Driving the X7 home at 2am from the airport, still had the blizzaks on, have all the good options, wife & kids in the X7. Two lane highway, started clear, then a bomb squall of ice/rain/slush/etc. When it first started had sensed a tiny slip, slowed to a normal speed, after a few mins then the highway had about just under an inch of coverage on it, pretty much no other cars around.
Started to lighten up on the throttle to slow down a little more and bam they X7 completely breaks traction. Without any brake or throttle I began trying to regain control, went side to side on the highway maybe 3-4 times, once the X7 was maybe half over the line to breakdown/shoulder. There's not much room on either side of this highway and no rails/barriers, it's just down into a ditch. Managed to save it luckily, didn't help that I had to do this on a bend/turn, was on a straight section finally when had her under control.
After the fact, I wondered if maybe a throttle tap or two would of helped, obviously any brakes would of been bad. What surprised me is I don't really feel like any system on the car helped, my friend was surprised too, which is my thinking that a light throttle might of helped. My main focus was not putting it in the ditch, I was being more cautious because the family was in the car, if they weren't I would of been a little more aggressive in getting it under control. At no time did I feel like it was going to roll, it was very stable for a large SUV, almost felt like a sedan under the circumstances. I'm really curious what the integral steering was doing the whole time, not sure if it helped or made the slides worse.
Under exact controlled circumstances I would love to try it again. Wife was pretty freaked out, kids not as much, one joked he had his arms up like we were at the amusement park. 8yr old tells me the next day we need a BRaptor instead as we could of just jumped it into the ditch and out of the ditch and kept going LOL
. Probably won't be in snow again this year, hopefully every time we are the wife won't be in panic mode over happening again. She knows I have driving skill and definitely realizes now that only a fraction of a percent of people could of saved the X7 like I did. Freak conditions, wrong place, wrong time, and luckily without incident.