There is a relatively small speed bump just in front of pumps at the local gas station.

This guy in the Jeep, when it was his turn, oh so daintily crept up to and over the bump. It wasn't even a very big bump.

It's only November and we've got quite a depth of snow here in Britain, just yesterday, I had quite a hairy drive back to Yorkshire from the West coast of Wales.
You can be sure that when we have snow or ice, the first vehicle in a ditch I'll find will be a four wheel drive. It's no better than any other vehivle, if you don't know how to drive it!

Ugh, I hear that! I grew up in an area with lots of people driving luxury SUV's. They all thought they were invincible in snow and ice, and would tear down the roads at ridiculous speeds. More often than not you'd see the same car again, stuck in snow bank.

Actually, it's very possible that he did "get it". Sure, any Jeep could go crashing over that speed bump at speed, but some models will literally shake your fillings out if you do. Was this a Wrangler, or a Grand Cherokee?

tanstaafl.

Not a Cherokee, one of the variants based on the classic jeep.

Probably he was just trying not to spill the buckets of goat's blood...

You know you're driving your jeep properly when your wife/girlfriend/SO looks over at you and says, "That was really fun, but it made my boobs hurt."

Me driving my Jeep properly (without the wife);

My wife is totally not on board for automotive fun...

My daughters love it tho.

If it was older than 1987, it would be a CJ. There are several kinds you likely would have seen including CJ-5, CJ-6, CJ-7 and CJ-8 (Scrambler).

If it was newer than 1987, that would be a Wrangler. There are three variants:

1987-1995 - YJ - most easily distinguished by the square headlights
1997-2006 - TJ - back to round lights but still with the vertical grille
2007-current - JK - slanted grille and wider plastic front fender flares

My best guess is that you saw a 1995 or older Jeep. Those have leaf springs front and rear for suspension. Especially if it was lifted or the suspension had been messed with. A lot of the cheaper aftermarket springs get you higher up, but are a lot stiffer than the factory springs. My first set on my Jeep were like that and I could get air going over a speed bump slowly they were so stiff.

It was still shiny without dross in the crevices. From your list most likely a JK.

I would still love to get a CJ-5 or CJ-7 for playing out in the desert. Perkinsville Road, between Chino Valley and Jerome, was amazing in the Jeep.

The area in your picture looks really familiar. Do you remember where it was taken?

Schnebly Hill Road between Sedona and I-17.

I agree, 4x4 = snowmobile in some people’s minds. However they do tend to give you a false since of security. They are a lot harder to break loose in the snow and ice. But when they do you’re in a world of hurt because now you’ve got all four wheels sliding instead of just two.

As someone who lives and drives in deep snow conditions regularly, I'll take my AWD Subaru over a non 4x4 any time. It is way better on snow and ice than most other vehicles.

And yes, I have treated it like a snowmobile, barrelling down forest trails in the dead of winter hunting for geocaches. Quite simply amazing what it can do, and where it can go.

Cheers

Mark, is that with or without winter tires?

With Hakka's on all four wheels.

Last season, after 11 years, I figured the Hakka's were looking a bit worn, though, so it now has new Goodyear winter tyres all around.

EDIT: Oh, and 5-speed manual transmission, too. I don't find automatics to be as easy to control on ice. And they (still) don't offer 6-speed manual over here. Strange.

Cheers

I think the complaint was more about people with luxury or "luxury" SUVs that think they're invincible, when, in fact, they're probably more likely to be, uh, vincible. There's pretty much no situation where a higher center of gravity is going to be better, and we're not talking about situations where a high suspension is going to help anything.

Gotcha. We use to go camping all the time when I was in school up in Prescott - I'd guess at least one weekend a month. Then, one of my friends was doing flight testing on an aircraft down at Williams Gateway and we took off every weekend for another part of the state (or Utah). Those were awesome times, I think he was here for about a year. I keep hoping his current flight test program brings him back down for some more camping.

I will never be without a 4 wheel drive. Since I live on a farm in the middle on nowhere they are great. I love it when I’m in my Jeep Cherokee and all of a sudden stop going forward in the snow or ice. No problem, just flip a lever and you’re moving. I only got it stuck once in the last 10 years bad enough to require my tractor’s assistance. I was pulling a car trailer up a hill in the spring in the mud. While I covered everything within 100 feet in mud I still needed a little pull.

Reminds me of:
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
P. G. Wodehouse
although vincible is a perfectly good English word: From the Latin.

It's what happens when a pig gets laryngitis... he becomes disgruntled.

tanstaafl.

Lack of coffee changed that word in my head.

"discontinuous hard shoulder"
A road sign north of Manchester(UK), I'll swear i'd never heard that first word in my life, but it's in the dictionary. I just thought:
"Internittent hard shoulder"
would be understood by most people.

Must have been written by a mathematician.

Well, first car in a ditch round our way was an Audi Q7, happened on the first day of snow. It's not just Jeep drivers...

Not sure what the first car in the ditch was, here (two weeks ago). The police had the section of road closed, meaning that my late-night drive home from hockey was interrupted by a 6 mile, 10MPH detour. Whee. It sucks when country roads get closed.

I can recall two extraordinarily slippery driving occasions... once in Alaska the highway was partially blocked because a school bus had slid off the road, couldn't get going again. I was in a Toyota Land Cruiser (the old FJ-40 style) and once I stopped it was so slippery that the truck just slid sideways down the very slight gradient caused by the crown of the road. When it reached the snowy shoulder it stopped.

The other time was in Oregon in 1964. It had snowed, frozen, and then rained so that Interstate 5 was black ice with water standing on top of it. I had to get from Eugene to Portland, about 110 miles, to catch an airline flight. My vehicle was a BMW and with my years of Alaskan driving experience I was the fastest vehicle out there. When I passed the State Troopers they probably looked at my Alaska license plate and decided to just let the idiot go. It was so slippery that I was slightly fish-tailing the whole time, and so nervous that once I pulled into a rest area to catch my breath. As soon as I stopped, the BMW slid and fell over. Oh, did I forget to mention that my BMW was an R-69s motorcycle? I couldn't get enough traction to pick it up again, so a truck driver had to help me slide it over so the wheels were against a curb and then the two of us were able to get it back upright. I did make the flight, but that was a memorable trip!

tanstaafl.

In North Dakota, it was always easy to tell who got transferred to base since the last snowfall. One year, in the 13 miles between base and town, there were over 30 cars in the ditch. That was just on one side of the highway. There were always a great mixture of 4WD and 2WD. If you don't know how to drive whatever you are driving, it is easy to end up in the ditch.

In the past I would ride my motorcycle in the snow and ice too. Until one day I was riding on a straight flat road in hard packed ice/snow and in a second, for no apparent reason, the bike was on its side and I was sliding down the road. In my many years of riding and wrecking that was the only time I had no idea why I went down. It was like someone pulled the bike’s wheels sideways out from under me.

The first and only time I have come off the road was last January, under the single most slippery driving conditions I've ever encountered. It had been extremely cold (for the southern UK) for a couple of months, and snowed quite a bit. Most of the snow had gone, and the weather warmed up just a little, allowing some roads to thaw out.

There's a minor road near me that is a more direct route to where I needed to go, which had been closed for more than a week since they couldn't grit it. It was reopened on the day I decided go to see my bookkeeper, so I thought I'd go that way since it was quicker. Going up the slight hill at the start was fine, as the sun had been shining on it all day, and it was wet but ice free. As soon as I went over the top of the hill I knew I'd made a mistake, as it was a sheet of ice as far as I could see.

I wasn't going all that fast, but there was no way I could risk braking. I just shifted down a gear and let the car coast down the hill, slowing up as it wanted, with the intent of getting down to a walking pace and continuing on until I could rejoin the main road.

Unfortunately, as I came around the corner halfway down the hill, I found some IDIOT woman had preceded me, lost her nerve, and decided that she would do a three point turn in the middle of a road, on a hill, around a blind corner! So here I was, doing 10 miles an hour down a hill with near enough zero friction, with a car side on a hundred feet away.

The only thing I could do was brake, which of course made all four wheels lock instantly. I then had the choice of sliding into her, or into the ditch. I chose the ditch as the least worst option, hoping that when the wheels hit the side of the road the car would slow down. What actually happened was that the front wheel dug in and the entire car spun 90 degrees and put both front wheels into the ditch, rendering it immovable, although without any damage.

To add insult to injury, the damn lady finished her turn, very slowly drove back up the hill and past me, and as she passed waved and said "Thanks for not hitting me", and left!

The road was so slippery that when I got out of the car I immediately fell over and slid 50 feet on my back. I had to hang onto the car to remain upright. It took more than an hour and the help of some farmers with a landrover to extract the car.

They reclosed the road an hour later and it was shut for another 10 days

pca

Having recently driven the company Navara and Hilux, I have to say those sorts of vehicles do seem to instill a feeling of safety and invincibility. I can definately see how it causes people to overestimate their abilities in weather like this.

It's not just "SUV" size vehicles that do it. The magic words "4-wheel drive" contribute mightily to people's impressions that they can drive on ice the same way Brian Orser skates. 4WD != "go fast".

I dunno, it looks pretty easy to me...


heh

Mind you, they have their uses: Late one afternoon, I left a client's in Skipton in my Range Rover, crossed the Pennines and came down to Harrogate.There I was stopped by a police car who asked me where I'd come from and informed me that the road I'd just used had been closed to all traffic at lunchtime, three hours earlier.
I thought it was a bit quiet! Because I'd come out of a side road in Skipton, I'd missed the barrier!