Bad luck story

[Sabe]

This is one kind of winter surprise that we have, due to poor road cleaning on a wet and snowy day this wet slush stays on the road, then next day when it gets -10C or so below there will be ice tracks on the road, 1 to 3 cm thick depending of situation. It ok to drive if you are careful, but as happened here, our missus is not so experienced driver and she apply brake at the wrong place and that's all it needed, car goes out of control in a second, and if car goes sideways then it's almost impossible to recover from it because these ice rails take your car where ever they want, driver becomes passenger so to speak.
I'm not happy and there was a lot of bad luck, like this tree happen to be in wrong place at the wrong time, but then again, there could have been oncoming traffic, like a bus. Bumper did it's job and took most of the blow, bonnet and small parts are gone, speed was about 50 kph at the beginning of event and i have to say that modern cars are very well built, softly stopping, bending metal as planned.
And just for information, this kind of event is not so...good but what can you say, everybody can't handle car like a pro.
What i got from this video is explanation how she managed to do that on a straight road.
Time stamp is wrong btw, we don't have daylight at that hour.

 

[reverend]

That looks like it did just let go - hope she's ok anyway.

I'm not a fan of ice - the estate I live on can be an absolute death trap when it's cold but even that's nothing compared to what you have here!

 

[petepete]

looks like she braked for the anticipation of the bend, maybe too hard or brakes pulled to one side..

either way I wouldn't drive as fast as 30mph on that road as you are driving on ice and a quick prod of the brakes will show you braking is reduced to quite nothing...

and I would poo my pants going down hill on ice !!!!

 

[Sabe]

Yes i think she froze after she noticed what is going to happen, in theory it's easy to recover from that, just press clutch and steer, but usually it happen so fast that it should be just a reflex.

 

[reverend]

I remember years ago I drove from Belper to Chesterfield via the back roads of Ashover through snow and ice - made it all the way to work and then there was a massive patch of black ice where they hadn't put any salt down and I slid into the wall at about 2mph and no matter what I tried it wouldn't recover. It was quite amusing as it just slid so slowly. Ten people after me did the exact same thing!

It doesn't help we don't tend to use winter tyres here. I'm as guilty of that as anyone - I always mean to get some but so far I never have!

 

[Sabe]

It doesn't help we don't tend to use winter tyres here. I'm as guilty of that as anyone - I always mean to get some but so far I never have!

Having two sets of tyres is really pain in the...especially now when we must have tyre pressure monitor system in every new car.
I'm very lucky to get a toyota programming cable from china, otherwise they want like 10 to 40 euros every time i change other sets of tyres to my car, twice a year that is.

 

[Signhere]

Ruts are nasty stuff (very unpredictable). The back end usually break away first though.

Nothing beats actual experience. She will be a better driver.