dont drive as fast
dont follow as closely
slow down more for turns
no sudden turns/lane changes, gotta take it slow and smooth
if you lose traction DO NOT slam on your brakes
USE YOUR HEADLIGHTS

Slow down, break early. Make sure your tires aren't bald. Remember that your vehicle is a heavy machine and is going to carry its momentum on ice. Be extra careful at intersections as ice will form at them from the melting/refreezing that cars do to the snow when they idle there.

Invest into some snow tires, your car will love you.

pump your brakes
don't make exaggerated adjustments with your steering when you start to slide
get some chains on yo tires

keep a bag of salt/a shovel in the back of your car in case you get stuck

i thought this was gonna be a thread about jaeger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsgSAco5gB8

and turn in the direction of your slide.

Get winter tires if it is really THAT bad

yea that's where I got the name from

Keep a warm coat in your car and a shovel and adjust to the weather. Thats basically it.. common sense helps in all situations :)

-Pay attention to other drivers so that you can avoid the unsafe ones.
-Download the _pro version of the map to get rid of the snow.

i actually loled

The key to driving in snow/icy conditions is keep your wheels ROLLING. Most skids occur when throttling or braking.

Whenever possible avoid coming to a complete stop.

Increase your following distance by at least 4 seconds from summer driving.

Understand your brakes. If you have ABS brakes just press them fully and steer in the direction you want to go. If don't have ABS, press your brake in pulses.

If start to slide, take your foot off the throttle and do not push the brake. Look far in the distance and look at an object and steer towards it. Once you have regained control and your wheels are turning rather than sliding you can begin to brake as per normal.

Watch your RPMS, if you are going at a constant speed and they suddenly start jumping up and down by several hundred RPM, you are sliding. Take your foot off the throttle, do not brake until you have regained full control.

Understand changing conditions, it the temperature is around 0 C it's very likely that there are ice patches and wet spots.

Pushing the throttle to the floor at a standstill will leave you at a stand still.

Get snow tires, 4x4 helps.

TLDR: Do not accelerate or brake if you start to slide. If you slide, look far ahead find an object and steer towards it.

--- If you're driving a light vehicle do not let your gas tank go lower than 1/2 unless absolutely necessary - the added weight from fuel made the tinier cars I've had drive a LOT better.

--- Dumping a bunch of crap in your trunk can really help too by weighing down the back end (less fish-tailing).

But the best tip, is if you don't feel comfortable going at a particular speed, don't go that speed, don't feel pressured to go faster than you feel comfortable going.

all i know about snow is you dont do anything drastic

let your wheels regain traction, downshift instead of braking, no over correcting or slinging your steeringwheel around

and fwd is good i thinik

if you feel yourself starting to slide simply letting off the gas completely for a few seconds helps a ton

Find a large, empty parking lot, and play for a while. Learn how your vehicle responds to input in adverse conditions.
This saved me a lot of trouble, learned to use throttle/ebrake/4x4 to control the vehicle when it lost traction.
Plus, it is a hell of a good time.

Pay attention to which wheels drive your car, if you can't make it up a hill in your front wheel drive car, try reverse.

Don't pin it to win it, and use a higher gear if you keep spinning your tires.

Winter tires are a very worthwhile investment, but they do not activate godmode on your vehicle.
You are better off to buy a new set of crappy tires than to buy a heavily worn set of high-end tires.
Better tires go up front if you have a full set of winters, otherwise the better tires go on the back.

4x4 only helps you accelerate, it doesn't help you stop or go around corners (unless using advanced techniques)

If all else fails, and you can't touch the brakes without locking your tires up, you can sometimes use reverse to slow you down more quickly *ONLY to be used as a last resort, when you're about to slide through a stop sign/light at low speeds* (yes I have done this, and it saved my ass)

4x4 does prevent skidding around corners. Especially in cases where the rear wheels are overtaking the steers.

Utilize coasting. A safe way to reduce speed, reduces force of the breaking, can help save gas too

True, but I used the word advanced loosely. If you understand how 4x4 works then you can use it to your advanage, but it can also cause adverse behaviour such as excessive understeer when lifting off of the throttle. This is why I suggest getting to know how your specific vehicle behaves.
I live in a town where people with large, lifted 4x4 trucks think they are invincible, and drive well above the posted speed limit in near-whiteout conditions.

I just hate the false sense of security that people get by having 4x4 (Albertan godmode)

One more thing: don't trust the inside shoulder, even if it looks nice and flat. Plows tend to leave a nice flat spot on the deep snow where there is actually a ditch. I see people getting pulled into the ditch by a soft shoulder alll of the time.

It simply just has to do with more weight being over your steer wheels since most 4x4s are rear wheel drive when the transfer case is in 2 high. There's no advanced technique for using 4x4. The advantage of 4x4 is that in cases where 2 of you drive wheels are skidding you still have more control because you have 2 wheels with traction pulling you where you want to go. What do you mean by excessive under steer without throttle? If you can't steer enough you are probably going way too fast! There really is no advantage to 2 wheel drive on ice... Except maybe making really tight turns and you like to have fun :)

I agree though, the best safety device you could add to a vehicle is a giant metal spike that comes out of the front of the steering wheel. You can have the safest care be useless in with bad driver and the most dangerous car be much safer just out of good driving habits.

If the front tires are pulling the front of the vehicle around the turn, then releasing the throttle can cause forceful deceleration due to both engine braking and added rotating mass in the driveline. This can cause the front end to plow forward, rather than steering in the intended direction (keeping the wheels rolling), especially in larger/older vehicles with heavy drivelines and powerful engines.

Advanced technique was just referring to knowingly using the capabilities of 4wd to your advantage, be it using the throttle to guide the nose around corners that you would normally understeer around, bringing the front end to bear when oversteer occurs, or all-out rally driving methods involving impressive 4-wheel drifts.

Basically this, but you need to know which ones are in control and how to use them to your advantage

Most vehicles are designed for a relatively desirable front-rear balance, in fact the added weight on the front of a front engined vehicle tends to cause the rearend to be even more loose around corners. Plus, extra weight is almost always undesirable when it comes to performance in good or bad conditions.

PS: I love having fun in the snow. Any chance I get, I go for a rip out in the vast empty parking lots around town. If only I could afford a set of tires :(

Basically, make sure you can depend on yourself to be in control, not the vehicle and it's various options/gadgets. Makes you more aware and confident as a driver, and it is in fact cheaper and better for the vehicle in the long run.

Unless you have jake brake there's no way that can happen just by releasing the throttle. Releasing throttle is easiest way of getting your wheels rolling if they're skidding. You gain more control not lose control by taking your foot off the throttle. In 4wd you shouldn't be using throttle at all to make the turn, it can cause binding.

I really don't understand what you mean oversteering and understeering because either of those is operator error. It has nothing to do with 2wd vs 4wd. If are turning a corner, you should be doing it at slow enough speed that there is no oversteering of any kind, and if you oversteer or normally understeer on regular basis... You probably shouldn't have a license!

Do you tell someone who has never driven in snowy conditions to not use 4x4 if they have it? To me that doesn't make any sense.

Please understand that I am in no way advocating against the us of 4x4. I agree that it is the best option for winter driving. What I am against, is people thinking that it suddenly makes them invincible.
Driver error (under/oversteer) is caused by a lack of familiarity with the conditions, that includes a lack of familiarity with how the vehicle behaves. Let's be honest, nobody is perfect; if we all were, how would we have the experience to know what causes the vehicle to lose/regain/maintain control?

Releasing the throttle completely reverses the direction of force between the tires and the road, thus engine braking; the engine is attempting to slow down while the momentum of the vehicle (via friction at the tires) causes it to retain it's speed/speed up. This can most definitely upset the performance of the vehicle when this reversal of force goes beyond what the tires are capable of providing for traction.

On dry paveent you might not experience lift-throttle under/oversteer, but in icy conditions it can be the difference between going into the ditch or not. Plus, the more power a vehicle makes, the greater the upset is between throttle on and off.

Case in point, FWD - Oversteering occurs:
Releasing the throttle in a FWD will cause weight transfer forward (decreasing rear traction and stability) and if the driving is steering into the slide, will cause the front tires to push back and increase the rate at which the vehicle spins. Increasing throttle slightly while steering into the slide will most likely help the driver regain control by both shifting weight to the rear , and by helping pull the nose of the car in line with where you want to go.

If you're driving a RWD car, make sure to floor it and drift everywhere you go.

You're dead wrong on the engine braking. If you release the throttle your engine is still in gear pushing forward. You are not reversing anything. Your wheels are sliding... at this point your engine has very little ability to move forward or backwards or have any influence on the movement of your vehicle at all. You need to get your wheels rolling instead sliding. The way you do it is by releasing the throttle. You are already sliding there is no force (or very little force for the picky physics nerds) pushing back on you when the wheel turns forwards again in gear at an idle. Even if you shift into a very low gear your rpms will jump up and then rapidly slow down until the wheel rolls again at which point your rpm matches the threshold of rotational velocity needed in order make the wheel roll. There is no jarring effect because you still have no breaking power, you will just slide.

I've trained hundreds of people how to drive winter conditions on the shittiest oilfield lease roads ever. TELL PEOPLE TO TAKE THERE FOOT OFF THE THROTTLE IF THEY SLIDE IT'S GOOD THING TO DO IN ICY CONDITIONS ALWAYS 100% OF THE TIME NO MATTER WHAT KIND OF VEHICLE YOU ARE DRIVING!!!!!

I'm not going to disagree with you that releasing the throttle is more often than not the best bet for those who lack an understanding of how their vehicle responds, but knowing when and how to apply throttle allows for better control than completely releasing the throttle.

I don't understand how you say I'm so wrong though.. I was not referring to recovering from a throttle-induced slide by using more throttle. That would be just stupid. If you have lost static friction (AKA started sliding) then there is nothing causing your wheels to rotate at the required speed to resume a correct roll. Carefully controlling the throttle and steering into the slide can allow you to minimize your losses or at least control the sliding wheels enough to regain static friction.

At the very least, you can utilize the much weaker forces provided by kinetic friction to at least have a chance of guiding the vehicle slightly. (this works, I literally just went out and did such)

The jarring I refer to is not a jarring transferred to the driver, but a disparity between the engine's desired rotational acceleration due to throttle control, and the effect of friction acting upon the wheels (and thusly the engine). reduced frictional forces caused by icy conditions means that releasing the throttle entirely is in fact asking more of the tires than the given coefficient of friction will allow. AKA lift-off sliding. Just as possible as sliding because of too much throttle.

I don't want to go into a thorough physics lecture an/or debate over the various nits that are to be picked upon by both sides, so I'll just let it remain at the more simple and easier to understand; let off if you slide and don't know how to recover properly.

TL:DR Know your vehicle, and learn what works (using safe controlled conditions). If in doubt, yes, let off the throttle