I
Off-Road Recovery
You may find sometime that your right wheels have
dropped off the edge
of a road onto the shoulder while
you’re driving.
If the level of the shoulder is only slightly below the
pavement, recovery should be fairly easy. Ease off the
accelerator and then, if there is nothing in the way, steer
so that your vehicle straddles the edge of the pavement.
You can turn the steering wheel up to
1/4 turn until the
right front tire contacts the pavement edge. Then turn
your steering wheel to go straight down the roadway. If
the shoulder appears to be about four inches
(100 mm) or more below the pavement, this difference
can cause problems. If there
is not enough room to pull
entirely onto the shoulder and stop, then follow the same
procedures. But if the right front tire scrubs against the
side
of the pavement, do NOT steer more sharply. With
too much steering angle, the vehicle may jump back
onto the road with
so much steering input that it crosses
over into the oncoming traffic before you can bring it
back under control.
Instead, ease off again on the accelerator and steering
input, straddle the pavement once more, then try again.
Passing
The driver of a vehicle about to pass another on a
two-lane highway waits for just the right moment,
accelerates, moves around the vehicle ahead, then goes
back into the right lane again.
A simple maneuver?
Not necessarily! Passing another vehicle on a two-lane
highway is a potentially dangerous move, since the
passing vehicle occupies the same lane as oncoming
traffic for several seconds.
A miscalculation, an error in
judgment, or a brief surrender to frustration or anger can
suddenly put the passing driver face to face with the
worst of all traffic accidents
-- the head-on collision.
