This behavior is a problem accentuated by front wheel drive. Some are worse than others, but I have owned a number of front drive cars that would "head for the hills" when they encounter a patch of water, or the ridge of loose gravel that develops between the wheel tracks on gravel roads.

In any front drive without a limited slip diff the suddenly unweighted [no traction] wheel will spin up to higher than road speed, & spear the car off in another direction when traction is regained after the puddle. Preventing this is one of the reason for traction control fitted to up market higher powered cars.

It does happen to a minor extent in rear drive cars, but the effect on directional control is much less. In rainy conditions I insist my lady take the ute. They are not great for traction at any time, but are much less likely to try to kill you than her little front drive shopping trolley hatch, when they hit standing water.

Well done Issy, the young lady was fortunate to have someone coming towards her who was decent enough to stop and lend assistance.

I second that. Well done Is Mise!
We need more like you on our roads.

Hi Foxy and Issy,

Not so fortunate for a dear friend of ours. She is 75, recently lost her husband. Was driving on a stretch of busy road, 1 lane each way, 80km speed limit, she was probably doing 60km, she is a slow driver. A bloke in a ute came up behind her, tail gating, she tapped her breaks a couple of times, must have upset him. Its not the road you can overtake on, lots of on comers and side roads. At the end she went left into a 3 lane main road, he cut inside her then in front of her, and slammed on the breaks for no reason. She slammed her breaks on, a car behind ran up the back of her, the ute took off. Insurance wrote her car off, $7k payout, but she wants her little car back, repairs will cost $13k, Anne has to foot the difference. Of course economically better to take the $7 and buy another car, well she wants her car, what can one say.

Rip off old people, same lady her phone with Telstra $75/month. I said are you still on a plan paying for the phone. No, I finished that years ago, but since then the nice man at the Telstra shop has been upgrading my plan. WHAT! so you can make unlimited calls to Ethiopia, should you ever need to! She does local talk and text, a couple of gigs of data. I said Anne, you should be paying no more than $30 tops per month, they are ripping you off!

Hi Paul,

I can understand the lady's love of her car. My husband
has a Ford Fairmont XE (automatic) that he loves. The
rego on it is a fortune each year. Plus at the moment
it's battery's gone dead and needs to be replaced.
Which my husband will of course do. Seeing as we've also
got a Holden Statesman - I keep trying to persuade him
to sell the Ford and stay with the Statesman, but he won't
hear of it. So we've got double everything in payments.

I wonder what I can say to persuade my husband to sell the
Ford? Or should I just give up?

Thank you, Foxy and Paul, but I couldn’t really ignore her, she was blocking the lane ahead of me (big smilie).