If you were to ask my wife how my driving is, she would tell you I am a horrible driver and should not be allowed to operate a motor vehicle. That being said I would like to say that I Ken Block'd the heck out of my Mercedes Benz E350 today. Early this morning I had to take my wife to the Emergency room where she ended up having to be admitted for overnight observation. Why is this relevant? because in the morning on the way to the hospital the roads looked like this:
This picture was taken around 9:00 AM. I left the hospital around 3:00 PM to go home and get my ten year old off of the bus to take her to my mothers house. By 3:15 PM the roads started to look like this:
I have lived in the Greater Pittsburgh area my whole life so driving in the snow is no big deal to me. That being said, most other drivers seem to forget how to drive in less than ideal conditions and decide they are going to drive too fast for conditions, often resulting in less than ideal results.
So there I am driving around a very sharp bend about to descend a steep hill. I am inching along at around 10 MPH in almost whiteout conditions when i round the corner and see someone sideways in the middle of my lane. I know I cannot hit the brakes so I let up off the gas and allow the 3.5 liter V6 engine braking to kick in as I gently attempt to steer the car to the left around the obstacle in front of me.
It didn't work.
All that I managed to do was get the nose of the car into the oncoming lane where I started to slide sideways. In slow motion I can see the line my precious Lunar Blue W212 chassis Mercedes Benz E Class is heading on. My passenger side rear quarter panel is going to slam flat into his rear passenger side quarter panel. As my car is sliding towards him I do the only thing I can think of. I turn the wheels down hill and punch the throttle. I feel the engine surge as the Mercedes Benz Electronic Stability Program kicks in. The car swings around, missing the stranded vehicle by what my mind perceives as mere millimeters, but I am not out of the woods yet. Now I am sideways sliding down the hill facing the other direction, only now there is a small bend coming up to the left. With as much counter steering as I can muster I attempt to get the car under control as I feather the throttle as little as possible. I manage to correct the vehicle with a final flourish of a drift around the bend.
While I would like to be able to attribute this total bit of driving bad-assery to my skills I truly cannot. Were it not for the amazing engineering under the hood of my Mercedes Benz I most likely would not be writing this right now as my wife would surely have murdered me for wrecking the car.
As a post script, about 2 miles up the road I came upon this wonderful cluster:
Stay safe out there everyone. Winter is definitely here.
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