Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I was a grasshopper. Way back in 2004 I was driving home from work. It was snowing and I was doing about 30 mph (I probably should have been doing 20). I was on a long straight road with no traffic. I figured, "I'm not turing right or left, I'm not going to need to stop fast, it's just a straightaway with no traffic. No reason why I can't do 60 mph". So I sped up to 60 mph and everything was fine about a minute, until I suddenly lost 100% control of the car. The car started fishtailing left and right, and then went into the wrong lane, and then veered off to the left and was heading off the road directly towards a tree. Then the car did a 180 (so now I'm going backwards), and the car is still heading off the road towards the tree. The car went over the curb and plowed through the snow bank, and shot snow into the air probably 50 feet high. The car is now complelty on the grass and is continuing to go backwards through the snow which is probably 8 inches deep. After traveling backwards for about 50 feet offroad, plowing through all the snow along the way, the car finally decelearted and stopped. I tried to drive forward to get back onto the road, but the car was stuck. I got out and saw that my back bumber was about 1 foot away from the tree. I took out my little car shovel and cleared some snow from around the tires, and then I was able to drive forward. Convienetly, my car plowed a nice little path when it was going backwards at 60 mph, so it was actually pretty easy to drive back to the road. I then took it nice and easy until I got home, and then I changed my underpants. 

I virtually lost no speed when I spun out and went backwards, I hit the snow bank at 60 mph. The snow bank was probably 3 feet high. I'm lucky that it was fresh snow and it was soft, if the snow had been sitting there for a month it would have been like hitting concrete. So hitting the soft snow bank helped to slow me down, and I think it helped to prevent my tires from hitting the curb directly so my tires didn't pop. And then traveling through 8 inches of snow for 50 feet also helped slow me down. All in all, I think that my car shot thousands of pounds of snow 50 feet into the air, within a few seconds. Think of all the energy that got transfered from the car to the snow, that is what stopped me. My car got no damaged at all, expect the back right tire (I think this is the first tire to go over the curb and had the most impact) would make a funny noise once in a while. I had the mechanic look at it and he said there was nothing wrong, but the noise never went away.

Momma, make sure your son doesn't do this. 

Last Edited By: Aluelk Nov 16 15 9:34 PM. Edited 1 times.