I was a young college student on my way to school one morning in my VW. It had sleeted the night before, so driving was already treacherous.
Anyway, I was driving on the lonely country road at about 30 mph (usually 55mph when dry), and I began to close in on some other slower moving vehicles in front of me. I didn't want to slow down (ahhh, youth), so I carefully veered over to the opposite lane to pass. I had made it around all of the vehicles and back over to my lane when I felt the tires begin to lose grip. The VW started to slide the rear end over to one side.
I overcorrected with the steering wheel and wound up slinging the rear end over the other way. With every attempt to straigthen the car out with the steering wheel, I would launch the rear of the car in the opposite direction.
Before long, I had this violent tail-wagging effect going on, and each "wag" increased with intensity, until I decided I couldn't control the oscillations any more. When I gave up, I found myself facing the traffic I just passed up, heading down the road going backwards at 35 mph!
I figured I would be dead soon as some large vehicle would take me out in the opposing lane, but instead, the car evenually slid over to the adjacent ditch, and the iced-over grass slowed the car down to a halt!
That must have looked pretty interesting to the folks in the cars I just passed up!
One thing that stuck in my mind was that I had the first track of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" playing in my 8-track deck...so whenever I hear that song, I think of that episode...
