> >* Wildest may have been when our car left the road on a
>>gravel road during a car trial after adopting increasingly
>>violent weavings that showed no sign of being overcome.
>>Rolling was going to happen sooner or later so leaving the
>>road and flattening a fence was a good choice.

> Was it a front wheel drive car? I have had this happen a
> couple of times in
> an Austin 1300 GT I once owned, and the problem occurs
> when you get one
> wheel off the road surface onto a (relatively) slippery
> surface, such as
> grass.

No. It was a Mk2 Cortina. An excellent car in most respects.
And a lady driver :-). True, but unfair. That is my wife's
worst case brush with vehicular disaster. She is an
excellent and safe driver and has travelled N00,000 miles/km
without any other accidents of her making.

In this case it was an oscillatory build up on a downhill 
gravel road with each "correction" taking us further 
sideways. We'd come over a crest and something happened to 
start the process off. I'm highly used to being out of 
control on gravel but my wife far less so - she prefers to 
drive so as to not be in trouble in the 1st place but is 
;less able to handle it if it does happen. I'd say we were 
within a fishtail or two of rolling when the decision to 
leave the road was made. Proved to be a fine decision in 
retrospect.

> The whole car and trailer started fishtailing down
> the ramp onto the level piece of road -

I recently said that the cure for trailer fishtailing was to
accelerate. In fact that was the opposite of what my brain
was trying to make my fingers say.
The correct response is (my brain insists) to brake hard.
Not intuitive. And partially but not well supported by a
Gargoyle search - so may be wrong. May also depend on
whether the trailer has override brakes and whether you
brake as the combo is in a straight line (mid fishtail).


        Russell


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