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Post by silverdragon on Nov 27, 2012 6:39:37 GMT
Or how NOT to be a statistic.....
With the success of the Winter Driving thread, I though we could go through another one of general ALL weather advanced driving techniques thread to help others...
This is for the stuff they just dont teach you on the driving test, but you SHOULD know...If you got anything you think would help, please add to this thread.
If you have any questions you want answers from OTHER drivers about, ask.
I was once asked how far ahead do you look?...
At the car in front, or the one in front of that?..
My answer "As many as I can see" got close to what the instructor was trying to imply on the subject.
He added "If you can only see the car in front, what does that mean?...
My answer "Your too bloody close"...........
When stopping in a queue of stationary vehicles, how close do you get to the one in front?..
My answer is to be able to see the rear tyres of the vehicle in front...
That way, if what we have is a failure to accelerate, you more or less have enough room to swing out and get round that vehicle should it break down at that point.
What is the ideal speed to go into a blind corner?...
If you cant stop in the distance you can see, again, your going to darn fast.
Ok, so this one I had to think about....
One a long MAMBA road, you are approaching what looks like a set of bollards in the middle of the road... between the two opposing lanes...what does that tell you?...
(MAMBA, Miles And Miles of Bu***r All)
{As the first line indicated, there are no myths here. So thread moved to the Oracle Board - CM}
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Post by the light works on Nov 27, 2012 16:10:44 GMT
"Ok, so this one I had to think about....
One a long MAMBA road, you are approaching what looks like a set of bollards in the middle of the road... between the two opposing lanes...what does that tell you?..."
time to wake up and pay attention.
here the general stop behind distance rule is that you should stop far enough back to be able to see pavement between your vehicle and the vehicle ahead. (maybe our cars turn a little less sharp than yours)
basic rule of handling skids: "drive the front end where you want to go and don't let the back end pass you"
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 28, 2012 8:57:10 GMT
If anyone is still wondering, the bollards will be "Tombstone Technology".
Usually, someone died there, and the cause of the accident was there was nowhere 'safe' to cross that road.
What it tells you is there is liable to be OTHER lemming pedestrians around on that road....
Reason I say that?.. how many times have you seen a pedestrian cross within yards (or even feet) of an actual marked pedestrian crossing?...
Its even illegal to do so in many places (Cross the road within a certain distance of an actual marked crossing... "Jay walking" as USA calls it) but people think they are immune....
Immune to what?... prosecution or several tons of heavy metal?....
"Reading the road", the road can tell you more than you think.
Horse droppings...(Fresh steaming ones) there will be horses somewhere near?....
Where ball bounce little boys follow....
My first Driving instructor passed on that nugget of wisdom, and I have yet to prove him wrong....
But I have had to brake HARD when he proved himself right.
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Post by c64 on Nov 28, 2012 9:10:23 GMT
If the car in front of you breaks down, you don't have any serious problem with that. The real danger are trucks or cars with manual transmission which might roll backwards before accelerating forwards. If you are too close, you have a very serious problem with that!
Seeing more than one car in front of you also saves you a fortune in fuel. Since when you see a car way ahead slow down, you can release the accelerator and save fuel instead of keeping it depressed to the last second and then brake away all your valuable energy you had paid for!
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Post by freegan on Nov 28, 2012 9:15:23 GMT
"Horse droppings...(Fresh steaming ones) there will be horses somewhere near?...."
Great quantities of them = overloaded farm vehicle ahead?
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 28, 2012 9:38:57 GMT
{quote}Great quantities of them = overloaded farm vehicle ahead? No, Great Quantities of them mean my Air Horn worked perfectly just now...........   (Joke... honest guv...) Seriously, I am not mean to horses on purpose, they are unpredictable, but I do like to let the riders know how STUPID they are INSISTING that they have the right to use "All of the road"..... "It Was My Right of Way" is a pizza poor excuse for an Epitaph... |
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Post by c64 on Nov 28, 2012 9:42:58 GMT
"Horse droppings...(Fresh steaming ones) there will be horses somewhere near?...." Great quantities of them = overloaded farm vehicle ahead? That reminds me of driving school. First time in a car, the driving instructor said that we do steering lessons, he drives the car with his pedals and I would just steer. I told him that I had a farming tractor license for 2 years and know how to drive. So we started driving. On a road with a 60mph speed limit, I slowed down and the driving instructor became angry. I told him that I know the road and adapt the speed to road conditions. He said that's rubbish, he knows this road better than me and I must speed up. So I did. Behind a turn, there was a big pile of dirt with rocks & stuff on the road and no way to brake in time, I had to run the car fast through it. "That wasn't there the day before yesterday!" he yelled and asked me how I knew. "I told you I have a tractor license, remember? Turnip season had started yesterday!" |
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Post by the light works on Nov 28, 2012 15:31:15 GMT
"Where ball bounce little boys follow....
My first Driving instructor passed on that nugget of wisdom, and I have yet to prove him wrong....
But I have had to brake HARD when he proved himself right.
"
I learned two things from such an experience:
first, if you brake hard enough, you can still lock up ABS. second, if you have good enough tires, you can take the pavement with you when you do it. (US definition which refers to an asphalt road surface)
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Post by c64 on Nov 28, 2012 17:42:10 GMT
"Where ball bounce little boys follow.... My first Driving instructor passed on that nugget of wisdom, and I have yet to prove him wrong.... But I have had to brake HARD when he proved himself right. " A few years ago I noticed that a boy in the neighbourhood was kicking a ball out of the back courtyard over the busy interstate and ran after it without looking about every 5 minutes! Everybody braked but did nothing else and the boy kept doing that. So I had called the police which was there in 1 minute, watching and then had a word with the boy. The next day, the boy was doing it again. That was a few days after I bought my current car with really crappy tires installed. So I took my car and on the first attempt the boy ran in front of my car. No ABS, loud horn and extra bright high beams and it still had the stupid "angry eyes" headlight covers from the previous owner, the boy had wet his pants and it worked.  Until a month or so later when I came back from work. Then I had just went for the ball. Looks like the boy had told his parents what happened when asking for a new one, I've never seen this boy play ball ever again… |
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Post by c64 on Nov 28, 2012 18:04:28 GMT
first, if you brake hard enough, you can still lock up ABS. second, if you have good enough tires, you can take the pavement with you when you do it. (US definition which refers to an asphalt road surface) Depends: 1th generation ABS just "pumped the brakes" no matter what the wheels do, extending the braking distance. This was banned relative quickly within the EU. 2th generation ABS waited until a wheel had locked and then eased the brake pressurefor all wheels. Still extending the braking distance but much better. 3th generation ABS had 3 circuits, front left, front right and rear. This actually improved the braking distance a lot, it was the answer of car manufacturers not in the "NSU club" (was merged into the Auto union or licensed to other manufacturers) since they didn't like the idea that a cheap VW had a shorter brake distance than their luxury cars. NSU had invented a "brake balance regulator" which is a valve at the rear axis regulating the brake pressure of the rear wheels by load on the axis. A conventional brake system had to be 80% front and 20% rear to make sure the rear wheels can't lock before the front wheels do. The NSU brake balance regulator (my car has one) is 50:50 and reduces the brake pressure when the rear of the car goes up making the rear wheels "bite" as hard as they can without the risk of locking them first. This 3th generation ABS was designed to break even with the NSU system. 4th generation ABS has accelerometers and 4 brake circuits. This one can regulate the wheels so fine that the wheels just spin a bit slower instead of fully locking. The tires may still screech and smoke but it gives you the shortest braking distance possible. This one usually comes with ESP nowadays. And the last few yards, the wheels can lock if the car senses a slippery ground since on mud, gravel or snow, locking the wheels at low speeds helps braking since you pile up snow/dirt in front of the wheels. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 29, 2012 2:33:36 GMT
but if you manage to simultaneously lock all four wheels, the ABS thinks you are stopped, and disengages control.
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 29, 2012 6:13:59 GMT
I have ABS, I can *lock" wheels when hitting brakes hard?....
Mostly that happens at low speed, which made me wonder is ABS doesnt actually work below say 5mph....
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Post by c64 on Nov 29, 2012 13:19:48 GMT
but if you manage to simultaneously lock all four wheels, the ABS thinks you are stopped, and disengages control. Even the 2th generation ABS can compute how much time it takes to stop from a given speed and knows the car is skidding. When all wheels do turns for - say - 20mph and then drop to 0mph within a second, it perfectly knows that this can't be caused by the car has stopped. |
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Post by c64 on Nov 29, 2012 13:25:16 GMT
I have ABS, I can *lock" wheels when hitting brakes hard?.... Mostly that happens at low speed, which made me wonder is ABS doesnt actually work below say 5mph.... That's the trick! At low speeds, it doesn't matter if the wheels are skidding or not. You get the same braking distance and within those few feet, you don't need to steer any more, the braking distance is simply not long enough to actually drive around something. And in case of mud, gravel or snow, this actually decreases your braking distance a lot since the wheels pile up dirt/snow which acts like a brake shoe. A state of the art ABS/ESP senses the ground conditions and starts to lock at higher or lower speeds which matches better of how the car reacts to the ground and if it's trying to drive a turn or not. |
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Post by Lonewolf on Nov 29, 2012 14:33:28 GMT
The best driving survival technique is to believe that every other driver around you is going to do the worst possible thing at the worst possible time.
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Post by the light works on Nov 29, 2012 15:10:29 GMT
but if you manage to simultaneously lock all four wheels, the ABS thinks you are stopped, and disengages control. Even the 2th generation ABS can compute how much time it takes to stop from a given speed and knows the car is skidding. When all wheels do turns for - say - 20mph and then drop to 0mph within a second, it perfectly knows that this can't be caused by the car has stopped. my Acura begs to differ. |
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Post by the light works on Nov 29, 2012 15:12:30 GMT
The best driving survival technique is to believe that every other driver around you is going to do the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. the usual outcome of that is discovering how much better they are than you at finding wrong things to do. |
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Post by c64 on Nov 29, 2012 17:03:49 GMT
The best driving survival technique is to believe that every other driver around you is going to do the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. So you lock yourself into your panic room located 15ft beneath the basement? |
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Post by c64 on Nov 29, 2012 17:05:54 GMT
Then maybe you should get yourself something which is designed to really drive it instead of looking neat in your driveway? |
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Post by the light works on Nov 29, 2012 17:41:00 GMT
actually, I had to trade it in on a van when I needed something I could camp out in for a week at a time.
I still miss it, now and then, though. it was nice having something that had both performance and fuel economy.
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(Joke... honest guv...)