Go ahead, dumbell, "turn into the skid."

Mrs. Donna O’Toole of Joliet, Illinois, write:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our daughter Sacajawea finished her high school driver education course a while ago and has been driving for a few months. They taught her in the course that if your car starts to skid you should always “turn into the skid,” or “turn in the direction of the skid.” They said it several times. I remember that they said the same thing to us when I took drivers education way back in the 80s, and I’ve heard it all my life but I haven’t paid much attention to it because it doesn’t make any sense.

Yesterday evening Sacajawea was driving back from Triple Trio practice in the snow. She was crossing the Jefferson Street bridge and the car started to skid, turning to the right. So following the guidance of her teachers she turned the wheel to the right, and she went off the bridge. The car turned over but landed on the river bank and luckily Sacajawea wasn’t hurt very badly but the Stratus is pretty bent up.

This morning my husband called Sacajawea’s driving teacher Mr. Feeney at the high school and asked why he had told her to do that. At first he laughed a nervous laugh, but then he admitted that he always told new drivers to do that because that’s what it says in the book, but that it had always seemed stupid to him, too. He has never “turned in the direction of the skid.”

So, is there something about English that we’re all not getting? What does “turn into the skid” mean?

-Signed, Mrs. Tecumseh J. O’Toole

Dear Mrs. O’Toole,

When your car is skidding, why would you turn in a way that would immediately and very obviously make the skid worse, just because somebody told you to? Only a stupid person would blindly follow instructions that are obviously wrong, especially when it involves the integrity of your Dodge Stratus.

Apparently, this “turn into the skid” thing is all the result of some misprint in the distant past (or maybe it was just a silly gag by some waggish joker) that has been mindlessly reprinted and repeated ever since by people with minimal intelligence and no common sense, despite the fact that it is patently loony and idiotic. 

The solution is for you to stop being such a complete sheep and to start thinking for yourself. It’s people like you that have voted our country into the toilet. No offense.

-- The Grammer Genious

PS. You probably also believed them when they said you should loosen a screw by "turning it to the left." When you loosen a screw, only the TOP edge moves to the left. The bottom edge moves to the RIGHT, stupid. No offense.