Lost control, what happened? What to do next time?
Discussion
Driving a Mk1 MX5 on decent Toyo Proxes, generally found them good in wet and maybe too good in the dry IYKWIM.
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Ben
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Ben
ywouldi said:
Driving a Mk1 MX5 on decent Toyo Proxes, generally found them good in wet and maybe too good in the dry IYKWIM.
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Ben
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Ben
Steer into the slide (back ends moves to the right, you steer to the right) which I assume is what you did although you say the opposite, also feather the throttle to remove the excess torque which provoked the slide. If you remove too much throttle and start applying engine braking you can make the problem much worse by inducing lift-off oversteer, which can be far harder to control than power induced oversteer.
If you have just got a little bit of a slide, the above should be enough to correct the slide if you apply enough correction soon enough.
However, once the car is significantly out of shape and slewing across the road you have got a much harder problem because you aren't just counteracting the oversteer you need to damp down the yaw oscillation. This means adding and removing the correction in phase with the vehicles movement. If ou are only fractionally too slow with this then instead of damping it down you will amplify the oscillation. R_U_LOCAL seemed to take extreme exception to my advice for this, and he's clearly got an awful lot of experience, but my advice if you find yourself in this situation and are in any doubt that you are going to get the slide under control is abandon any attempt to correct the slide, and concentrate on stopping without hitting the scenery. Nail the brakes as hard as possible, lock all four wheels, and come to an ungracefull stop in a straight line. If you do this soon enough, i.e. before the car has picked up a lot of sideways momentum, you stand a very good chance of staying on the carriageway. If you don't manage that, at least you will stay on the carriageway for a good distance and use all available grip to slow down.
If you take the alternative approach of trying to regain grip and get the car back under control you will spend a long time with the car weaving sideways using up a lot of space and not slowing down much. If you try this and fail, then you are likely to hit hard when you hit.
I am certainly not an expert on this but if the back end was sliding to the right, shouldn't you have been steering right not left?
Either way, you obviously tried to correct the skid and failed, so I can only suggest that you do more training in controlling skids and in the meantime be more careful not to provoke them. Maybe your previous success in controlling skids has made you over-confident.
Either way, you obviously tried to correct the skid and failed, so I can only suggest that you do more training in controlling skids and in the meantime be more careful not to provoke them. Maybe your previous success in controlling skids has made you over-confident.
ywouldi said:
Driving a Mk1 MX5 on decent Toyo Proxes, generally found them good in wet and maybe too good in the dry IYKWIM.
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Ben
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Ben
Rather than repeat myself and go over old ground with GV8S
have a read through my post on the subject here... www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=368019
As the Americans say...just my $ ten cents worth...
1) Could there have been a spill of diesel on the road? Was it near a filling station?
2) Not being judgemental Pal, but, if you lost control, you were going too fast or did not have the car set up for the maneouvre.
3) What to do next time?... Avoid there being a next time?
Have a thought about further driver training and get input from guys like RU...look at IAM and RoSPA and later HPC...don't waste time or cash on 20 minute drives on skid pans (stands back to be shot down in flames).
BOF.
1) Could there have been a spill of diesel on the road? Was it near a filling station?
2) Not being judgemental Pal, but, if you lost control, you were going too fast or did not have the car set up for the maneouvre.
3) What to do next time?... Avoid there being a next time?
Have a thought about further driver training and get input from guys like RU...look at IAM and RoSPA and later HPC...don't waste time or cash on 20 minute drives on skid pans (stands back to be shot down in flames).
BOF.
BOF said:
2) Not being judgemental Pal, but, if you lost control, you were going too fast or did not have the car set up for the maneouvre.
Certainly not going too fast, maybe a little heavy footed, but my speed would have been less than 30mph. Will look into advanced driving courses at some point.
[quote=ywouldi]Driving a Mk1 MX5 on decent Toyo Proxes, generally found them good in wet and maybe too good in the dry IYKWIM.
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Interesting, this reminds of an "incident" in my youth.
My first car, Triumph Spitfire Mk2, roundabout, accelerating out, dry, 30/40 mph, 360 spin and continue.
Friend with me said that he had had that there.
RWD, peculiarity of the road surface or what, I don't know.
AWD, that's the best.
Coming across a roundabout in Bedford today in the wet, accelerated reasnobley hard, but certainly not pushing it. Plus not in the best gear for acceleration so wasn't in the right rev range for hard acceleration. The back end slipped to the right, I steered to the left slightly, the back end slid back to the left and I ended up spinning into the other lane. Thank god there was a gap in the traffic, into which I neatly slid.
I think I may have let off the throttle when the inital slide started, but I quite often get a slide in this car on roundabouts and am OK and holding them.
What is the "correct" thing to do in this situation?
Interesting, this reminds of an "incident" in my youth.
My first car, Triumph Spitfire Mk2, roundabout, accelerating out, dry, 30/40 mph, 360 spin and continue.
Friend with me said that he had had that there.
RWD, peculiarity of the road surface or what, I don't know.
AWD, that's the best.
Edited by WhoseGeneration on Tuesday 15th May 19:47
I went on a skid control demonstration some time ago. The instructor added to the usual preachings by adding that it is advantageous to drop the clutch whilst trying to control the skid. The theory being that the wheels are free to do their own thing without being braked (by the driver of the engine) or acelorating. It certainly seemed to work.
jaguarnut said:
I went on a skid control demonstration some time ago. The instructor added to the usual preachings by adding that it is advantageous to drop the clutch whilst trying to control the skid. The theory being that the wheels are free to do their own thing without being braked (by the driver of the engine) or acelorating. It certainly seemed to work.
I'm always very reluctant to teach pressing the clutch in situations like that. If the oversteer has been caused by excessive wheelspin - "power oversteer", then dipping the clutch can help, but if it's oversteer caused by excessive speed, then the sudden weight transfer towards the front can actually make the situation much worse.
You lifted off the gas inducing oversteer, otherwise known as lift off oversteer which sounds like you inadvertantly did, in such situations it's the best option to keep the revs consistant through the corner (or roundabout in this case) then power out on exit, too much gas will see you oversteering and too little ie lift off will also see you oversteer.
Drive your car, dont let your car drive you.
Drive your car, dont let your car drive you.
GreenV8S said:
... my advice if you find yourself in this situation and are in any doubt that you are going to get the slide under control is abandon any attempt to correct the slide, and concentrate on stopping without hitting the scenery. Nail the brakes as hard as possible, lock all four wheels, and come to an ungracefull stop in a straight line.
Certainly controversial advice, but I must say that this approach has kept myself and my vehicle free of scratches, and on tarmac (though facing the wrong way) on more than one occasion. My instances were in one case caused by a road surface which had a grip change mid-corner which I had failed to observe before attacking the corner enthusiastically (mostly stupid on my part), and in another case caused by pure stupidity on my part by proceeding to provoke the car when the signs it was giving me were saying that all was not well. On that occasion, locking all four wheels while I was still sliding sideways but progressing down the carriageway undoubtedly prevented me from sliding up a grass ridge and probably rolling a few times.
Sure, the ideal is not to be out of control in the first place, but when you have lost control, well, bailing out of the manoeuvre while I still had the option has worked for me so far.
I suspect your initial slide and fishtail may have been caused by a brief slippery patch on the road causing the rear to slip and then grip suddenly, though it's also easy to fishtail by winding on too much corrective lock and / or not unwinding the corrective lock quickly enough. Best general advice I ever got on wheel movement during oversteer was to just look and steer where you want to go.
Edited by alfanatic on Thursday 17th May 13:02
Sounds like you over-corrected, which is a common error with oversteer corrections.
Let's look at the steering first, and what to do with the pedals second:
Steering: Remember to only steer as much as is necessary to keep the car going where you want to, and keep your eyes looking forward in the direction that you want to travel. When the slide has finished, your steering wheel should be pointing in the direction that you want to travel. If you still have the opposite lock on after recovery you'll jerk the car into a slide in the opposite direction (momentum will carry it over). Key idea: The idea is that the steering wheel always points where you want to go, (which is where you should be looking) regardless of the rotation of the vehicle. Think of you going down the road, not the car. If you like, think of a plane landing in a crosswind or a hovercraft making a turn. You will find that it will help you enormously if you used fixed input steering in this situation (i.e. don't feed the wheel). You need to be very skilled to rescue a slide if you're feeding the wheel. On track feeding the wheel is the cause of the vast majority of over-corrections), and yes, this does apply to road cars with 3 turns lock to lock.
The other thing that plays a crucial part in what's happening to your car at a time like this is whether you are accelerating or braking. I'm guessing from what you've said that you backed off sharply. The effects of this are twofold: firstly, the weight of your car is moved forwards (the back wheels go light and the fronts squash down), taking grip off the rear wheels, giving it to the front, and making the oversteer worse; and secondly, any weight that is hanging out at the back will be pulled forward by inertia, making the slide worse (like a caravan swinging - backing off makes it swing more).
The answer is to steer accurately out of the slide, and with the throttle you just remove the cause of the slide - if the slide was caused by excess power (as seems the case here) then take that excess power away (but no more), and, at higher speeds, if the slide was caused by backing off then come back on the throttle (but not too much!). If this is too much to take in, the best plan of action is to freeze your feet and concentrate on the steering. To be totally honest, at the relatively low speeds that we achieve on roundabouts and in most driving, accurate steering will rescue the vast majority of rear end slides - just stay calm and steer where you want to go.
I'd definitely reccomend some sort of skid pan or car handling tuition to help you.
Obviously, your main thoughts for the future are not how to correct things like this when they happen, but to avoid them happening in the first place -i.e. action not reaction. Drive in a balanced, gentle and smooth manner and you should never achieve handling imbalances on the road.
Let's look at the steering first, and what to do with the pedals second:
Steering: Remember to only steer as much as is necessary to keep the car going where you want to, and keep your eyes looking forward in the direction that you want to travel. When the slide has finished, your steering wheel should be pointing in the direction that you want to travel. If you still have the opposite lock on after recovery you'll jerk the car into a slide in the opposite direction (momentum will carry it over). Key idea: The idea is that the steering wheel always points where you want to go, (which is where you should be looking) regardless of the rotation of the vehicle. Think of you going down the road, not the car. If you like, think of a plane landing in a crosswind or a hovercraft making a turn. You will find that it will help you enormously if you used fixed input steering in this situation (i.e. don't feed the wheel). You need to be very skilled to rescue a slide if you're feeding the wheel. On track feeding the wheel is the cause of the vast majority of over-corrections), and yes, this does apply to road cars with 3 turns lock to lock.
The other thing that plays a crucial part in what's happening to your car at a time like this is whether you are accelerating or braking. I'm guessing from what you've said that you backed off sharply. The effects of this are twofold: firstly, the weight of your car is moved forwards (the back wheels go light and the fronts squash down), taking grip off the rear wheels, giving it to the front, and making the oversteer worse; and secondly, any weight that is hanging out at the back will be pulled forward by inertia, making the slide worse (like a caravan swinging - backing off makes it swing more).
The answer is to steer accurately out of the slide, and with the throttle you just remove the cause of the slide - if the slide was caused by excess power (as seems the case here) then take that excess power away (but no more), and, at higher speeds, if the slide was caused by backing off then come back on the throttle (but not too much!). If this is too much to take in, the best plan of action is to freeze your feet and concentrate on the steering. To be totally honest, at the relatively low speeds that we achieve on roundabouts and in most driving, accurate steering will rescue the vast majority of rear end slides - just stay calm and steer where you want to go.
I'd definitely reccomend some sort of skid pan or car handling tuition to help you.
Obviously, your main thoughts for the future are not how to correct things like this when they happen, but to avoid them happening in the first place -i.e. action not reaction. Drive in a balanced, gentle and smooth manner and you should never achieve handling imbalances on the road.
Everyone else has covered both the technique for correction and preventative measures you might take so I'll cover what appears to be a less obvious one.
Predict lack of grip. Slow down before you lose it.
If you get a long dry period and then drizzle the roads will be covered in a lovely lubricating layer of moist dust. Its slippy slidy fun if you've got lots of room but on most roads you don't have any room whatsoever to play with. Only one answer: feather the controls and slow down.
Another measure you could take is to sell the MX5 and buy a car with four wheel drive or Stability Control. Loads of acronyms for this PSM, ESC, ESP etc. At least if you suffer a talent shortage in one of these the car will try and fix it for you...
Predict lack of grip. Slow down before you lose it.
If you get a long dry period and then drizzle the roads will be covered in a lovely lubricating layer of moist dust. Its slippy slidy fun if you've got lots of room but on most roads you don't have any room whatsoever to play with. Only one answer: feather the controls and slow down.
Another measure you could take is to sell the MX5 and buy a car with four wheel drive or Stability Control. Loads of acronyms for this PSM, ESC, ESP etc. At least if you suffer a talent shortage in one of these the car will try and fix it for you...
Don said:
Another measure you could take is to sell the MX5 and buy a car with four wheel drive or Stability Control. Loads of acronyms for this PSM, ESC, ESP etc. At least if you suffer a talent shortage in one of these the car will try and fix it for you...
Hopefully it won't come to that!!!!!!
I'm totally with Don on this one though, try and predict what sort of grip you're going to have and try and prevent unwanted loss of traction. Without wishing to be too critical, there's no way you should be getting unwanted handling inbalance on the public road, especially not in an MX5 (maybe an Ultima or Caterham). The only times I've ever had oversteer or understeer in my Elise 111S (present road car), or my previous roads cars (BMW 330i, Caterham VVC, Toyota MR2, Celica Carlos Sainz and AX GT), have been when I have deliberately provoked it on an empty road late at night. You shouldn't really be taken by surprise by a handling imbalance to be brutally honest. Sorry if that sounds harsh
I don't know how you drive, but as a general point, one should be gentle with the controls and operate them in a balanced and sympathetic manner. I reckon about 70% of the people I've ridden with do unimaginable things like increasing lock whilst accelerating, changing gear in a bend, or accelerating on turn-in, which is just asking for trouble.alfanatic said:
[quote=GreenV8S]... my advice if you find yourself in this situation and are in any doubt that you are going to get the slide under control is abandon any attempt to correct the slide, and concentrate on stopping without hitting the scenery. Nail the brakes as hard as possible, lock all four wheels, and come to an ungracefull stop in a straight line.
Trouble is that these days most cars have ABS etc, so a some of your options become limited.
Dipping the clutch usually only works when its very slippy, so wieght transference wouldn't be much of an issue.
Personally, I would have gone and had another go at the corner to try and sort out exactly what I had done wrong and see if I could get it right.
Maybe there was diesel on the road as an earlier poster has mentioned.
Most likely thing I would suspect would be not concentrating fully. Easy done.
andygo said:
...Personally, I would have gone and had another go at the corner to try and sort out exactly what I had done wrong and see if I could get it right...
Good advice. Funnily enough, I did exactly that in the first incident I mentioned in my original post, where I lost control because of a surface change experienced while, um, attempting a 90% handbrake turn *cough*. Anyway, it was all a bit odd, and I couldn't really tell how I'd screwed it up so I tried again, and got exactly the same result... turns out that the road surface on that corner changes from slippery to grippy about halfway around.
Someone mentioned changing cars. Well, I have a footnote on that one too. I've spun three times in my life, all mentioned above. While all of these were all-my-own-work, they did all occur in the same FWD car. I never had a spin in the RWD Alfa that I have owned before this one, nor any of the cars I have run after this one, despite trying similarly adventurous manoeuvres in all of them. The car which I couldn't handle was ... drum roll... a 1996 Opel Kadett.
It's worth mentioning for the record at this stage that if the back goes out in a front wheel drive car you just accelerate and it comes back (with opposite lock of course!). Accelerating solves all the causes of oversteer in one action in a FWD car: weight transfers to the rear of the car giving it more grip, the front is tugged forward pulling you out of the slide, and the acceleration force vector on the front wheels reduces lateral grip possible at the front! An instant solution to everything!! With that in mind, if you accelerate the instant the back end goes out, the only time you'll ever spin is if you're going downhill, or the car isn't powerful enough to manage it (or if you're in the wrong gear). 99.99% of FWD spins can be prevented by being in the right gear and accelerating hard.
The very reason that RWD is tricky on the limit is that you want the weight transfer, but sadly that acceleration vector goes through the rear wheels and reduces their ability to grip laterally, which is where things get tricky as you need to give it throttle, but not too much! - that's the point where most people spin.
The very reason that RWD is tricky on the limit is that you want the weight transfer, but sadly that acceleration vector goes through the rear wheels and reduces their ability to grip laterally, which is where things get tricky as you need to give it throttle, but not too much! - that's the point where most people spin.
IMO even driving very sensibly you can't prevent oversteer in 100% of the cases, so you have to make sure you're prepared to react correctly.
The only way to do this is through training. You need to practice the three common cases - lift off, weight transfer, and power oversteer, until you can catch the car without thinking. Reading on how to lift slightly, or declutch, or steer into the slide but be prepared to correct into the other direction won't help you when you're tired, on the way home in the rainy night, and surprised - unless you've done it a couple of times before.
NB, I've only been "surprised" by oversteer 3 times, and all 3 were in my MX-5. 2x lift off in the dry, 1x overcorrection with tank slapper in the wet. In the Seven and 928, I've had many more oversteer moments, but never unprepared.
-Marin
The only way to do this is through training. You need to practice the three common cases - lift off, weight transfer, and power oversteer, until you can catch the car without thinking. Reading on how to lift slightly, or declutch, or steer into the slide but be prepared to correct into the other direction won't help you when you're tired, on the way home in the rainy night, and surprised - unless you've done it a couple of times before.
NB, I've only been "surprised" by oversteer 3 times, and all 3 were in my MX-5. 2x lift off in the dry, 1x overcorrection with tank slapper in the wet. In the Seven and 928, I've had many more oversteer moments, but never unprepared.
-Marin
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