trancerz

I'm going to have post traumatic stress disorder everytime I think about redlining my car ever again.

Ape-x, I am sorry to hear that you were in a similar situation and your car ended up in a worst position than mine. Yes you are correct, I am VERY young, and that is the reason why I never push my car. I am tired of people stereotyping young male drivers as evil kneivil on the road. I drive like an old asian lady and plan on keeping it from now through all of college.

Thanks for the tips guys, I'm going to find an empty parking lot in the rain and replay the scenario all over to see what I could have done about it.

UmarS2K

That sucks, bro.

trancerz

Yeah, it sucks but we live and learn. Some unfortunate people learn without living.

Michael foster

Totally got that! Experiencing it is the worst of all. From now on I'm not driving fast when it's raining.

aCab

Not if your heart is in it enough. I worked full time (40 hours a week) in college while taking 18 hours and still was able to drive 5 hours to get to the mountains at least once a week.

If you really wanted to drive the car, you'd make it happen. But then again, this is coming from someone who lives to drive. I put 32k miles on my car a year...and I have a company car to drive during the day.

hicabi

I feel for the OP. This kind of thread is an open invitation for the jackasses who fail to comprehend the very simple fact that stuff happens.

I wish the OP had VSA, which is handy for these situations. I guess this is an invitation for the "my right foot is my VSA" morons to join the conversation...

CKit

Stuff does happen, but in the scenario listed the OP didn't scan for road conditions.

If I drove with my eyes closed, "stuff would happen" but it wouldn't mean that my own actions (or lack thereof) didn't contribute to the situation.

Driving like an "old Asian woman" isn't my choice of solutions. If you don't understand the limits of the car, your driving skills, and ROAD / WEATHER CONDITIONS you're stuck driving slowly to try and avoid accidents.

However, by developing skill in all three areas you can increase the level of "sportiness" in your driving AND make the overall situation safer.

Here's a description:
There is a thing called "tire budget."
Each contact patch only has a certain amount of grip you can spend.
Get crappy tires, less budget to spend.
Poor road conditions? Less budget.

The problem is when people don't know what maneuvers eat up budget (slamming shifts, abrupt power changes like VTEC in a turn, weight transferring, heavy braking, running over a puddle or gravel, going downhill).

The hallmark of a nooby driver is that they alternately underdrive and then overdrive their grip budget. If you were to plot a graph, they are at 50% budget with spikes of 120%. A better driver on the street might always hover at 80%. Which means faster in the fast parts and slower in the slow parts, but still with a healthy margin for unforseen conditions.

So the choices are:
Drive at 30% of the car's capability all the time so you don't have to account for conditions that eat up tire budget... puddles and snow may then spike up to 80% but still will keep you "safe."

Or learn some "advanced" driving. Donuts in wet parking lots only helps a little as it assumes constant road conditions and not a spike with abruptly changing conditions.

hicabi

I totally agree. However, I doubt that the OP was driving with his eyes closed. Under the right light conditions, a small patch of gravel will disappear. Driving close to the end of the limits, no matter how careful you are, there is a level of trust to conditions all around you.

This is one of the reasons I do not ride as often anymore... Once a fly managed to get into my full face helmet while I was riding...

Yes, many of us, including me, are making careless mistakes. But for others, no matter how careful you are, stuff happens, for reasons beyond one's control.

idea-catalyst

One of the aspects of this thread that I find interesting is the "difference" of RWD cars. My high-school days (read "learning about driving) were in the '60s and RWD muscle cars were the norm. Everyone knew how they went squirrely when you powered through a turn. It was those newfangled FWD cars that were really weird: back off on the gas around a turn, go into engine brake mode, and watch your ass-end lead you around the corner.

RWD and FWD behave very differently - and even then there were some very interesting weight distribution differences with the slightly more common rear-engine cars.

It's all about what you become familiar with. If you're driving something new to you (and when you're young, almost everything is), experiment with it in a safe environment before you start pushing the limits in unfamiliar territory.

aCab

Lol, there is nothing wrong with driving in the rain - the car handles it fine. I was able to carry it through deal's gap this weekend, at night in the rain and fog faster than most people would go during the day. It's all about being able to control the car - and you can't control the car if you've never pushed its limits (you're probably not pushing the limits if you've never redlined it)