Years ago, I had to go to work for an important client meeting on a very icy morning (kinda like today here!), and was going down a rural ice-covered road toward the highway. Knowing there was a series of curves ahead, I slowed down to a near-crawl, but had to keep some speed up for the grade. I went through the curves, nervous as hell about slipping on the ice, but had no incident.
I let out a little sigh of relief as I got back to a straightaway. But no sooner had I done so, that I started fish-tailing a bit. Nothing too drastic at first, but it started getting worse, and all too quickly, I started turning doughnuts on the road. Fortunately, there was no other traffic around me; I was totally alone on this road. Tried steering out of it, to no avail. Did at least three complete 360s before I realize that I wasn't going to get out of this. So I took my hands off the steering wheel, feet off the pedals, and just let the car go wherever. Don't know how it happened, but my car went--backwards!--down a slight embankment (about three feet), over a shallow ditch (still backwards!), then came to rest in a yard. Four feet to my left was a large tree; three feet to my right was a gas meter!
If I had held it even a split second longer, or let it go a split second sooner, I certainly would have hit one of them, with possibly catastrophic results. As it was, not a scratch, dent, or mark on the car; I'm not counting the brown spot in my underwear at that point... After a moment's recovery, I backed up a few feet, pulled through the yard to the driveway, then back onto the road, and never had another bit of trouble. Whewww!
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