Well, that was exciting... big ice storm on I-80 yesterday morning. One of the worst I've seen - semis flipped in the middle of the road, their cargo dumped... semis jack-knifed in the median, cars flipped, cars smashing through guardrails and going down embankments... big fun. I was doing ok until there was an accident in front of me and I had to touch my brakes. That was all she wrote. I was probably doing about 50, had hundreds of yards of open space in front and behind... the trouble was the semi in the lane right beside me. (I had 4 wheel drive and anti-skid braking; no matter. There was a solid 1/2 inch (~ 1cm) of ice on the road - when I stepped out of the car I nearly fell on my ass.)
So I touched the brakes, the car started to oscillate, and I'm turning into the spin, trying to dampen the oscillations... and it's responding and I'm trying to drift off onto the shoulder and into the snow to stop myself. Back end hits the grass besides the road and snapped me right back out into traffic, spinning clockwise now at a high rate. I went backwards, under the trailer of the semi and into the rear wheels. The wheels hit the back of the car, but instead of just running over it as I expected, it bounced me back out from under, spinning couterclockwise, and into the snowbanks on the side of the road. The road was so icy that the car really didn't absorb much impact - it spun away like a hockey puck on a skating rink.
So I got out, tore the remaining piece of bumper free and kept going.
Pretty serious damage to the back of the car, but considering, I think I used up a bit of my luck.
