Yikes. Glad you're ok.
I could be wrong about this, but I blame the Vanagon suspension. One of the
reasons we like our vans is that they don't handle like big wallowing
american vans. They are fairly stiffly sprung and the roll stiffness is
quite high. This means that any road irregularities cause big weight
tranfers. If you don't believe me, try breaking traction with me in my
diesel vanagon on going over diagonal speedbumps up my hill. You wouldn't
think that this underpowered wonder could do it.

I know that rally cars run very soft suspensions in snow and ice stages, and
I believe this is at least partially to alleviate this problem. Soft means
that all four tires are carrying their share of the load, given a low enough
CG. We have a high CG, so we don't have the luxury of running "soft."

Daniel Snow

'82 Vanagon Diesel
'78 Puch Maxi Luxe Moped
'01 Xootr Scooter
http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/snow/vanagon/vanagon.html

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