Up to my dads this morning to give him his eye drops after his recent cataract operation.
His driveway is halfway up a steep hill and cuts off at right angles.
I climbed the ice covered Hill in the X1 with its Cross Climates and turned into his driveway and parked up. Did my duties , back into car and started to reverse out. He has a hedge so you need to reverse out slowly until you have sight of the road and any traffic. As my back end just about reaches the pavement it starts to slide down to the hedge. Instinctively I slammed on brake but I should probably have flicked into Drive and floored it.
Too late. Back wing is now in hedge.
I put into drive but every touch of the gas results in the front sliding down as well. Till I end up full-side of car in hedge.
What do I do now? Can’t go forward. Can’t get out car to try and apply grit as I think the car could still slide.
Only option left to me was to reverse and run the car down the side of the hedge. Which is what I did.
But as soon as rear end got clear it started sliding down the hill. So to try and correct the slide I hit the hill descent control. Not sure if it works in reverse or just going forward. Much as I tried I couldn’t take foot off brake and let it do it’s thing. Instinct wouldn’t allow me.
So I eventually slid/reversed down the hill, against the kerb of the pavement and came to a halt at the T junction at the bottom. The other side of the T junction is the railway…..
Have had a busy day so haven’t forensically examined the car but it looks like I may have got off very lucky. Being a white car in this weather it was very dirty so dirt has been wiped off with big scrape marks which may be no deeper than the dirt. No trim damaged(I flicked the mirrors in just as I hit the hedge). Wheels also seem to have escaped damaged even though I came down against the kerb. Tyres must have taken all the rubbing.
I learned a few lessons today that’s for sure!!!
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