The Pro Trucker's Guide to Winter Driving You might as well brush up, thinking about it can help knock the rust off the skills even before they are necessary. Thanks: Newmark's Door: "The Pro Trucker's Guide to Winter Driving" More below. The main thing to remember is no matter how well honed your skills, it is unlikely the guy next to you is anywhere as good, and he is probably intent on taking you out, so just stay home. Ok, now for some Russian Driving School videos. Remember the rules in Russia are different than in the rest of the world. First, keep the accelerator pedal firmly pressed to the floor at all times. Once you start losing traction, in the rest of the world you would let up on the accelerator, but in Russia that would be a mistake, You cannot roll the car unless it is traveling at a pretty good clip, well, unless you get a solid hit from a friend! Ok, keeping those rules in mind, watch and learn: One other thought, I had a senior partner back in the 1990s who was a bit daft when it came to driving. He was driving one winter from Portland to Salt Lick City, Utah. Portland doesn't get much cold winter weather, so he never developed any winter driving skills. He has just picked up a new law firm car, a Lincoln Towncar. As he rolled out through the Columbia River Gorge, he put the car on CruiseControl and got comfortable, even though the road through the Gorge was an icy, snowy mess. He didn't even make it to The Dalles before the car's rear end decided to race the front end down the highway. Somewhere during the third or fourth spin, he realized that he had to do something to turn off the CruiseControl, he was confused, and, as he told the story, it wasn't until about the 15th spin that he realized that hitting the breaks would work. Right, hard breaking during a spin was only slightly better than giving the CruiseControl its head. The car immediately slammed into the inside barrier and ricocheted off across the road and into the opposite barrier. He didn't say how many time the car repeated this maneuver, but we went down to the repair yard to look at the car, and my guess it was quite a few. The car looked like a heavy tinfoil auto replica which has been folded, spindled and mutilated by a giant child. I don't remember a straight line on the vehicle. Of course, I told him, "No trouble, that should buff right out." A few weeks later he was driving a company car again, I suspected the first one was totaled, but I never asked. I always marveled at his ability to survive his automobile driving incompetence unscathed. Another time he was driving to work early in the morning. He and I tried to one-up each other on who could get to work earliest. As a result, traffic was usually light, but that morning he left for work late. Instead of altering his behavior, he got into the car, strapped in, and folded the newspaper around the steering wheel so he could read it while he drove to work. Within a mile or so of entering the highway, he was in traffic, reading the paper and not paying attention. When the semi-tractor ahead of him applied the brakes, he just kept coming. He said he realized something was wrong a few seconds before impact and applied the brakes. It didn't help. Something on the tractor hit the car about mid-grill pressed the hood back, blew out the windshield, and peeled off the engines top end. The collision peeled off the heads, valves, fuel injection, the whole shooting match. I don't know how but the A-frames were left unscathed, and the frame was unsprung. We went down to the wrecking yard to observe his handy work; his wrecks were something of a work of art. I would get a door dink; he would peel the top end off an engine. I didn't think that could happen! Gene if you are out there, Booyah!!!! I finally got fed up and bought a 1976 Toyota Land Cruiser wagon which had been rolled on the beach. That car ran great, looked like crap, and I won every intersection staredown from then on. No one had the temerity to push out into an intersection; I was going to win that collision. The odd thing about the Toyota was I sold it for much more than I bought it for, to my brother, who five or six years later sold it for more than what he paid me. The damn thing was a money maker! One last video and the reason I stay home. Portlandians driving on slick roads:
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