Droppin' Wheels

One of the largest causes of vehicle crashes is when a driver runs off the shoulder of the road and yanks the vehicle back onto the road.

In all my years of instructing, this is one exercise that I continually hear parents ask if it is taught in certain schools. The fact is, even in some of the best driving schools in the country, this situation is not taught. And when I say taught, I mean getting drivers behind the wheel and let them do it the wrong way and then teach them the correct way.

Why is it that so few schools teach this? Well there are several reasons. Space is always an issue. In order to teach this properly and to give the students room to make mistakes, you need a lot of runoff room. Another reason is vehicles and damage. A lot of schools have the students drive their own cars in the school. There are positives and negatives to doing this and for sure one of the negatives is that most people won’t want to start sliding their car around wearing out the tires. Or, driving it off the road where debris may be thrown up and damage the vehicle. Even in schools where a manufacturer provides the vehicles, it is still a concern with regards to damage to the vehicle.  Lastly, to be instructed properly it takes a good instructor, plenty of time and a good course set up to do this correctly. A lot of driving schools these days have to focus more on making money rather than training the driver. Especially when they are supported by a manufacturer. The reality for them is that the manufacturer is not a “driving school”, they are in the business of selling cars. How do they sell cars at a driving school? They put you in the seat of their car and get you to do some really cool fun stuff that makes you feel like their car is the best in the world and doing what you just did and now you HAVE to have that brand of car. Hey, it’s great marketing, but what happens a lot of times is that the school becomes more about “butts in seats” and “throughput” rather than educating drivers. But I digress form that topic for now.

With all of that said, I think it should be a mandatory exercise in any good training course to teach off road recovery. If it is set up properly there is no damage to the vehicle, minimal tire wear and a HUGE educational benefit to the student. 

I know of one school that is teaching this exercise now and it is working good. The program is only a half day school so the students don’t get quite enough time behind the wheel or personal instruction, but what it does do is give them a sense of what its like and let them see that there is a proper way to handle it.

So what normally get reported in these situations? Well, in the news you will typically read something like this:

“…………the driver ran off the shoulder of the road, over corrected and crashed the vehicle.” Sound familiar?

I have a bit of an issue with the above statement because often times it gets used improperly. In a lot of cases it’s not necessarily an “overcorrection” that caused the crash, but rather a lack of “recovery.”

This usually goes down one of two ways. One way is that the driver runs of the edge of the road, panics, turns the steering wheel hard to the left. The vehicle responds by truning hard left. The driver is surprised by the reaction of the vehicle and does nothing else with the wheel so the vehicle ends up in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. 

The driver simply ran off the right side of the road and jerked the wheel so hard that they drove themselves into the ditch on the other side of the road. That's one scenario.

There’s a reason I posted this topic right after the skid control post, they go hand in hand. Again this is another one of those hard to describe in text scenarios, but I will do my best.

      Okay, lets say you are driving down the road and you run off the right shoulder. For simplicity sake we will just say it’s a grassy shoulder with minimal drop off. 

You realize you have run off the road with your right side tires. You panic, turn the steering wheel hard to the left. The front tires are the first ties to have both on the grippy asphalt. However, now you have your right rear still on grass and because you are turning the wheel to the left, the vehicles weight is on the right side of the vehicle. So, good grip up front because both front tires are now on asphalt. Not good grip in the rear because your right rear is on grass, and that’s where a lot of the vehicles weight is at this point. So what happens? The back of the vehicle starts to slide to the right. OVERSTEER!

So you recognize that the rear end is sliding to the right. You remember drivers ed; “steer into the skid”, so you steer to the right. You have managed to stop the rotation, good. And now the rear tires come back onto the grippy asphalt and what does the vehicle do? It HOOKS! Hard to the right. Why? Because you were not taught about eyes in the right place, and you were not taught about RECOVERY. 

 This means as the rear end was sliding to the right, and you steered to the right, you were also LOOKING to the right and when the rear tires regained grip you didn’t take out the corrected steering input, so the front tires were pointing to the right. So guess what? The vehicle went to the right! And somehow we will blame this situation on the vehicle. It will sound something like;  “I don’t know what happened. The car just took off to the right and I ended up in the ditch.” NOOOO, What happened was, the car did exactly what you told it to. you told the car to go to the ditch, so it did, in a big way. Lol

Now I just described a scenario that takes about a second to happen on real life. So there is no way for you, in the real world, to “think” about this as it’s happening. You don’t have time to think about it. Your reactions to these types of situations have to be instinctive. The only way for that to be the case is to train so that you have some muscle memory.

So, without being able to put you in a car and show you here’s how I will put in to text how to handle the Off Road Recovery situation.

Should you run off the road, first and foremost, DON’T PANIC. Panic will NOT help. It will cause you to tense up and over react with the steering wheel.

Next, don’t look off the shoulder of the road. You know you have run off the road, you don’t need to visually confirm it. Look up and ahead for your intended path.

Retain a firm grip on the wheel. Don’t choke the wheel, but hold it firm. If the shoulder is rough you don’t want the wheel jerked out of your hands.

Ease your foot off the accelerator. And GRADUALLY steer the vehicle back onto the asphalt. As you are bringing the vehicle back onto the asphalt you can expect some jerking of the vehicle. Do not over react to this either. Remember; keep your eyes out ahead of you. This will help you ensure that the vehicle is pointed in your intended direction.

Should the rear of the vehicle start to oversteer, you will need to do C.P.R. (see previous post)

As long as you don’t panic, this situation can be a non-issue. But if you panic and start doing excessive or random things with the steering wheel, you can turn a non-issue into a life-threatening situation.

Now let’s say that it was s pretty significant drop off, like maybe a four or five inch drop. 

You can still handle it as I described above. Police, Secret Service and many other agencies teach this technique for hopping on and off of curbs and sidewalks. It is a bit more aggressive and tricky, but it is most certainly manageable. With that said, what I would recommend for the average driver, if you drop off a large shoulder, if there is room, stay off the shoulder and bring the vehicle to a slow roll and bring it back up then. Again, this means you have to make a quick assessment of the situation without panicking and decide if there is enough room to bring the vehicle to a slow roll or stop while it is off the shoulder.

And that’s pretty much it. I have done this on curbs, sidewalks, gravel edges, grass edges etc. and no matter what the situation, they are all manageable and can be minimized as long as they are dealt with properly.

You will notice recurring comment in a majority of my driving posts, know what it is?  KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR INTENDED PATH!

The reason it is a recurring statement is because it is a VITAL key to your success. You should always be training you path of vision while driving. Continually think to yourself, am I looking far enough ahead? Did I look through that turn before I turned the steering wheel? If you constantly pay attention to these things they will become natural. Again, in a lot of situations you don’t have time in the moment to think through it. It has to come naturally.

JM