Looking at the various forums on this site, it seems that hardly a few days can go past without another driver crashing his car. Seems a common tale that i hit a patch of ice and just slid into a curb / another car. Now i know that some accidents are caused by failures or other drivers, so my comments are not aimed at every driver, but those they are aimed at know who they are.
Anyway, just to help those who dont understand the laws of winter i have written the following guides (forgive my physics, i am no expert and im doing this off the top of my head). The first guide is a technical guide for those with a scientific background. The second non-technical guide is for those without a scientific background and is probably more on the same level as some of the people who are crashing.
Technical Version
In this country we have a thing called winter. In the winter we get a drop in the ambient temperature and as a result a strange thing happens to water. It becomes solid as its temperature drops below its freezing point (0 degrees C). Solid water is called ice. Ice has some strange properties, the most relevant for drivers being that when pressure is exerted on the ice (ie from a car tyre) the surface of the ice melts (facial melting). This is due to the increased pressure raising the freezing point of the ice above its normal freezing point. The ice therefore returns to a liquid state. This thin layer of water forms between the tyre and the ice. Under normal driving conditions the tyre would be in contact with the road and the rubber from the tyre would adhere to the tarmacadam of the road thus affording the car traction and grip (and also drag) (lets call this the adhesion co-efficient). Under the situation of tyre on water on ice on road, the contact between the tyre and road is lost and the adhesion co-efficient of the tyre to the water / ice layer is much reduced. The tyre literally floats on the water, over the ice.
Now Sir Isaak Newton suggested that each force exerts and equal and opposite force. Ths first law of thermo dynamic also suggests that energy cannot be created or destroyed but is simply transfered from one form to another.
As a car travels down a straight it posseses kinetic energy. Ie movement in a forward plane. However as a car takes a bend the forward kinetic energy of the car shifts planes from forward to forward and lateral (g force). Now if the adhesion co-efficient of the tyres to the road is greater than the lateral force (g forces) exerted by the car, then the car will travel round the corner and the energy from the lateral movement will be transfered to the tyre in the form of heat (and kinetic energy will be lost to heat so the car will lose speed).
However, if the adhesion co-efficient of the tyres to the road is less than thelateral force exerted by the car, then the car will start to turn round the corner but at some point will begin to travel laterally due to the sheer stress exerted by the lateral forces on the tyre being greater than the adhesion coefficient of said tyres (ie skid).
Now under conditions of ice (remember this forms when the temperature drops below freezing and water is present on the roads surface), the propensity for the adhesion co-efficient of the tyres to be less than the lateral forces exerted on the car is considerably increased. So under these conditions, there is a much gtreater chance of the car sliding off the road.
Now because each force exerts an equal and opposite force, it is possible to reduce the lateral plane of movement while driving round a corner (ie reduce the chance of a skid). In order to do this we simply reduce the forward kinetic movemnt of the car prior to entry to the corner. This increases the likely hood of the adhesion co-efficient remaining higher than the lateral g force of the car in the corner and will reduce the chance of unwanted lateral movement.
Non-technical version
ICE IS SLIPPY
SLOW DOWN DICK HEAD
IMO, of course
