The weekend rain and the frigid temps earlier this week created the perfect storm for physics lessons in the driveway. Driving in winter weather is one of the things I’m most grateful to have learned from my dad.

But like all lessons, until you get to put them into practice, they’re useless. Dad laid the foundation, but years of needing to commute to work, regardless of the weather, is where I got to put that foundation to work. As they say, “good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”

Luckily, we had a half-mile driveway that served as our test track, and now I’m thrilled to be able to pass on those lessons to my kids. Our driveway has one giant hill and lots of curves. Although it gets plowed during snowstorms, with the combination of water and freezing temperatures, there just wasn’t much that could be done with it last week, and it’s basically become a very large bobsled track.

The boys have gotten used to driving four-wheel-drive vehicles, so snowstorms haven’t been that much of a challenge. Low gear and going slow has been enough. Ice, however, was a different beast. I’d driven over it a few times with G. This is one of the few places where I feel like my “dad” skills are up to par. Sure, I don’t know all the technical terms for stuff, but I have a basic understanding of how gears and different wheel drives operate, and how to maneuver over our treacherous terrain.

We also have a small window of safety built in with plowed snow being built up on either side of the driveway, and if the car does slip a little bit, as long as we’re traveling slowly enough, it’s usually enough to stop us or slow us down before something bad happens.

Being in the passenger seat that first time that the teenage driver starts to lose control is mildly terrifying. There is also that split second when you know what’s about to happen and they don’t. And, if, in that window, you can calmly bark out orders, well, usually things turn out OK. At least it has been in my experience.

The other secret weapon to teaching kids to beat the icy driveway? The coal furnace. One of my dad’s rules of thumb during winter driving was to always have a tub of ashes and a shovel in the back of the car. I have, rather ashamedly, gotten out of the habit of carrying the shovel, but I’m seldom without ashes when I know I’m going to head into weather.

As much as I’m a believer in green energy and have been giving serious thought to replacing our coal furnace with something that’s less harmful to the environment, the thought of facing winter driving without coal ashes is holding me back. Coal ashes spread easily and have just the right amount of grit. There hasn’t been a patch of snow I couldn’t get unstuck from or an icy spot I couldn’t make it over thanks to coal ashes.

The other night, G got home before I did. Or, rather, he got close to home. “I’m not making it up the hill,” read the text. I’m a mildly terrible parent, maybe, but it made me laugh. “Good,” I thought to myself, “now you’ll learn something.” I suggested a few things he might try, but said that, ultimately, his best bet would probably be walking up to the house to get ashes.

As I watched his dot on Life360 move, he decided to take the easy route: back up and go to Uncle J’s house for help. Still laughing, I gave my brother the heads-up. A little while later the dot was back out in action. Based on the slow movement, retrieval of the ash buckets was in-process. A few minutes more and the blip of him going home and leaving again happened a few times.

A little while later, I pulled into the driveway, gratified to see that he didn’t just ash the part of the hill where he was having issues, but rather emptied out every single ash bucket that we had on as much of the driveway as he could. New lesson: Always hold at least one can in reserve for emergencies. Best of all, his truck was parked in its spot, in one piece, and he was safely inside working on his homework.

Not all his lessons can be taught in such a safe, controlled environment, but I’m glad this one can be. It might be years until we have another ice storm like we just had, or then again, we could get another one next week.

I’m sure he has many more lessons to learn, and much more poor judgment to execute, but he definitely tipped the scales to better judgment next time.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News