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
It feels that way because usually when you skid, you’re trying to turn.
So imagine you’re turning right and the cars skids – your instinct is to keep trying to aim the car to the right, where you’re trying to go.
As the back is skidding out to the left (clockwise from above), steering the front to the right (clockwise) just helps the spin (clockwise).
It’s different if you’re going straight and start to skid – the back starts to spin out (clockwise) but your instinct then would be to steer left (anti-clockwise) to keep aiming the car straight ahead where you were going. That’s steering into the skid.
So if the back of the car wants to spin one way, steering the front of the car to spin opposite helps control the skid instead of making it worse.
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