Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

As one of the poor unfortunate souls that got caught up in the snow chaos last night.

I am sick of hearing the authorities being slagged off for not reacting properly. The issue last night were the morons who are clueless as to what to do.

A muppet in a Merc, hit the crash barrier 4 times from stationary.

Foreign trucks took to the hard shoulder and parked up. Stopping recovery trucks/ gritters and emergency services getting past. Cars driving 5 foot apart at 50mph on 6" of snow

I have never slalomed through jack knifed lorries before, very strange evening.

Sorry to hear of your misfortune, the snow really came down heavy and before it all started, I saw gritters out..
I totally agree with you.. drivers not having a clue when driving in snow and or icy conditions, driving home in my Seat with a set of Avon" ice touring" snow tyres ( which are great BTW) huge difference to the stock low profile tyres) I decided to put them on 2 years ago after driving in snow with the stock tyres and hearing reports of a bad winter ahead, ( which lasted about 4 days..))) I have them on a set of second hand alloys so I can change all 4 wheels to summer stock rims myself.

Anyway... cars were overtaking me at speed in the outside lane of dual carriageway which was totally white, no tracks and at least 4" snow, I was wincing expecting them to slam into me, some of them were BMW and Merc's, low profile tyres and rear wheel drive, I was so relieved when I got home without some idiot crashing into me, thing is, I would have thought most of the drivers were not young and inexperienced due to the cost of those cars...
My dear little Porsche is staying at home curled up in front of the fire well away from these bad people..))

I sympathise with your rant Sean, the standard of driving in this country is below par.

However, until you've driven with British and Belgian people in the Alps in winter you will have seen nothing

I'll put some of the video up if I can, I've been overtaken coming down a fully snow covered hairpin mountain pass at a speed I thought was the maximum for safety only to be overtaken by several cars, a tour bus and a lorry!

Something Ive been saying for many years, its not the roads, its the morons on it.

My girlfriend gets annoyed with me if we drive anywhere because I spend so much time spotting bad driving and flashing people to give them half a clue that what they've just done is no where near the correct standard of driving.

The problem we have today is similar to motorsport, cars are so safe that it gives people a feeling of invincibility so 70mph in 2 inches of snow feels fine apparently! And to be honest most modern cars will do 70mph in 2 inches of snow. The issues comes when trying to stop doing 70mph, but most people don't think that far a head and will only ever find out that stopping wont be easy when its to late.

My final point for now is the "Auto" function most cars now have for lights, wipers, mirrors, gear ect ect. Its come to my attention that "Auto" means I don't have to think or even bother to check that the car is doing what its supposed to.

I do enjoy a good rant but I will post something less ranty later

Good point on the automated side of the car.

I fear the lane change warnings, speed limit displays, blind spot warnings in the mirror, adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency stopping and self parking.

All are currently available as standard or options on widely available cars now and this is going to make standards really decline.

I got stuck but only a small delay.

As you say the morons are the problem.
My local town became gridlocked because motorists blocked roundabouts and traffic light junctions. No noticeable accidents but just preventing traffic from flowing.
Saw two people have a little slide and then just get out and start walking. left cars in middle of road!

Where roads were free from traffic, country lanes and minor A roads, the traffice was moving and just a little slower than normal.

Driver training and awareness is where the problems start.

Dont get me started on driving standards. arghh. drivers are taught to pass a test in this country, not to drive! i had my daughter driving at silverstone rookie school at 14, but before then on private industrial estates and land where there was loads of room. My dad did the same to me.
At 15 she is a better driver than her mum, Bring on driver training at school and compulsory skid training, with refresher courses every few years.

Oh what an excellent rant. It shows that us car enthusiasts think very consciously about our driving.

I wish for the sake of safety, that we had more snow in this country, as that would give people more experience, and even the chance to have snow lessons.

I'm disappointed that some people accuse the government of not gritting enough, as if with enough grit to envelop the whole country, we can somehow just magic the snow away.

I was once driving my van on a motorway where the outside lane was icy and therefore not being used. I came up behind a slow truck, and chose to very carefully pull out and use the outside lane, barely touching the accelerator, steering really gently, and didn't touch the brakes. I made it. However, the guy in the BMW behind me took that to mean that the lane was fine, and he would be invincible. Seconds later he powered into the lane, spin it round and smashed into the barrier.

I'm also glad not to have traction control or ABS on either of my vehicles, because it has taught me to react to the conditions.

Not long after I passed my test, I worked on an old RAF airfield and in the winter theres no one around and no one to upset. A couple of us took out cars and one at a time drove around nipping the hand brake and trying to correct it and learning how much of each pedal and steering we could use until we know roughly how to hold on to a car if it tried to get away from you in slippery conditions.

Maybe it was illegal ect ect but it taught me many valuable lessons to the point that a few years back I had been following my mum as she was taking her car for MOT and I was bringing her home. She turned into a corner under steered wide, slammed on the brakes and just ploughed into an on coming car. Luckily both were only doing about 15mph. Both came out unhurt.

I managed to use some skills learned on my airfield day to get my car stopped and avoid a 3 car pile up!

Drive to work, down 5 miles off country roads, park my car 5 min walk from the job as it grinds out on the clints driveway. Where I park there's a hill that joins the road on a bend. So I went back shovled all the snow way from car and junction and spread some grit along the hill, hopefully no will now slid down hill in to my car.

I used to play in the empty lorry park at work in my Capri and BMW when it was snowy or icy.

My skid training was similar to Broady. I was an apprentice at RAE Farnborough & we worked in a massive hanger. Outside the hanger was a pan, tarmac around 200 x 160yds.
In the winter it would never thaw out & the technique was as your mate drove back from lunch across the pan you'd grab the handbrake & hold the button in & give it a couple of hard pulls!
Your mate in between questioning your parentage would flail away at the wheel & get it under control. He'd then do the same to you the next day while you were driving.

Later on we hired Maidstone police skidpan & have a Sunday dancing around the cones in all manner of cars.

We have some pretty big industrial eastes, more ice then snow it was quite fun 2 learn just how 2 drive on snow, and play a little too. I could get the car 2 spin 360 and then drive on almost seamlessly. Got mixed reaction from the workers, men clapped and woman spoke there heads. Won't be driving in the snow again unnessery not worth the corsoison worries

We have something in common Jim....I worked for RAE too, but at Bedford.

Mick

Small world, I flew up there at one point on a DH Dove to look at a piece of windtunnel kit. Both Bedford & Farnborough are shadows of their former selfs though. Lots of memories of Farnborough as I was there from 72-78. Did 3 airshows whilst I was there.