Blind
2.3L
CAFords OG
Member # 3052
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We had an instructor at the Bridgestone Winter Driving School who put it in perspective for us: "There is no substitute for speed control. Because if you know car control, but you're still traveling too fast for conditions, all that means is you're going off with style"
Good on ya for realizing training can help. You don't need a big fancy school but if you can swing one, go for it. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for Street Survival clinics. www.streetsurvival.org, and autocross schools put on by local clubs and the SCCA, and driving events put on by the Porsche Club of America and the BMW Club of America. Both run great events on race tracks that include car control drills beforehand.
Search youtube for street survival videos to get a handle on how helpful they can be. I posted one that shows the improvement just in emergency lane change capabilities before and after...it's dramatic.
As I tell my students, it's not enough to miss the deer. Anybody can miss the deer. You have to miss the TREES afterward, that's what matters
Actually it's not a laughing matter, a lot of people die trying to miss the deer because they didn't know how to follow through with it.
School or not, remember these few things:
1) ALWAYS look where you want the car to go, not at what you're afraid you might hit. Your hands follow your eyes and your car follows your hands, but we humans suffer from a condition called Object Fixation. Scared you're going to hit that pole? Stare at it, you'll hit it, 100% guaranteed. Stare at the gap next to it, and that's where you go. Really, really hard lesson to learn without practice.
2) Look WAY ahead of the car at all times. Further than you think. Further. Further. This gives our brain time to process information, slows things down for us, averts panic, lets us look where we need the car to go.
3) Understand the balance of your car. Your car is only connected to the road by 4 contact patches each about the size of a grapefruit. What you do with the controls is manage the size of the patches, and with it, traction. Lift off the gas or apply the brakes, the front patches get bigger, the rear patches get smaller. That means you get more traction in front and less in the rear, until you overwhelm the grip of the front tires. Step on the gas, you get less traction in front and more in the rear, until you overcome the rear tires' grip.
Unfortunately our natural reaction to fear in the car is to look at what we're afraid of (see #1), and then to lift the gas or step on the brake. And gusss when we're most likely to get scared, other than an impending collision? When we're in a corner. What happens? In an effort to slow down, all we do is shift traction to the front and away from the rear and make the car spin. One of the other counter-intuitive things about car control is when the back end is sliding out and you're not on the gas, either give it a little gas or let off the brakes...load transfers to the rear, the rear gets traction, it stops rotating, you save it. It's magic.
Which brings me back to missing the deer. Remember the letters CPR. Correct. Pause. Recover.
Correcting is the easy part. You're sliding sideways, you turn into it. Great. Now what? Well, you now have a whole lot of energy stored in the springs the car is leaning on, and when that energy releases, the car will snap back the other way. You have to anticipate this happening, but it takes a little time...a pause. Correct...pause...RECOVER. Get that wheel back where it needs to be proactively.
This all applies whether the pavement is dry, wet, snowy or icy. The only thing that really changes is how long it takes to occur. The slipperier things are, the slower load transfer occurs, but it does, eventually. So always, always look where you want the car to go.
edit: Another thing we're ingrained to do is when we want the car to turn, we turn the wheel, right? So what do most people do when we get in a situation where we're turning the wheel, but the car isn't turning enough (understeer)? We turn the wheel more! This flat-out does not work. It also causes us to panic and stare at the guardrail or tree. Your brain is screaming "it's not working! Turn more! Oh no!" BLAM. The reason it doesn't work is, the front tires don't have enough traction, otherwise the car would be turning the way you want it to. You have to get them more traction to get them to work. The only way to do that, in addition to managing fore/aft weight balance, is to reduce the steering angle. That's right, take steering out of it and the front tires will hook and turn the car. But man oh man does that take discipline.
There you go, $800 1-day Bondurant school in a nutshell, minus the actual muscle memory. Spend $60 on a street survival school, or on an autocross school, whatever, but get the experience, it really is an eye-opener and a lifesaver.
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89 LX Notchback ex 4cyl, 14psi
02 Harley F150, 15psi
Posts: 8521 | From: Fairfield | Registered: Jul 2003
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