doubt there are different perspectives and incomplete discussions.
