A rear-wheel drive roadster with fat summer high-performance tires and Tennessee plates apparently says "Stay back a hundred feet, Edna, god only knows what that hillbilly's going to try to do next!" loud and clear in Hoosierese.
(For what it's worth, the traction control light only lit up twice and I only felt the antilock kick in once. Although that last was at the shopping center exit with a really busy street ahead, which made for an exciting half second or so...)
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16 comments:
Ha! It's true - we who live in snowier climes are wary of nonnative motorists. Icedriving is a skill, for sure.
It'll come to you quickly. Hope not too quickly!
Time and distance are everything.
Slick road = more time+ longer distance.
You'll have no problem at all I suspect. Smarter than the average bear.
Oh, I just took it as a combination of experience from years of riding motorcycles in the rain and my early driving experiences with powerful RWD cars on dirt and gravel roads. A V8 Gran Torino is exciting on dirt when "on the one side there was a mountain, and on the other side there wasn't nothin'". ;)
Judging from what I saw, some of the locals could have used those experiences. The newish Impala approaching the stop sign with both front tires locked and snowplowing at a 45* angle was a fascinating spectacle...
I think you'll did us Hoosiers tend to view outsiders with a suspicious eye, period.
*Hate* the feel of antilock braking.
Yeah, it feels like I broke something. That's why I never trigger it. Well, almost never...
If travelling at a brisk rate of speed on dry pavement and a sudden obstacle pops up, it's nice to be able to just stomp the brakes til the pedal bends without worrying about losing steering, because HAL is pumping the calipers for you.
(What most people don't seem to grasp about ABS on ice/snow/water/oil is that the antilock means that you'll drift sideways into the intersection with all four wheels turning rather than locked up like Fort Knox.)
Breda said...
Ha! It's true - we who live in snowier climes are wary of nonnative motorists. Icedriving is a skill, for sure.
5:16 PM, February 20, 2008
Apparently an uncommon one, given the amount of wrecks/locked brakes and wheels flailing maddly from side to side shown on various media outlets.
Tam said...
Yeah, it feels like I broke something.
6:50 PM, February 20, 2008
Thought that was exactly what happened the first time I got on the brakes hard enough to kick on the ABS right as I hit what was reminiscent of a washboard section commonly found on a dirt road. Nothing like the pedal suddenly going to the floor to make a Luddite out of you...
Hi Tam
hope you have fun in the snow, better you than me.Bob picked up the jar yesterday. but no knife was found
Just remember SNOW looks good on post cards and screen savers and thats all .
When I moved to Indiana way back in 2000 I made sure to drop my insurance deductible to $100 because I was sure that I would soon be needing it.
When I left Indiana in 2004 I was still accident-free. That despite the best efforts of suicidal deer that were determined to take me with them.
You may want to drop a couple hundred pounds of cat litter in your trunk until April. Not only will the weight help with the RWD but it makes a dandy traction surface if you get stuck in the snow.
My littermate says there are only three truly international words. Taxi, dollar, and f*ck.
We are glad you made it!
Although I was kind of hoping that you could make it to West Texas....
I could use a next door neighbor like you.
Well at least in another week or two, it will hopefully be gone the ice that is.
But the ice can get you no matter how much time you live up here, as of course we learned in December. Eating an airbag is no fun, & Lady D is still getting over the mental part of it, the ice scares her.
Any chance you could pick up a cheap front-wheel-drive winter beater? A used Ford Escort with 150,000 miles and good Nokian WMR's on it make a heck of a winter car, and the heater/defroster on Fords are usually industrial-strength.
So what if it's so rusty that stuff falls out of the rear? As long as you don't have to do a Fred Flintstone with your feet, a little road-spray into the interior is easily stopped up with a wet/frozen towel.
Apparently Hoosiers are way smarter than my fellow Pennsylvanians. One time I got caught at work by an ice storm when I still had my summer tires on, and drove the whole way home at about a 15 degree angle. My traction was so bad the car wanted to slide off the crown and I had to use kinetic friction continually to keep it on the road. I did not find it a good idea to go very fast. But a bunch of morons with better traction thought it a good idea to tailgate. True, I could not have suddenly stopped using my brakes if I wanted to, but there was a danger of bouncing off something and back into the tailgating car.
In re front wheel drive - I felt a LOT safer with my rear-wheel-drive 4-banger Ranger with 100 lbs of sand and a stick than I do with my automatic front-wheel-drive Taurus with ABS.
Druther have to deal with a loose rear end than losing directional input because the transmission though this was an excellent time to shift (with which decision I disagreed, incidentally)...
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