What happens when an 18year old has a 4.6l mustang

[Çrestfa||en]

My room mate was the proud owner of a 2000ish mustang with the 4.6l v8. Apparently he was coming around a turn(odviously over the speed limit) and started to slide. Then he tells me this "so I accelerated to pull out of the slide" I took a double take and asked him why, he said thats how you get out of a slide. Then the car spun about 4 times and went over the curb into a tree putting his left arm through the window and smashing his legs up good. After that I told him that accelerating in a slide with a rear wheel drive just feeds the slide...he refuses to believe me. The turn he lost control on is in a 35mph area but is built for up to 55mph turns(mom was traffic engineer for the area) so it's pretty odvious he was speeding and didn't know how to prevent his vehical from sliding. Needless to say I dont think I will be driving with him anymore.

heres a picture of the stang in the junkyard.

 

[Eagle]

What your pal apparently doesn't choose to understand is that there are three different kinds of slides with a rear-wheel drive car: understeer (front end slides first); oversteer (rear end breaks loose), and just plain old "over-cooked it" slides (all he** breaks loose at once). You can use power to balance out understeer, within limits, but if the rear wheels break loose, adding more power is a great way to meet your maker. It appears that's the kind of slide he encountered, and he obviously chose the wrong way to correct it.

I would say you are wise to avoid riding when he's driving.

 

[Ghost]

Your friend needs to get a 46 cj that want go more than 30mph till he learns to drive right! He is lucky to be alive if that tree cought the drivers side like it looks.

 

[Roxtar]

Remind him that he doesn't have a Porche 911. That is the ONLY car where accellerating will pull you out of a slide due to the engine weight being behind the rear wheels. Punching a 911 causes the rear engine weight to squat the suspension down on the rear tires, giving them more grab.
Accelerating with a front engine, rear drive, car in a slide will take away what small amount of traction the rear tires already have.
Consider how to do a donut in the snow. You go slow, crank the wheel and then when you start to slide you punch it, causing the back end to kick out violently. Same physics here.

 

[Çrestfa||en]

the thing that makes me mad is that the day before he raced a honda accord while I was in the car and was doing over 100 and nearly lost control in the same area. I know I did stupid stuff when I first got my license but I had a grandma car so thats kind of limiting

 

[Danno]

my partner lost his nephew a few years ago to a sliding Mustang. The nephew's friend had just signed a $1 million bonus to pitch for one of the MLB teams and used the bonus to buy a Mustang Cobra. He didn't last a week and took his friend (the nephew) with him. A real shame as they were both very promising young men. wrapped it around a palm tree in Tampa at a high rate of speed.

 

[LiquidOps]

this is what a buddy of mine did to his Camaro

 

[Fore Wheeler]

you should have to pass an I.Q. test to own a fast car.

 

[EMTJeepers]

Jee, I scrape up people like this all the time...... :twak:

 

[azxjman]

NO teenager should own a super fast car even though I dont consider a mustang to be that fast. I cant count all the stupid crap I did when I was 16 in my jeep I cant belive I made it though alive.

 

[Hunter-LynchburgVa]

NO teenager should own a super fast car even though I dont consider a mustang to be that fast. I cant count all the stupid crap I did when I was 16 in my jeep I cant belive I made it though alive.

more importantly State Driving Agencies should require drivers to complete and pass an accident avoidence course that deals with developing a drivers ability to respond to an emergency situation(skids and the like), just as drivers ed is used. i know a lot of northern states impement this because of winter weather conditions, but it is invaluable regadless of how far north of the equator you live. its saved my ass more than once.

here is some info:
http://www.bsr-inc.com/index.html

this is the one i went to when i was 16, made a great birthday present:
http://www.bsr-inc.com/AAS.HTM


Hunter

 

[ChiXJeff]

Remind him that he doesn't have a Porche 911. That is the ONLY car where accellerating will pull you out of a slide due to the engine weight being behind the rear wheels. Punching a 911 causes the rear engine weight to squat the suspension down on the rear tires, giving them more grab.
Accelerating with a front engine, rear drive, car in a slide will take away what small amount of traction the rear tires already have.
Consider how to do a donut in the snow. You go slow, crank the wheel and then when you start to slide you punch it, causing the back end to kick out violently. Same physics here.

Uh, no. In a front wheel drive, you *DO* want to apply throttle (judiciously) and steer into the skid. You have to keep the front wheels planted, and chopping the throttle or using the brakes can lose that. Light throttle and steering into it will work against the skid and gather the tail in.

Eagle's point about 3 different kids of skids is well said. Front wheel drives especially need to keep the front tires planted because once they start to slide you not only lose motive control, you also lose steering control. At least in a rear wheel drive, if the tail steps out, you still have some degree of control, although it's not much.

 

[DDCxj]

some kid I know was coming back to school from lunch last year going 85 in a 30 and went to take a 90* turn to get into the parking lot and he thought for some strange reason that by lowing down to 70 he could do this. Him and his 99 Grand Am kept going straight over a snowbank into the air and landing then slamming into a tree and parts flew everywhere.
The best part was seeing him get out of the car and run over to the snowbank that he DIDNT hit and start kickng it and swearing at it, then he got back inhis car and drove himself to the hospital with one of the front wheels halfway off the car. Can you say dumbass?

 

[Eagle]

more importantly State Driving Agencies should require drivers to complete and pass an accident avoidence course that deals with developing a drivers ability to respond to an emergency situation(skids and the like), just as drivers ed is used. i know a lot of northern states impement this because of winter weather conditions, but it is invaluable regadless of how far north of the equator you live. its saved my ass more than once.

HAH! Pet peeve #2,438: "Driver's Education"

What a joke. "Driver's Education" around here has become such a joke that the local high school doesn't even offer it any more, they just act as a booking agent for the Sears driving school. At the Sears driving school, they do NOT teach people how to drive, they show them videos while they sleep and coach them on how to pass the test. Graduates of the Sears Driving School are barely qualified to move a passenger car from one end of an empty parking lot to the other, on a dry sunny day.

Connecticut did, however, just institute phased licenses though. Doesn't affect me so I'm not sure of the details, but I think it's something like 16 and 17 year olds can't drive with more than one passenger under the age of 18, and there may be some restrictions on night driving.

My brother works at a BMW dealership, and he's always ranting about parents who bring in "Junior" or "Missy" who just got their license last week, and the 'rents buy them a new BMW Z5 roadster to drive to school. Sure recipe for disaster -- put a kid who's barely qualified to drive a gold cart into a high performance roadster that's good for ... dunno, 200 MPH? Brilliant!

 

[5-90]

The simple sad fact is that driving has become mispercieved as an American right, rather than the privilege that it truly is. This can be easily demonstrated by the constant measure in CA to allow illegals to get driver's licenses (a mistake, and I vote against it every time I see it.)

Compound this with the small fact that, in all my travels, Californians are (as a whole) the worst damn drivers I've see - in all age brackets and "ethnicities." I figure somewhere upwards of 2/3 of all CA driver's tickets could be revoked out of hand for incompetence, and the rest should be evaluated.

Oh - and anyone who tells you that there is no "ethnic weighting" on the test is lying to you - the test was easier in every language other than English I've tried! The test was written wrong to begin with - either that, or I'm just not as good as I think I am (IN driver's ticket, International driver's ticket, E&E, EVOC.)

I remember being drilled by my mother when I was on my learner's permit, and signing up voluntarily for the LPD "Inclement Weather Driver's Course" - $200 well spent. Oh - I took DE in Jan/Feb/Mar in Northern IN - snow, slush, and ice. Three days/week OTR, two classroom.

Driver's ed these days isn't even a bad joke - I don't see how it helps get a driver's ticket anymore. Most of these people aren't qualified to be anywhere NEAR a motor vehicle powered by anything bigger than a 3-horse Tecumseh, much less IN CONTROL of one. I'd feel better going for a ride with Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder driving by turns.

Throw in the riceboys and boy racers who feel they have to go everywhere at 150 or better, and the amazing thing goes from being how many roads incidents we have, but that we don't have more (I don't call them accidents - they are mostly caused by stupidity. Pure parts failure is an accident. Lack of maintenance or pure incompetence is stupidity.)

I guess I'm ranting again...

5-90

 

[Çrestfa||en]

Well I just got the FULL story today. Turns out he wasn't even in a turn when it happened(was before it). He was going straight hit a slick area(it had been raining) when the rear started to slide he turned toward the left and accelerated hard. The vehical then spun and smashed into a tree that was on the shoulder of the lane going the opposite direction he started in. To make it worse the stang had a positrack in it(this is what he told me). The funny thing is the day I met him he told me he was into drifting...lol odviously not.

 

[RichP]

For 8 frigging months I let my son drive to his weekend part time job at Skirmish, for 8 frigging months I told him to slow down at this one particular corner, both ways. He gets his drivers license, bought a neighbors toyota and drove to work, on his way back, second day of being a licensed driver, he flips it ON THAT SAME FRIGGING CORNER, and plants the car into a stone wall. Punched the passenger side door into the center hump, luck he was alone. Took that to convince him that his magic tires didn't work....
My daughter on the other hand, 18months younger than my son, I trust more with my XJ than my wife.... My daughter actually likes relaxing when she drives.

 

[Çrestfa||en]

there are 3 types of people in this world: the smart ones that learn from other's mistakes, the average ones that learn from their mistakes, and the dumb ones who dont learn from theirs or other's mistakes. I'm average

 

[Eagle]

I saw another example today. It was snowing in southern Connecticut -- the heavy, wet, big-flake kind of snow we get in March, so the roads were a bit slippery and the highway crews got caught and were behind the curve.

Driving a back road through the town where my brother lives, I went through a fairly tight 'S' turn where a lot of people have problems in winter, and all was well. A quarter of a mile beyond, I see a car pulled over and behind it is a nice NEW S10 p/u parked straddling a ditch and facing the wrong way. Driver was a young man. He was unhurt, but I could not say the same for the truck, and the way he had straddled the ditch, the tow truck was going to do a lot more damage getting him out (the ditch was 4 feet deep).

I'm still trying to figure out how he was able to negotiate the 'S' turn with no apparent problem, then spin out and lose it completely on a STRAIGHT section of road.

 

[mikal]

What we need is a graduated license system. If you're a poor driver and just barely pass then you're limited to driving Geo Metros. The more capable you are, the bigger and faster vehicle you're allowed.
Oh, it would also be good if I had the authority to revoke anyone's license, whenever I deem it necessary.