hey i am a volvo drive and never had an accident or caused one. Im always driving too fast to cause any trouble.
hehe you don't see volvos out here in cali much.. I used to see them alot back in atlanta though, my co-workers wife even drove one- think the reason the car has the best safety rating is because it's guaranteed to wreck!
we in the UK don't require extremely wide lanes to drive in a straight line. my old volvo drives like its on rails, only once had the back end tail free on a roundabout and its a FWD car on budget tires! i would rather drive a volvo than an american classic, odd i know but at least they were using disc brakes in the 1960's!
6 lanes wide and still wasn't enough room for him to regain control? He wasn't hit by anyone, it was all his own doing Just like most drivers on the road that don't know how to properly control a car, he needs to go sit an advanced drivers course. They should be mandatory imo, not advanced. It's crazy that people can so easily get a license and legally drive such a big & heavy vehicle at speeds that can and do cause so much damage to just about anything.
He was on the right outside lane, so no, he didn't have any room to regain control considering there was a car to his left, he only had his lane.. You could argue he *could* have saved it, but that sh*t happens so fast that you can't really say much, just like you couldn't say you would have been able to pull off a perfect recovery for sure.
Don't know yet, we drove it around after getting it towed and it seemed fine, apart from a few grinding noises from panels rubbing on ground/tires. Shop will confirm any other damages soon.
As sorry as I am to hear about what has happened to your friend and his very nice Mazda (and I'm very glad to hear he is uninjured) I am slightly concerned about his ability to drive... In dry conditions and at that speed anyone should be in enough controll of their vehicle to apply their brakes without skidding off the road (with or without ABS). If he was doing 110mph in the wet and lost controll under heavy breaking I can understand that but 70??!! Advise him to go on an advanced driving course or even spend a day on a skid pan, it's awesome fun and you'll be amazed how much you can learn about your car. Failing that go to a large empty car park in wet or snowy weather and just have fun skidding about, you'll learn so much about car controll that may just save your life (or your car) one day.
Its a very different game in rwd car versus a fwd when things go south they can go bad really quickly. I done a 360 in my old Sierra just after passing my test simply by putting a little too much power down coming off a round about, properly daft car to have as a new driver but man do you learn quickly when your back end has a mind of its own.
+1 most rwd cars have virtually no weight over the rear axle, so any rapid changes in the vehicle's dynamics and you soon get a shock.
I've lost it heaps of times in plenty of cars, but this is basically on purpose, when i'm getting a feel for the car and learning how to slide in them in an open space somewhere, away from any traffic. Once i've got about 10 minutes or so of sliding under my belt in a car however, it's very easy to control the car in a slide. Same goes for anyone that has got some experience pushing cars over their limits. If you took that sierra to a big wet car park steveo_mcg, and spent at least 10 minutes sliding around, provided you know the basic concepts of handling a car, you'd be the master of that car. It's like learning how to do tricks on a bmx. You'll probably stuff up a few times at first, but once you've got the feel for it, it's easy. I've been cut off by merging cars and trucks heaps of times in cars, and when on motorbikes over the years, and never slid off the road. It's not like this guy was in an old car, with soggy suspension, no abs and skinny tyres either, which would be alot more understandable, especially for an inexperienced driver. This guy was in a very well balanced, great handling car, with abs and all. I also don't see how he is able to control the car while sliding on grass so as to avoid hitting a pole, but on a dry road, is unable to keep it under control when avoiding someone that is cutting him off. As Whalemeister and i suggested earlier, if you don't want to see him crash again, get him into an advanced drivers course asap
I can +1 to that too as I also RWD (with no TC) and think it's the only way a car should be. If you don't know the how your car handles in a tight situation then you're doomed to failure. Better to find out how your car behaves in a wide open space where you can't hit anything than on a busy road...
Amen. I have worked in Legoland in Denmark a couple of years where i biked to work. Me and some fellow biking coworkers rated drivers, after how dangerous the where: 1: A family in a car who have been driving all night, with 2+ kids in the car, eager to get in the park early. These people are desperate, tired and have no idea where they are going. 2: General tourists from abroad. They cannot find their way, don't know the laws/rules and are too busy doing everything else but watching the road. If they are in a rented car, seek cover. 3: Old people. These traffic jammers dont see a thing, they never use the indicator, but they are slow and easy to predict. 4: Local young gearheads in their tuned VW golf. They drive very fast, not indicating but have good vision and really do brake for pedestrian crossings and bikers. To make matters worse, the town where Legoland is are building roundabouts instead of light-controlled crossings. Work was peaceful, biking was hell.
Just noticed mvaugusta is into his bikes (guess the name should give it away ) and linked it to my biking past, I've only been driving cars for about 5 years but had 8 years biking before that. I think there is something similar in our approach to driving / riding in that you have to know your own limits and then the limits of your vehicle. It's all too easy to get lulled into a false sense of security in a car, you can't feel the wind hitting you and really have little concept of how fast you're going, power steering also removes a great deal of feedback from your hands which further removes you from what you're doing. On a bike you really feel the wind, poking your head over your fairing at speed will jerk your head back pretty sharply, you also feel every slight change in road surface and have a much greater understanding of grip purely because your life depends on it and there is no hiding from the fact that if you mess up on a bike at best it's gonna hurt and I don't even want to mention the worst... In short in a car you feel safe, you believe that the car around you will protect you if you hit anything, 70mph feels calm and sedate on the motorway going in a straight line. If you then break suddenly and yank the steering wheel hard to one side you're gonna find yourself in a facing the wrong way world of hurt no matter what you're driving and that illusion of safety is gone in an instant, hitting a solid stationary object at 70mph is not going to end well in any car. We could all do with learning something from the Finnish, their driving test is much more intensive and even includes a skid pan.
Now THAT'S the way it should be!!! Learning to drive without learning how to handle skids, is like learning to use a pencil without knowing how to use an eraser. You don't have to take him to an advanced driver's course DarkLord, you could always take him to a big wet carpark, one with big open spaces, no poles or curbs, and have him practise sharp corners while slamming on brakes, and also when under power, first at lower speeds and as he gets good at it try it again and again until you can do it at freeway speeds. You just need to find a nice big smooth wet carpark or something like that. If the cops bust you however, it will be alot more expensive than the course.
A: its when your in your lane and driving as you should and some **** decides to cut right in front of you from there lane to get ahead of everyone! leaving you about 1 foot or so to break hard or smash him or her in the ass! youtube it mate! (cut off) people like this should be banned from driving for life casue they will never learn! just think of how many crashes they must have caused! (you all ****in wasters) thanks for the lifes you have dammaged or killed! glad your mate is ok tho dude! he is ****in lucky!!!
This is for thse who suggest to get the guy to learn to drive his 8 better.. I agree, however, it is what it is and I believe he was driving with DSC turned off (he wouldn't say if it was on or not), his reaction was also pretty violent for being cut-off and may have just been from panic. Either way, what happened, happened, and I've suggested he come with me to the track days on weekends and do some drifting
