Icy Surface and Incline Make Lincoln MKT the Wrong Kind of Autonomous Car

We all know how dangerous black ice is. Not only does the thing make your vehicle slide as if the tires were covered in butter, but it's also notoriously hard to spot since it looks not that much different from simple damp asphalt. That's why drivers should look at the thermometer reading in the vehicle's dashboard display and, if it shows freezing temperatures, they should treat any shiny surface as a potential skating rink.

We can't really point the finger at Melissa, the driver of the Lincoln MKT you'll see in this clip and say she didn't follow that advice because she didn't really have that much choice. You see, the clip was captured by Melissa's Ring camera, which means she was merely trying to park the crossover in front of her home.

Should she have parked the car at the base of the slope and travel the last few yards on foot? In retrospect, yes, she probably should have. In fact, if anything, we're amazed by the fact the Lincoln was able to make the climb in the first place. The tires were spinning like crazy but at least as long as she kept pressing the throttle, the MKT kept climbing.

It was only when she stopped and hit the brakes that the vehicle started sliding. Once it did, though, there was no stopping it - at least not by sitting on the brakes. The last thing you want to do when sliding is to lock the wheels, and that's what braking does. Locked wheels mean zero control - that's basically why ABS was created in the first place.

What Melissa should have done was to stop only when two of the Lincoln's wheels were resting on the grass. She also could have tried to put the vehicle back in drive and give it some gas the moment she felt it was gliding downhill, but it's always easier to know these things in retrospect than when you're in the heat of the moment.

However, the good news is nobody was hurt during the MKT's little escapade, and even though it seemed hard to believe when the vehicle started sliding toward the base of the hill, there was no physical damage either. The clip ends with the Lincoln facing back the way it came, stopped in the deeper snow on the side of the road. However, we're curious to know what Melissa decided to do from there. Did she have the courage to go back up? Or did she count her blessings for getting out of that one without a scratch and played it safe? We like to think it was the former, only with a lot more success than the first time.