"tank Slapper"

[Seaton]

Your not the first to be bitten by one of these cars,

But mate, there is better places you can do this other than where there are parked cars and pedestrians.

[Never had any say Panda]

I agree with outsider.. What's been described has potential to be something we read about in the news instead of him coming on here asking for advice..

However in saying that.. I think kudos to you mate for admitting you made a mistake and trying to figure out what went wrong.

Having driven a XR6T with factory dunlops there is your first problem, secondly once you're past the limits of the Traction Control system (ie: arse end hanging out) there isn't much it can do to help you. Even though they talk these cars up as having 'state of the art' stability control, the hard fact is it's gotta be simple enough to process information from various sensors very quickly and only performs optimally inside a very tight set of parameters, the second you over corrected the steering or lost the back end completely all bets on the traction control are off..

Having done numerous advanced and defensive driver courses I think they are excellent, however they aren't going to make everyone a better driver. The simple fact is when we are caught unaware or in an unexpected situation, everyones brain reacts differently.. Some people can think fast enough to see possible outcomes and choose the best reaction but 99% of people will panic in that situation. One example here would be riding in the passenger seat in a car with a bloke who'd done defensive driving only about 3 weeks prior.. We encountered a rather large kangaroo out near barcaldine doing about 120kmh. His reaction was to throw his arms in front of his face so he had no hands on the steering wheel and slam on the brakes..

[Barnesy]

Check you car for any error codes

[Ralph Wiggum]

Thread needs more slapping of turkeys

best I could do at short notice

[JETURBO]

Good work luke !!

[EvilDaifu]

Think it would be good if defensive driving courses actually put you in a potential crash situation but in a way that wouldn't injure anyone, damage the car or other property. I reckon you can learn a lot from an actual situation like that - especially those reactions like both hands up and foot hard on the brake mentioned by SDP.

I remember doing a lot of driving gravel / dirt roads up to Mt Stirling (cross country skiing resort in VIC) on quite a lot of weekends ages ago - had to keep both hands on the steering wheel there with the skinny tyres on my Toyota Corona back then

[LU82]

If you plan on accelerating hard from a stand still I would make sure you have TC off and shift manually and in between shifts make sure you have two hands on the wheel so you have less chance of over correcting when the back steps out. You will have more control over the car and it will make it more predictable when you get wheel spin especially if your running more power than standard.

You also need to take into account the camber of the road and if it's up hill or down hill. So in your case you said it was a slight down hill,(and assuming the road was camberred to the left) so once the car stepped out to the right first and instead of the car just straightening up it has come around to the left so you now have the camber of the road and down hill momentum to deal with which could cause you to panic and over correct and go all over the road.

I have recently refitted the factory dunlops and yes they are an average tyre in the dry but I can still slide up the road in third gear without much effort in trying to keep the car straight.