Last updated on August 7th, 2023 at 12:30 pm
Imagine your car starts skidding when you are driving down a steep terrain of the road and you are all alone with no one to guide you. In this situation what would you do? There could be many valuable tips or guidelines on how to regain control of a vehicle in a skid, but the most important thing is to stay calm and not to panic and to be aware of the correct techniques in handling the situation.
What is the reason for your car to skid? Main reason could attribute to losing a proper grip on the slippery condition of the road. Having bald and worn out tires could attribute to skidding. In this situation all the tires of your vehicle could go in to one side or only your front tires or rear tires could go in to one side.
Prevention is better than cure. Therefore, it is important for you to know how to prevent your vehicle skidding if ever you face such a situation. Here are some valuable tips in the event your car is skidding:
9 Key points to avoid vehicle skidding
1. Reduce speed – It is vital to ensure that you reduce speed of your vehicle especially when taking bends and on rainy and wet days. There is a high tendency for skidding on rainy and wet days as the road is slippery. Hence, being alert and driving with controllable speed could avert skidding.
2. Take off your foot from the accelerator – To regain control of a vehicle in a skid it is important not to panic. Take off your foot from the accelerator pedal and do not step on the brake pedal.
3. Hard breaking – It is a common sight to see most people panic and step hard on the brake pedal when the vehicle is skidding which is something you should never do. Hard breaking will move the weight of the vehicle to a side causing the vehicle to spin or turn upside down or even run off the road. Hence, it would be prudent to slowly and steadily press on the breaks gradually when the vehicle is skidding.
4. Steering into a skid – Slowly and gently steering into the skid and then straightening your steering wheel thereafter would certainly help to regain control of a vehicle in a skid. Once this is done you could drive as usual. Unfortunately, most people do not believe in gently steering into a skid. All it takes is slightly to steer the vehicle into the skid to regain control of a vehicle when it is skidding.
5. Engaging the gear in to Neutral – A complete wrong and incorrect advice is to put your gear in to neutral when the vehicle is skidding. If this is done there is absolutely no control of the vehicle and further taking off your hands in engaging the gear at this crucial time could be very foolish. This is something you should never, ever do. This is applicable to both manual and automatic vehicles.
6. Maintaining a fair distance – Many accidents resulting from skidding occur in today’s world because of not maintaining a fair distance between the vehicles in front of you and in behind you. Also, in a situation of the vehicle skidding the crisis can be managed if you maintain a fair distance between each vehicle because if not you will press the break peddle suddenly which will result in skidding and your vehicle is bound to bump on to other vehicles in front of you and also the vehicle right behind you may also crash on to your vehicle causing a huge damage to your vehicle as well as the others which may also cause your life under threat.
7. Hold on to the steering wheel firmly – When your vehicle is skidding the normal tendency is to panic and let go off the steering wheel. If this happens there will be no control of your vehicle and the vehicle could end up in disaster and so will be the life of the driver and the passengers. Hence it is of paramount importance that the steering wheel of your car is held firmly at the time of skidding. Once you have regained control over your vehicle you could gently steer it the way you need to go.
8. Tires inflated at the proper levels – Always remember to check the air pressure of all the tires regularly and ensure that the air pressure is pumped at the recommended pressure levels. This is something many drivers fail to do as they feel that this is not so important. What they fail to understand is that if the tires are not inflated properly these tires will not have a proper grip on the road and chances of skidding will be more. It is vital to remember that not only under inflated tires even the over inflated tires could attribute to skidding as both under inflated and over inflated tires could result in the tires not having a good grip on the road resulting in skidding.
9. Worn out tires – Many do not replace the worn-out tires at the appropriate time maybe due to financial reasons or due to negligence. Worn out tires has hardly any grip on the road and this has been one of the many reasons for skidding. It will be too late to realize that investing on tires and replacing them will be very much cheaper than spending on colossal sums of money in on repairing the vehicle in the event it meets with an accident due to skidding. What about the injuries to the driver and the passengers resulting from such accidents. We have heard of so many incidents where valuable life has been lost and people being crippled for life.
So, I believe that you have learnt some valuable tips, which will save you and others from serious injuries.