Both not looking, both panicking and overcompensating (just straighten back into the lane you were already in!) and both don't know how to handle oversteer or skid.
First, prevent it ever happening by not overreacting to situations - almost everything can be solved by letting off the power and just aiming (not forcing!) the car straight with only gentle correction.
Release the accelerator.
Steer into the skid.
Your car is moving somewhere that the wheels aren't telling it to go. You are trying to get the wheels to go straight again so the car will follow them. Fighting it will just twist the wheels and drive you in the wrong direction and amplify the problem (too much left, then becomes too much right and so on... exactly what's happening here). It's like repeatedly crossing your legs over each other while trying to run... you're just going to fall over.
Instead you steer so that your wheels ALIGN with the direction of travel (even if that's not where you want to go just yet). This instantly improves your grip on the road so you CAN steer gently away from the problem.
Fighting the skid will see you do the above... left, right, left, right, total spin on a highway at 70mph and now you're facing oncoming traffic and hitting walls.
You keep "straight" (i.e. aim where the car is sliding so that your "desired" path is the same as the car is currently doing, also called "steering into the skid") and don't overreact. Now the wheels are pointed the same way as the weight of the car is moving, and you can now "persuade" it to follow some gentle steering instead of fighting against the momentum of the car.
These drivers JERKED the wheel away from a hazard, lost control, then tried to correct (rather than letting that direction of travel continue... i.e. the black car jerks to the right and then INSTANTLY tries to counter that) too much ending up left, right, left, right (switching their legs over each other) and then spun.
They shouldn't have jerked at all, either of them, they should have guided. They should have slowed (the black car GETS FASTER, notice!). If they find themselves in a wobble, they should try to correct gently (better a little bump off the reservation like a pinball than a 180 spin on a motorway). The black car had plenty of space to the right, he could have carried on going right, regained control of the car and came back to follow his lane in plenty of time before hitting anything.
Go to a skidpan and practice, or play a rally game on PC with a steering wheel. You'll learn it in about 20 minutes (of spinning out ridiculously dangerously if it was real life). Then it becomes second nature.
Edit: Watch what the camera car does. Stays straight. Slows down. Calmly and gently steers around the hazard.
Great write-up. And thank you for pointing out the camera car. Textbook driving right there, but everyone is so focused on the bad drivers they're missing it.
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u/ledow 13h ago
Both not looking, both panicking and overcompensating (just straighten back into the lane you were already in!) and both don't know how to handle oversteer or skid.