How to recover a fishtailing RWD vehicle

DannyDan · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:34

So I was driving along an A-road yesterday when the skies opened and it started pouring down (with what I thought was rain).

I had cruise control on, which I set to a lower speed when it started raining. Suddenly my car (an e60 525d, so RWD) started wildly fishtailing, so I disengaged the cruise control which only seemed to completely throw the car out of balance. The next few seconds are a bit of a blur but involved clinging on for dear life whilst I headed towards the central reservation, then towards the grass bank on the other side, and towards the central reservation again. This repeated itself a few times over what seemed an eternity but was probably 10-20 seconds.

Whilst it was happening I thought there was no way I was going to regain control of the thing and I was going to end up in the central reservation. Then, out of nowhere, the car seemed to regain traction and I was able to bring it back in to a straight line.

I pulled over shortly afterwards in order to clean off my soiled pants and realised that it was actually hailstones that had been falling, so I presume the car had lost traction on what was effectively a layer of ice.

So aside from the fact that I was driving too fast for the conditions, once the car had started fishtailing is there any "correct" course of action that I could have taken to recover it earlier?

SoliD · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:39

Keep the power constant and steer into the slide and slowly bring it out. Not that this will happen as your first instinct in this situation unless you have lots of training is to shove on the brakes and steer in multiple directions wildly.

Gaygle · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:43

I think you probably experienced the wonder that is DSC/ESP - it's a fantastic invention. It saved my behind the other day as i came round a NSL corner to just see thick mud lying across the road.

Housey · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:46

I suspect you were aquaplaning based on the conditions and your description, though perhaps the rear end being lighter was moving more. In simple terms with oversteer you need to turn into the skid, with the right level of steering input and a power reduction but most people panic, over compensate and get into a tank slapper.

In conditions where all 4 wheels loose traction all the systems in the world will do little to help you and as I said above I suspect this was more likely than simple oversteer as the traction control might have caught that better.

In simple terms oversteer is turn into the skid and reduce power, understeer is a case of coming off the power to get the traction back but again there are all sorts of variations on this based on the driven wheels etc etc etc

rodenal · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:47

As above its difficult when you've got no idea the car is about to step out but its basically a case of not changing the throttle position and counter steering then once you've got a bit of control lift.off very slightly - if you've never really had to correct anything I can pretty much guarantee you'll over do it on the opposite lock hence the total changes of direction

mjt · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:58

What tyres have you got on the rear, and how much tread do you have?
How fast were you going? (be honest)

sovietspybob · 14 Oct 2012 at 21:58

Get yourself on a skid course, it'll be the best 100 odd quid you'll ever spend!

After a morning of repetitively having the car lose the back end catching it, it becomes 2nd nature and it takes away the blind panic when it happens to you in real life.

As you're only on the wirral get down to here http://www.angleseycircuit.com/performance-driving-centre/skid-control

I managed to do it free through work but would have happily paid the price myself for how much safer i feel on the road now. Its saved me several times on track days with being able to calmly correct a massive slide and carry on without any panicking, and im sure it'll continue to help me if we get one of those bad winters again.

Sin_Chase · 14 Oct 2012 at 22:09

Your perceived 10-20 seconds was probably closer to 2-5 seconds. 20 seconds is a LONG time.

[TW]Fox · 14 Oct 2012 at 22:10

The odd thing here is that you disengaged the cruise - the cruise should have been automatically disengaged when the DSC activated, which it should have done immediatly.

Jono8 · 14 Oct 2012 at 22:16

i had a brown pants moment yesterday on my way to work but in FWD guise ( Octavia VRS). Put far too much power down in 2nd gear on a wet and greasy bend. Traction control just basically gave me a big slap on the rist thankfully and wouldnt let me put any more power down.

No ESP and i reckon i would have been in a hedge

Clarkey · 14 Oct 2012 at 23:32

If it is major out of control then dip the clutch and steer it back in line or spin it away from solid objects.

Frozennova · 14 Oct 2012 at 23:51

Jono8 said:
i had a brown pants moment yesterday on my way to work but in FWD guise ( Octavia VRS). Put far too much power down in 2nd gear on a wet and greasy bend. Traction control just basically gave me a big slap on the rist thankfully and wouldnt let me put any more power down.

No ESP and i reckon i would have been in a hedge

ESP can be dangerous in situations like that as it can invoke lift off oversteer in situations like that.

Jono8 · 14 Oct 2012 at 23:58

ManLoveRulesOK said:
ESP can be dangerous in situations like that as it can invoke lift off oversteer in situations like that.

I was exiting the bend so had pretty much finished turning. I just put to much power down in to lower a gear for the road surface.

DannyDan · 15 Oct 2012 at 07:52

mjt said:
What tyres have you got on the rear, and how much tread do you have?
How fast were you going? (be honest)

The rear tyres may have been a contributing factor, they're on just over 3mm of tread. They're Dunlop Sport SP01s. Cruise control was set at 70ish, maybe slightly less.

[TW]Fox;22960950 said:
The odd thing here is that you disengaged the cruise - the cruise should have been automatically disengaged when the DSC activated, which it should have done immediatly.

It's possible that it did disengage itself before I hit the button to disengage it.

DannyDan · 15 Oct 2012 at 07:54

Clarkey said:
If it is major out of control then dip the clutch and steer it back in line or spin it away from solid objects.

My main aim was to prevent it hitting the central reservation barrier... so although steering into the skid may have been the correct thing to do it wasn't my first reaction on heading straight towards it

godinman · 15 Oct 2012 at 07:58

You must've steered into the skid, as that would've been away from the central reservation.

Scania · 15 Oct 2012 at 11:02

DannyDan said:
The rear tyres may have been a contributing factor, they're on just over 3mm of tread.

Do the front tyres have quite a bit more tread? - this, low tread on rear, good tread on the front, would make the rear end wayward in this sort of scenario imo.

Morba · 15 Oct 2012 at 11:10

I'm amazed that in a split second you attempted to turn off cruise control. What were you doing with your feet during these few seconds of lost control?

shoes · 15 Oct 2012 at 11:14

Ask Shad.

Django x2 · 15 Oct 2012 at 11:23

Something is seriously wrong with your car if this is the actual course of events.

The split second the car detects instability, cruise control is disengaged automatically (as Fox said). You would know if it had disengaged itself as it "bongs" at you.