With snow in the forecast, I'm trying to find quality snow instruction videos. Land Rover has a decent video out, but is for beginners. Looking for driving technique videos related to driving a big 4x4 SUV.

I'm not an amateur, but always looking to sharpen skills.

Slam on the gas Slam on the brakes! You don't want to get stuck and you gotta stop fast.

I am a HPDE Instructor.  What are you trying to learn?

Plenty of Russian dash cams of what NOT to do.

Large empty parking lots that are iced over/unplowed work the best... technique is only a tiny fraction of it. The rest is practice and finesse.

I have been to the Skip Barber 3 day course and am very confident in what I can, and can not do. Not so much learning as keeping and maintaining skills as related to snow and ice. My job requires me to be on the road during the storm. I'll be in my Range Rover, which is certainly capable.

I suppose most interested in preventing situations where I could get stuck and how to successfully recover from a struck situation.

I hate to say it but you do not learn to drive on ice and snow from a video.   It is something you learn and you learn by practice. Common sense helps a lot so does 6 months of god dang Winter

Just do what these guys do.

http://winterdrive.com/

or

go to youtube and type in the bar:  bridgestone winter driving school

I learned to drive on snow and ice when Uncle Sam sent me to Ft Wainwright for four years.

You have to actually do it, not watch a video about it, to learn how.

I grew up in the Southeastern US and moved to Eastern Idaho in my late 20's and this is how I learned.  My first day driving on snow covered roads was nail biting.  I skidded through an intersection while trying to stop quickly for a yellow light.  It was my employer who took me to a giant parking lot and said...have fun.    It worked like a champ and I've never had a problem since.

If you stay out of the stuff deeper than the bumpers, the Rover should be fine. My old S10 would push in about 6" over the front bumper with just a rear locker and fresh all season tires. Oh, and stay out of the hard pack the plows push off too, that stuff is quickcrete.

I'll skip the second and try to address the first:



Managing speed within the bounds of available traction is of course, critical to staying out of the ditch.  My suggestion is to ignote WHAT you are driving and think in terms of your tires.  Those relatively small contact patches (roughly about the size of your hand) are what is keeping you out of the ditch.  Not the car (mostly).  Not the engine.  Not the suspension.  Driver aids can help to a small degree.  Keep them ON in snow (if you have them).  Know what tires you are on, know how much tread you have and have an appreciation of how their tread design and rubber compound will do at 30 degrees F.  Summer tires are completely crap in winter snow.  Some rubber compounds become like bowling balls at 35F.  All the talent in the world won't get you up a 4% incline.



Drive leaving some traction on the table.  If you drive close to the limits of the tires (a combination of speed, steering angle, temperature, tire traction (design/rubber) and car balance (among other factors).  Remember that non-snow tires are far harder to manage because they have less traction.  



Keep your vision waaaay out.  >95% of drivers reading this drop their eyes to 1-2 car lengths ahead.  That leaves no effective time to adjust speed to deal with obstacles, turns, hills etc.  All of your driving inputs need to be smooth - throttle, steering and braking.  Lack of smoothness is a major cause of loss of control in snow.  And the cause of lack of smoothness in snow is insufficient vision and planning.



Think in terms of keeping weight balance as even front-rear as possible.  Lifting off the throttle abruptly or sharp braking transfers weight forward and is a common recipe for a slide.  Feel what the tires are doing and try to keep a good reserve of traction in turns, hills, lane changes etc.  Variable conditions (bridges, ice under snow etc) will suddenly offer less traction and can either cause understeer.  Uncorrected understeer can lead to oversteer - or even driving right off the road because the car will not turn.



So lest say that the worst happens and you go into a slide.  Force your vision WAAAY out (do NOT drop your eyes - which is common).  Force yourself to look where you want to go.  The common habit is to look at the place you are afraid of going (ditch, tree, guardrail, another car).  If you do the latter - your hands will adjust steering for where you are looking.  You may even need to look out the side window to sight the road (or a safe escape flat area).  In a slide - at some point you may scrub off enough speed to regain some traction.  If you do manage this - be prepared to correct steering - or the possibility (probability) that you put too much corrective steering in during the slide.  If your vision is in the right place - you'll be able to more easily correct steering.



Drive with hands at 3 and 9 o'clock.  Don't think of this as old lady habit.  It will allow you to make corrections more quickly - and more importantly - you'll always know what hand position is straight when you slide and have steering in.



Tires matter.  Vision, smoothness.  Leave traction in reserve.



 

what CWO said and it really is a art based in some science you just have to do it often to get good at it

Lesson 1:



Leave at least ten car lengths between you and the car directly in front of you.

much like rudder and stick in an airplane avoid drastic control inputs

No, stay as close as you can, that way there won't be much speed differential when you run into them. Let your bumpers do what they were designed for. As long as you're within 5mph, you're golden.

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Realize you cannot do anything quickly.  You cannot accelerate quickly, you cannot brake quickly, and you cannot turn quickly.  If you drive with all of that in mind, you'll realize that you need to look ahead more than normal, anticipate the need to stop sooner than you normally would and keep your eye out for all the idiots out there.

Just make sure there are not those concrete parking stops a few inches under the snow.

Practice and the basics ,

Go slow.  Never expect any other driver's car to stop at a stop sign.  

Sometimes I put it in 4WD because the engine weight on the front wheels have more traction (especially uphill).  

Get studded snow tires.

Following distance is probably the best tool for staying out of a wreck. Maintaining momentum is key to not getting stuck. Once you are stuck stop immediately. Continuing to spin makes it worse.

Driving on ice is a lot like driving fast. Traction is very limited so all inputs need to be smooth.

Limp your self to an empty parking lot, and learn how your car or truck works in the snow... Its not rocket science... Find out how long it takes you to stop at certain speeds. Find out how fast you can take a turn before your rear end slips out, do some doughnuts, drift a bit figure it out.. Might save your life...

POWERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Sorry but a video won't teach you very much at all.



Get to a parking lot like others have said and mess around a little and figure out how your car handles. Especially braking and turning. I used to pull my e-brake in parking lots all the time in high school and that taught me how to handle a fishtailing car.

If I learned anything after seeing what happened last year, stay the hell away from Southern Ice.  It is nothing like the ice we get up here.  We never see the sun come out long enough to melt the ice on the blacktop and have temps cold enough to freeze it once we get some cloud cover.  And we never encounter storms where the county and the state stop running the trucks during states of emergency.  Don't forget about those dastardly hills covered with Southern Ice.  Why do you think the mountain states grind to a halt with 8" of snow on the roads?

If you are forced to drive on Southern Ice, my advice is just to slide into a ditch and catch your car on fir trying to get out.  Use the insurance money to plan your escape to Belize while the snow melts over the next 24 hours.

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Like the others said, you can't learn it from a video. Practice, practice, practice.

I first learned by driving cars in muddy fields, long before I turned 16. They should make that part of driver's ed courses, so people know how to drive when they hit the snowy roads.

Put it in neutral if you are having issues stopping, stopping in gear means the brakes are fighting the drivetrain and the conditions. Don't stay back 10 car lengths unless its a 2 lane blacktop, anything more than 4 or so just invites dumb shits to get between you and the guy ahead of you on the highway. Don't lock the brakes, and don't let the faggoty-assed bullshit pussy fucking antilock brakes kick in either, slowly apply, let off, reapply until stopped.

If you live in a place that gets lots of snow and ice, get snow tires. Not "All Weather" or "Mud and Snow" but actual snow tires with heavy duty siping on them that are made of a soft rubber for below 0F conditions. Mount them in the winter months. No amount of fancy driving skill or vehicle stability aids will help you if you break contact with the road.  If you live somewhere where it snows for a week or two, stay home.

Lesson 2 : There are times to utilize PTO, Shitty weather is one of them.

Also if no one mentioned it yet, BIG EMPTY parking lot.   PLUS those extra gear choices, use them to slow down / brake vs touching that rectangular shaped pedal to the left of the gas.

Everything that guy said is on the money.

Snow is your friend. Snow gives you traction. Ice is what you have to worry about.

Don't brake and turn at the same time.

Move to Upstate NY find a parking lot and play for a few hours...youll get the hang of it...everyone forgets how to drive every october/november and picks it up real fast.

And don't put it in neutral.



 

I've lived my entire life in Louisiana and a couple of years ago started coming to North Dakota for work. You can watch all the videos you want but until you get time behind the wheel it will do you no good. I picked up winter driving fairly quick and more than likely you can too, just take your time, be patient and always leave yourself an out in case you can't stop as fast as you want.

It's a lot like driving on a really loose gravel road.  But quieter.

Only things that happen at higher speeds on the gravel will happen at lower speeds on snow.

Oh gosh, it's that time of year again?

I've been driving for 40 years and I just don't know what to tell you.  Most important thing, especially since you are a novice, is bring warn clothes, boots, jacket, gloves, hat, shovel, and keep a full tank of gas.  Keep your phone charged.  I didn't have that for half of my driving time.  In my youth, people died every year in the mountains, stuck on the side of the road in the winter.

 

Gotta teach yourself what it's like to lose control so that when you're sliding sideways you don't do panicky stuff.

This is the truth.  Every year it's like you relearn a bit during the first snowfalls, and then after a month or so it all comes back.
You can only learn so much from a video, in this case practice makes perfect.

I'm gonna disagree with you there. That can cause your drive wheels to lose trip, and then you're fucked until you either regain traction through luck, or match throttle to speed. Coast to slow, but don't shift. You can always let off the brake if you lose traction.

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if you have skis in front a a track in the back that is one strategy

Amen

On vehicles with a simple fix to disable ABS I usually wire a switch into the ABS pump fuse


sometimes off highway locking them up and having sliding resistance vs pulsing rolling resistance means the difference between stopping and flying ( not very well) for a few hundred feet


Or in other words if your cars computer has to start pulsing the brakes your computer between the ears has had an error

I think this is a good video demonstrating why ABS, Traction Control, and Stability Control are nice to have in snowy/icy conditions.

Demonstration starts just after the 4-minute mark.

This is good advice.  And if you start to slip, turn in the opposite direction of the slip, and apply more gas.

Throttle steering

Practice. Ill be hitting up parking lots tonight to get a feel for it again.  A lot of it is muscle memory, but I still need to grind the rust off every season, if you know what I mean. Powerslides, fish tailing, etc. Get a feel for how your tires have worn and what you have for a traction limit.

 

Southern method is the safest.  

Look outside, see snow.  Go back inside and hang keys up while you go make another pot of coffee.