Driving an automatic on icy roads and taking off on hills?

Maybe, but I'm not going to go from 'off' to 'high'. I'll kick it into low first, make sure everything is copasetic, then up to medium, then finally high. If I can't spend 10-20 seconds increasing the jakes by stages then I was going way to friggin fast in the first place.

I'll add that a Freightliner DT12 transmission is programed to drop 1-2 gears (depending on starting rpms) if the driver manually turns the jakes from 'off' to 'high'.

 

I'll have to play and see on the Ultra Plus. My Jake is so rarely off on the highway that I've usually already forced downshift to slow down before I've realized the Jake isn't on.

I do know you have to coast for quite a bit & slow somewhat before it will downshift if you come off the throttle or cruise. It's a long enough delay that it rarely comes into play when intentionally slowing, usually only happens if traffic is gradually slowing. You'll be slowing just right in high gear and then it'll drop a couple gears and it's too much; I usually just hit the button to force an upshift.

 

I drove 28 years and saw actual black ice maybe twice. I'm not disputing it happens, and it happens more in some places than others. But black ice isn't 10% as common as it's claimed. 90% of driver errors in winters are claimed to be black ice, IMO. Newbies don't put their phone down and pay more attention in possible ice conditions, they put a death grip on the steering wheel and keep driving distractions engaged.

There are drivers, lost and lots and lots of them, that park as soon as they turn on the windshield wipers for rain or snow. There isn't a sudden increase in black ice. There is a sudden increase in new, inexperienced, drive like a 4-wheeler drivers in trucks. I'm only speaking about the 48 states I drove in.

 

Wind chill has NOTHING to do with making it colder. Any object will only drop to ambient temperature, not colder because the winds blowing.

 

That was a battle I wasn't sure was worth fighting in here. I've never quite understood why people have such a hard time grasping the difference between heat & temperature, and how wind chill measures the loss rate of the former and has no effect on the latter.

 

Imagine riding a motorcycle in 40* and your fingers getting numb with gloves on. Vs someone just standing around.

We wear coats up to 60* or whatever while everyone else not riding is in shorts.

 

Only living things feel the affect of wind chill, everything else simply drops to the ambient air temp faster than normal. If it’s 20 degrees out and the wind chill is zero, to me it will feel like zero. To my warm truck that I just parked it means everything will drop to 20 degrees faster.

 

Ambient temperature is not the only aspect to cause black ice. If it has been cold enough to freeze the ground and road you can have black ice at temperatures considerably warmer than freezing, even if it is raining. Conversely a road can be just wet at temperatures below freezing. These conditions don't last a long time, but they certainly happen.

Watching for spray, cracking the window and listening, and most importantly listening to that little voice when it tells you "something felt a little light in the steering just then" are all tools to use . The use of mag chloride and salt brine in recent years has made reading conditions more difficult for me, but thinking about what the road surface is doing is probably half the battle.

In regard to the use of Jakes, I'm in the camp of the guys that do use them in slick conditions, but being prepared to act if a wheel slips. I'll add another caveat to what has been said, and that is that I prefer not to have the power divider locked in going downhill. My thought is that I would rather have just one wheel end stop turning than one on each drive axle so the other three still track.

I also agree with what @Long FLD said about going too slow. The super elevated corners can be treacherous when it's real slick and one isn't carrying enough speed to stay in the corner.

All that said, these suggestions come from my experience driving class 8 trucks since 1980, and learning to drive in Northern Idaho in 1973. I would advise new drivers to be ultra cautious using Jakes when slick, and be ready if a wheel slips. The most important rule for me is to try and always leave room between myself and other vehicles, try not to follow vans and other high profile loads so that I can see down the road as far as possible, and have a bail out path in mind if all else fails if possible.

@Hammer166 , didn't you write a tutorial years back on winter driving? If so it might be a good time to bump that thread.

Edit to add, I have no advice regarding automated or fully automatic transmissions as I have never driven one in a class 8.

 

Guess I was high tech, I had a 8 track in my cabover.
But you are correct.

 

You’re right.
Wind chill is a highly overrated concept.
If it is zero degrees ambient then that is as cold as anything will get no matter how hard the wind is blowing.
It measures how fast a body (exposed skin) will reach ambient temperature.