The cops came. When the investigation was done, Salt Lake County Deputy Phillip Vollmer wrote my wife a speeding citation even though she was only going 9 mph.

Before you get on Phil's case, I happen to agree with him - and I'm grateful. It's been two days since I tore the rain gutter off the back of the house while taking down the Christmas lights and my wife hasn't said a thing. You have no idea how good that feels.

Second, Phil happens to be right. Drivers are responsible to take road conditions into account. It doesn't matter that a speed limit sign says 40 mph if the weather is saying "Stay the hell home."

Besides, it was only a warning ticket.

Since it is still winter and my turn to do something expensive, I decided to get some training on how to avoid it.

The Winter Driving Academy at Miller Motorsports Park's Performance Training Center in Tooele County is a good place to start. On Thursday, I drove out there (successfully) and studied winter driving under professional race drivers.

The instructors had their work cut out for them. As an average Utah motorist, I am damn dangerous even on a clear day. Factor in a bag of Doritos and some Pink Floyd and it's amazing that I actually make it out of the driveway alive.

Professional driver Dan McKeever taught the classroom portion. I disagreed with almost everything he said, probably because I didn't understand much of it.

For example, Dan told us that the first issue in winter driving is speed. I tried to argue that the first issue was actually winter, but he politely ignored me. Then he said (with a perfectly straight face) that the key to avoiding crashes was to think ahead.

Dan is new to Utah. He doesn't know yet that a Utah driver is incapable of thinking any further ahead than his or her eyebrows. There was some other stuff involving math that I got wrong or didn't get at all. Fortunately, by then it was time to go drive.

My personal instructor in the skid car was another race driver, James Burke. Whereas Dan talked over my head, James spoke straight at my face but I only got about every 11th word. He's from England and talks exactly like Brad Pitt in the movie "Snatch."

James gave a brief lecture on proper hand positioning. Never cross your arms over the air bag spot unless you want your arms stuffed into your nose up to your elbows. Good advice.

A skid car looks like a normal car built into a furniture dolly. Extending out from the factory wheels is another set of wheels used to hydraulically lift the car in order to simulate winter conditions.

Using a control box in the front seat, James could lift the back end of the car until the regular tires barely touched the ground. The back end would whip around fast enough for us to read the rear license plate in the mirror.

When the front end was lifted, the curves instantly got straight. The steering wheel became little more than a tire swing onto which was clamped a badly frightened ape, or the typical winter commuter along the Wasatch Front.

We practiced "understeering" and "oversteering" through a course of turns laid out with orange traffic cones. If the cones were intended to simulate pedestrians, I ran over the entire population of Los Angeles.

The only way I can describe oversteering is that it'll make you barf if you do it more than twice. Apparently nausea is an important learning tool at the Miller Sportspark Winter Driving Academy.

James and Dan had a lot of patience or nothing else to do. After an hour, it actually seemed I was starting to get it. They were so pleased with my progress that they offered to call a cab to take me home.

rkirby@sltrib.com