When you are out driving next time watch the cars ahead of you and notice how many of them have wobbly rear wheels. You can by this means tell fairly well who is a careful driver and whose car has been skidding about the streets and has brought up sharply against the curb, or car track, or rut, or some other obstruction over which the wheels would not slide, and which was sufficiently solid to give them a hard knock.
No man can appreciate what a skid means until he has had one and then, perhaps, he will not live to appreciate it. No amount of preaching seems to do any good. He must sow his wild auto-driving oats and learn from experience. Because of this, it is recommended that each driver who has not had a real skid yet, pick out a very broad and wet street paved with asphalt where there is no traffic in sight. Let him drive the car fifteen miles an hour up the middle of the street, then give the steering wheel a sharp turn to the left, at the same time applying the brakes. The resulting sensation of absolute helplessness will be remembered for an hour or two—at least. For those who wish to continue the lesson, try allowing some other driver to repeat the operation, while the experience seeker occupies the back seat.
Now the skid against the curb or other obstruction may not have demolished the wheel, but it left its mark in cracked spokes, or bent rim, or if the car was of a certain type of construction it may have bent the axle shaft itself. If the wobble is due to a bend in the rim, it wears the tires excessively and if the spokes have been a little cracked it weakens the wheel; if the axle shaft has been bent, it is causing undue wear in the bearing; and under all of these conditions there is too much wear of the tires.
During the winter skidding is prevalent, much more so than at other seasons. This is due to the fact that snow and ice keep the pavements wet or icy, according to the temperature. There is another element entering into the situation, however; most folks who travel at this time of the year, because of the cold and discomforts of motoring, desire to get there and so travel faster—the very fact that they are uncomfortable causes them to pay less attention to driving with care. The result is that they run up close behind some other vehicle, which stops quickly; then they jam on the brakes hard and skid. Or, a car comes out of a side street suddenly, making it necessary to swerve quickly to one side, or stop, and the result is a skid in either case.
A rather unusual case of skidding is thus related by a driver:
I was driving up Broadway, in New York City, and to make the hill north of 157th Street had put on a little more speed, for the car was not a good hill climber. A block or two above the subway station a boy on a sled darted out of a side street and swung to continue down the Broadway hill. To avoid hitting him I jammed on the brake hard, and began to skid. There was a wagon at the curb and on the other side of me an auto going in the same direction and there was not room to turn out.
I saw that if my car continued to skid it would swing in front of the sled. It is unusual to skid going up hill, but there was so much loose snow, with ice underneath, that the skid chains did not take hold. There was but an instant to act, much less time than it takes to tell it, and I released the brake and let in the clutch. This stopped the skidding and the car shot forward just in time to let the boy go by.
Probably the greatest cause of skidding is turning the corner at too high speed. This often causes a skidding of the front wheels as well as the rear wheels—that is, the car is going so fast that the front wheels do not get traction enough to change their direction and when they attempt to make the turn they skid and the car goes for the curb. Applying the brake usually will overcome this skid.
In a rear-wheel skid the worst thing one can do is to apply the brake. It is best to let the car coast, turning the front wheels in the direction in which the rear end of the car is skidding; if it is trying to go to the left, turn the front wheels that way. If there is something in the way, so that it is necessary to stop, the brake may be applied a little as the wheels take hold, leaving the clutch engaged, which prevents locking the wheels, as the engine is pulling against the brake and there is not so much danger of locking the wheels. It keeps the wheels revolving slowly, so that you get a better traction for stopping.
It takes a greater pressure applied laterally to start the wheel sliding than to keep it skidding once it is started, and you can bring the car to a standstill much quicker if you can keep the wheels from sliding. A little practice will teach the driver just how much he can apply the brake without causing the wheels to skid.