Auto + RWD in snow/ice - High gear or low?

milltown

Looking for opinions here.

Conventional wisdom dictates that you should drive in as high a gear as possible, yes? The idea being less torque equals less chance of breaking traction.

But it seems to me, driving a tiptronic automatic rear wheel drive car that a lower gear would make more sense. I drove to work tonight 90% in 2nd gear and 10% in 1st. My reasoning is that if I'm trying to make a turn and the car is sliding and understeering that I can give it a little bit of "the shoe" to help the back end around and hopefully be pointing in the right direction when a bit of grip returns. In a FWD car (as I'd guess ~85% of cars on our roads are) the extra bit of throttle would just provoke more understeer but am I wrong in thinking like I do in a RWD car?

Bear in mind that I'm not talking about power sliding or drifting around corners here. Any turning I did took place at under 10mph this evening. I'm also well aware that in conditions like tonight, once you start sliding, you're pretty much a passenger. All you can do is make delicate inputs and hope they have some effect.

Discuss.

jackofalltrades

Can't give you much advice about driving an automatic in snow personally due to my location.

But I know that a few automatics have a winter driving mode that starts off in second or even third so as to reduce the possibility of spinning the wheels.

First seems too low to be driving in snow unless your car has a really small engine.

How does the car handle in normal automatic mode?

milltown

First was mainly used for slowing down in preference to the brake. I was leaving it in tip mode mostly so I had control of where, when and in which direction it would shift.

mickdw

I would agree with the theory of having the sharpest response at the wheels possible to aid directional changes using engine power but having said that, it would require a good level of feel and control. I mean if you were to drive using this technique in a ham fisted way, well, you would get into even more trouble. It is possible too that a squirt of troottle powering the rear wheels would propel you straight ahead if the front wheels lost grip, again driver control is critical here
The high gear theory is to keep average drivers out of trouble in the main part although there are situations where only a higher gear will allow you to move off in very slippy conditions.
Id say your plan has merit providing you can drive well

samsemtex

I dont know. I think 2nd gear will give way too much torque in these conditions. I was doing 30mpph and i moved up to 5th gear, just to see if it would skid, in my 1.8litre s40 and still broke traction very easily. I'd say 3rd would be plenty low enough because if you spin the wheels too much in 2nd you will just over correct when it does grip.

I suppose it depends on what you are driving as well.