It really wasn't. The only reason he got sideways was because he tried using his brakes too much. The driver got lucky. The one thing he did do right was keeping his front wheels pointing the direction he was sliding.
When sliding and starting to go sideways at all, it's time to lay off the brakes. They will only make it worse.
*edit- Just wanted to add that I'm speaking from a lot of experience. Commercial drivers license, 15 years of driving fire engines, tankers, and ladder trucks in all weather. Plus my side job is delivering propane during the winter. I've slid on ice while carrying around nearly 3,000 gallons of liquid pressurized propane. That gets your butt to pucker.
I've slid on ice while carrying around nearly 3,000 gallons of liquid pressurized propane. That gets your butt to pucker.
I worked yard and now work office around propane, I fucking bet.
When I did diesel driving in a smaller truck myself and about 1k gallons of diesel slid down ~160 ft of mud bill because some jackass left their fucking throw mat out before the rain started, it cmgor covered in mud and when my tire hit it I lost all traction and shit went literally sideways from there
Scariest however many seconds that was in my fucking life, I realized almost immediately I had 0 control over what was happening until I hit some flat land, which I prayed gave me enough time to stop before going over into the dry riverbed, likely flipping
It's all good, I hit a rock at the bottom going about 15mpg and put a big ass dent in my bumper is all!
At 45 seconds you can see there is some in the way going too slow and in the middle of the road! That bus driver would have hit them if they didn't try to slow down some how. I think they had more skill than you believe.
Believe it or not I'm not doubting your experience and agree with your assessment of laying off the brakes, but can you tell us how you would have done differently to avoid the jackass in front of I'm correct that they were blocking the road?
Longer wheelbase vehicles don’t rotate quite as quickly so you have a lot more time to correct before things go haywire. They finally started to get the hang of the brakes and manually pulsing them near the end. At the beginning every time he locked up the brakes it just rotated more.
ABS doesn’t really help here because it works by a difference in speed between the wheels. If they’re all locked up then there is no difference.
Should he have just coasted all the way down the hill? How fast would he be going by then? He seemed to do a pretty good job of braking as much as possible while still being able to steer enough.
You can see it starting to go bad and then the back tire catches some traction on the slop on the shoulder and he recovers. Sometimes the shoulder saves you.
Nah there were cars ahead, if he gained too much momentum he was screwed, besides he wasn't just slamming on the breaks, there was roll going on there, just wasn't helping much. Once he got enough control again he even bothered to turn on his flashers.