Bad weather doesn't always mean there has to be bad driving

By: James Shomar

Posted: 12/2/08

Winter has arrived, and I bet you're wondering "is there anything I can or should do to prepare for it?" The simple answer is yes - there is, and it doesn't have to be expensive either.

Snow tires are the big item everyone wonders if they need or not. Well, that depends on what tires are on your car. If you have relatively new all-seasons tires you may not, but if they are worn or are summer performance tires, snow tires might be a good idea.

When putting them on, it's important to know what type of wheels are on your car. Is the car front, rear or all-wheel drive? While putting them on all four wheels certainly won't hurt you, you can save a couple hundred bucks if you only put them on whichever set of wheels actually drives the car.

Despite the rumors, front-wheel drive is not necessarily better than rear-wheel drive in the snow. It really depends more on how you drive and what sort of road you're on. Highways and tight turns tend to favor front-wheel drive cars, but get caught going up a steep hill and you may start going backwards.

Remember how to drive each, especially when it comes to corners. Front-wheel drive cars will have a tendency to push the nose wide or understeer. This essentially means you'll turn the wheel and nothing happens; you'll keep going straight on. Rear-wheel-drive cars oversteer, which means exactly what it sounds like. Turn the wheel and even under partial throttling the wheels will kick the back out and spin you around into a circle.

To prevent any accidents from occurring, there are a few tricks of the trade you can remember. In a front-wheel-drive car, the important thing is to turn into the corner earlier than you normally would. Try to use as much road and as little steering as you can, accelerating out of the corner rather than into it. In a rear-wheel-drive car, you want to do almost the opposite. Take the corner a bit wider and later than you normally would. Make sure not to accelerate until the wheels are almost perfectly straight.

If you do find yourself in a slide and the back starts kicking out, you must let off the gas pedal and counter steer. Counter steering means turning into the slide. But make sure not to over-correct it because once the wheels catch, it would just send you into a slide on the other side of the car.

Most accidents occur because people overestimate the abilities of their cars.
You see people driving tiny SUVs thinking they can go over 70 mph on a snow-covered road, but not all SUVs are exempt from bad weather conditions. Especially if they have what I like to call "urban soft roaders," like a Toyota Rav4 or Hyundai Santa Fe, because let's be honest: they are about as good at off-roading as Stevie Wonder is at hopscotch.

When it's all said and done, it's not what you drive but how you drive it. You may have an old Hummer H1 military vehicle, but if you go 80 down a highway with black ice, you're going to crash. The biggest things are to take it slow, stay calm and think before you do something.

James Shomar is a freshman biomedical engineering major. He recommends that if you "Prepare for the worst you'll perform the best." He can be reached at jashomar@syr.edu.