So there was this video of a woman managing to avoid a crash by steering in a special way. I’m learning to drive rn and people keep saying if you skid you steer into it, but isn’t that the opposite of what it feels like you would do?
In: Physics
When you are skidding, your wheels are already not steering in the direction you want. They are just acting as a (poor) brake against the direction of motion.
By aligning the wheels back to the direction of motion, they will once again be able to roll somewhat, and your steering will influence the direction of travel and help you recover.
Counter-intuitive, will send you closer to the edge of the road than you want, but better to be able to steer into a glance-blow than a side-on whack whatever you’re headed towards with zero control.
Skidding – whether through speed, or because you’re on ice – renders all the wheel functions useless. Braking is useless. Steering is useless.
Rally drivers and other experts can deliberately skid to the exact point that they will want to regain control, most drivers will just fight the skid and think the pedals/wheel are going to do something and they won’t.
You’re already moving at speed sideways against the wheel… nothing you do in terms of fighting, or braking will help. Let it skid, steer back into control (even if that’s towards the thing you don’t want to skid into), and then carefully pull it back away. You need to “herd” the direction of travel closer to what you want, not run against the stampede.
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