How to avoid getting stuck in a ditch...

I know more than one driver who just plain can't grasp the concept that you don't need to be moving forward to turn the wheel. It might have to do with having grown up before power steering.. I don't know... But they're exactly the types who wouldn't surprise me if they drive right back into a ditch after driving out of it.... Moving forward while turning the wheel away from the ditch.

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#4 posted by soupisgoodfood , October 21, 2008 12:50 PM

@Ivan

You do know that turning the wheel on a hard surface while not moving isn't the best thing to do to your tires, right?

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#5 posted by minTphresh , October 21, 2008 1:03 PM

sage advice of the highest caliber! this author needs to move to washington d.c. immediately to handle our financial mess. yay! we're saved!

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#6 posted by pauldrye , October 21, 2008 1:16 PM

I'm always getting stuck in my own driveway, but it's because of crippling anxiety and lack of motivation. Plus often the car is out of gas.

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#7 posted by RJ , October 21, 2008 1:35 PM

If it made the list, there's a good chance somebody has done this. Not just one, but several somebodies.

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#8 posted by Silva

, October 21, 2008 1:36 PM

#4 soupisgoodfood - but still better than continuously falling into a ditch, no?

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#9 posted by Jerril , October 21, 2008 1:46 PM

#4 - tires are cheap. Axles, rims, and various other parts of your car are expensive, not to mention the possible extreme cost of dying of hypothermia because you're too damn stupid to stop driving into the ditch in some remote part of nowhere in a blizzard.

Never mind the fact that the original article is talking about being stuck in snow, so you're not exactly scraping your tires on bare pavement, but over snowpack or ice or slush.

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#10 posted by Kimrod , October 21, 2008 1:54 PM

Sounds like a prep thing for winter...is that shoveling or sniveling? No snow here in the Pheeenix desert. I gave all my shovels the heave-ho when I moved here.

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#11 posted by The Lizardman

, October 21, 2008 1:59 PM

Per #7, I have seen this happen on more than one occasion but it never stops being funny. Unless, of course, you are on of the poor sods helping push it out.

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#12 posted by HPHovercraft , October 21, 2008 3:25 PM

For some reason the constant repetition of the phrase "drive into a ditch" now has me thinking of the Kids In the Hall sketch about never putting salt in your eyes.

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#13 posted by Phikus , October 21, 2008 4:09 PM

KIMROD: Don't you still need those for burying bodies in the desert?

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#14 posted by anthony , October 21, 2008 4:28 PM

In Chicago, you'd dig your car out of a drift in the morning. Some folks then chose to leave a lawn chair in the dug out space (a method approved by Daley). Later, you'd come home to someone else's car in the space you made, and you'd dig out another one. Overnight, the plows would come by and create a huge drift over all the cars on the block once again.

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#15 posted by seanboing , October 21, 2008 6:33 PM

@takuan: A well aimed jab. :D I predict even deeper ditch digging by the McCain campaign. They are so good at it!

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#16 posted by wkiernan , October 21, 2008 7:01 PM

You know if you sat down as a philosopher or a logician and you set about writing a list of elpful advices for drivers stuck in ditches, you might not think of that particular contingency, driving right back into the ditch, as something likely enough to be worth warning against.

I think bullet point #2 has the air of actual, repeated experience. Whoever wrote that had personally watched freshly extracted customers stomp the gas and lurch right through the same ruts into the same ditch, over and over and over again.

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#17 posted by Nora

, October 22, 2008 12:43 AM

Driving back into the ditch is cool if you wait a little while though.

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#18 posted by sinderin , October 22, 2008 5:29 AM

Excellent advice. Reminds me of a Reeves and Mortimer line:
"If you DO get trapped in your flat... try NOT to get trapped in your flat."

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#19 posted by Cool Products , October 22, 2008 7:16 AM

I'm just trying to imagine this. Someone pulls my car out of a ditch for me, and as soon as they get it out, I just hop right back in it and drive into the ditch again, ha. I hope I never get into the situation where someone might actually give me this advice one day.

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#20 posted by urshrew , October 22, 2008 8:08 AM

That statement describes many moments in my life.

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#21 posted by The Lizardman

, October 22, 2008 9:10 AM

@19 You don't have to imagine it, just move to a climate with icy roads and you can watch it happen all the time. The driver doesn't do it intentionally, I hope, it just happens that they once again lose control, hit the same patch of ice and/or ruts and end up right back in there.

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#22 posted by bibulb , October 22, 2008 9:42 AM

When I drove into a ditch, I sucessfully did NOT drive back into the ditch after having been pulled out.

This is more impressive when you consider that the entirety of the ditch was obscured by the massive flooding at the time.
However, I DID make sure to take roads that had no side ditches for the rest of that ride...

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#23 posted by soupisgoodfood , October 22, 2008 10:33 PM

@9: Tires can be expensive, unless you want budget or re-treads. And the rest is besides the point, as I was referring to #3, not the original post.

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#24 posted by Anonymous , October 22, 2008 10:37 PM

what if you saw some gold in the ditch, and some jerks were running towards it?