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   Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 03:18:20 JST Nowhere Girl

   "Yeah, that hill was pretty nasty," my boss said as he gunned it up to 69mph on the still slushy freeway and swerved between a couple of slow moving cars.

   "Eek," I said, in the tiniest voice ever.

   • Embed this notice
     timberwraith (timberwraith@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 03:18:19 JST timberwraith

     in reply to

     @gwynnion [sigh] That's not good.

     You could hand this down from a Minnesota driver with traction control in her car:

     Traction control will *not* protect a person from an uncontrolled skid across ice, which is still likely under winter driving conditions. It will try to prevent the driver from applying too much gas/throttle so that as much traction/friction is maintained with a slippery road surface as possible but it still can't prevent a skid across ice if the driver is not careful.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 03:18:19 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • timberwraith

     @timberwraith @gwynnion Utter dumbass. All traction control will do in snow/ice is get you stuck. Getting through/out of it at low, safe speeds often requires spinning your wheels with only low traction, which traction control will prevent you from doing.

   • Embed this notice
     timberwraith (timberwraith@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 03:18:20 JST timberwraith

     in reply to

     @gwynnion Good grief. 🤦♀️

   • Embed this notice
     Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 03:18:20 JST Nowhere Girl

     in reply to

     • timberwraith

     @timberwraith He's not even in a four wheel drive! He's got some fancy traction control thingie on his car that he thinks makes him invincible.

     I don't know how he's still alive.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 05:06:39 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • timberwraith

     @timberwraith @gwynnion Yep. I find lots of folks don't know about that, and it's super useful. I don't normally drive a vehicle with it so I only discovered it via the traction control light illuminating when stuck in snow, and realized "oh this vehicle has traction control and the button with the same icon on it probably turns it off". After pressing it, no problem getting out.

   • Embed this notice
     timberwraith (timberwraith@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jan-2026 05:06:40 JST timberwraith

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker

     @dalias @gwynnion Yes, that happens too. Some cars have a switch to turn off traction control temporarily for those instances.