Skids can be very dangerous for you, especially in bad weather conditions, as well as on unfavorable road conditions. Skids are basically occurred due to the mishandling of a vehicle by the driver. With little carefulness and knowledge, skids can obviously be avoided.

The main types of skid that you could face while driving generally come under three categories- front wheel skid; rear wheel skid; and four wheel skid. Here is a brief description of all the three categories:

• Front wheel skid: In a front wheel skid, a car tends to take a course outside, as opposed to the expected course. In other words, it is an understeer condition, where the vehicle goes straight ahead, rather than turning. Such skids generally occur with excessive speed on entry of a corner or turning, due to sudden braking to reduce the speed when negotiating the hazard. Such actions make the vehicle more vulnerable and ultimately it loses control.
  Whenever, you encounter a front wheel skid, do not brake. Instead push in the clutch. or you can remove the cause by just taking your foot off the accelerator and depressing the clutch pedal. If necessary, you can also reduce some of the steering movements. When you regain control, release the clutch and continue driving on in a sensitive manner.
• Rear wheel skid: In a rear wheel skid, a vehicle is being thrown into oversteer condition or the rear of the vehicle swings out of actual direction and gives the impression of trying to overtake the front. Such a skid occurs due to excessive speed into the hazard (corner or turning), and sudden acceleration or braking with a rear-wheel drive.
  In this case also, you can take your foot off the accelerator, and depress the clutch. After that steer the direction that rear wheels are sliding. This action will align the wheels, thereby giving you traction again.
• Four wheel skid: This type of skid occurs when all four wheels of a vehicle get locked up under harsh and sudden braking. Under such a condition, the vehicle is likely to slide in the direction that the forward momentum is carrying it, with no directional control.
  In order to gain directional control, you should depress the clutch and at the same time continue to pump the brake pedal.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Maintenance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.