Slow down before a turn, not during it

When you're making a turn in your car and you're afraid you may skid, isn't it a good idea to slow down?

If the turn is an arc of a circle, and you've already completed part of the turn at constant speed without skidding, then the road and tires are apparently capable of enough static friction to supply an acceleration of |v|²/r . There is no reason why you would skid out now if you haven't already. If you get nervous and brake, however, then you need to have a tangential acceleration component in addition to the radial component you were already able to produce successfully. This would require an acceleration vector with a greater magnitude, which in turn would require a larger force. Static friction might not be able to supply that much force, and you might skid out. As in the previous example on a similar topic, the safe thing to do is to approach the turn at a comfortably low speed.