What driving concept you feel that most drivers don't understand?
What driving concept you feel that most drivers don't understand?
I’ll start. Stopping distance.
My commute is 95 miles one way to work, so I see a lot of the highway, in the rural part of the US. This means traveling at 70+ mph (112km/h) for almost the entirety of the drive. The amount of other drivers on the road who follow behind someone else with less than a car’s length in front of them because they want to go 20+ over the speed limit is ridiculous. The only time you ever follow someone that close is if you have complete and absolute trust in them, and also understand that it may not even be enough.
For a daily drive, you likely need 2-3 car lengths between you at minimum depending on your speed to accurately avoid hitting the brakes. This doesn’t even take into account the lack of understanding of engine braking…
What concepts do you all think of when it comes to driving that you feel are not well understood by the public at large?
For a daily drive, you likely need 2-3 car lengths between you at minimum depending on your speed
It's not car lengths, it's seconds. You need roughly 2 seconds between you and the person in front of you. That gives you time to react and emergency brake if needed. At 70mph, 2 seconds is a little over 200 feet, not 3 car lengths. Average reaction time is about .75 seconds; you see something, and you start reacting to that thing--not you finish reacting--in .75 seconds. At 70mph, you will travel 75 feet before you can even realize that you need to get your foot off the gas and hit the brakes.
FUCKING TURN SIGNALS.
Christ, the number of times I've almost hit someone who swerved into a turn at the last second without a signal...
The two main ones I think about are zipper merges and space in traffic. The most efficient way to handle a lane merger is to do a perfect zipper merge right at the point of merging. But everyone in the lane that’s ending always tries to merge early, and too many people in the other lane don’t want to let anyone in when they get to the merge point.
As far as space in traffic, traffic jams are actually waves that propagate back though the stream of cars. The only way to end them is to have enough space between vehicles to allow the traffic stream to compress without losing speed. The spaces in traffic also make room for people to change lanes without causing anyone to brake for them. Those braking events are often the triggers for traffic waves.
Tailgating doesn't get you there faster. Most highway accidents would be avoided if people would just leave some space, and then we wouldn't get stuck in accident traffic jams for hours.
Somewhat counterintuitively, traffic will flow better and you'll get places faster if you just leave some space (and you'll be safer and use less fuel as you won't be always on the accelerator and brakes)
That they are driving around a 1 tonne piece of metal.
Driving is an unnatural, fairly sophisticated activity that many people don't have an intuitive sense about. Especially when it comes to the proximity of danger to themselves or others.
I live in a developing SE Asian country where the only rule is: there are no rules. You can assume that everyone will always maneuver for their own benefit, especially if their vehicle is larger. This includes turning right in front of you, driving the opposite way, and stopping in the middle of all the lanes.
In a sense, this brings a certain type of order because it's predictably disordered. The key rule is that you will die if you trust anybody to look out for you except yourself.
Is 95 miles (~150km) one way considered normal in the US? I live in Bangalore, India and my commute is barely 20km (takes me 45mins - 1hour) which is too much for me.
Me and most people I know would rather shift than travel 150kms a day. Can’t imagine the toll it would take on me, my fuel budget and my car
Yield doesn't mean stop
It means go unless not clear (ie stop when not clear)
If there's no oncoming traffic, then you keep going. If there is then you have to stop to allow the traffic to pass before continuing (or enter safely before said traffic reaches you).
This is fundamentally how roundabout entrances also work. You're supposed enter when you have enough time to accelerate into an open slot. You don't have to wait until it is completely clear, nor do you have to explicitly stop at an entrance.
Not using your phone while driving
If you're using your brakes a lot it's probably because you were using your accelerator a lot a few seconds prior.
Your headlights are for other people as much as they are for you. Get them adjusted every so often, don't put LED lights in halogen lenses.
Just because the car in front of you went through the yellow doesn't entitle you to do the same, if you're behind a large truck and can't see the color of the light, back off just a tiny bit, or use the other turn signals located 45 degrees to your left for your safety and convenience. If you're so close you can't see the light, you're probably so close traffic getting ready to move can't see you.
Getting out of the slow lane, passing, then getting off at the next off-ramp, and having the only car you just passed continue on past the offramp you just took saves you literally no time. And even if you're behind that car on the off ramp, you've probably saved no time.
Your turn signal is a courtesy to let others know not to pull up behind you in the turn lane if they wanna go straight. It should be on once you approach a red light, not when you realize you need to tell the person behind you why you aren't going through the intersection. This leads to frustration in others and can cause dangerous driving.
Failing to activate a turn signal before a light turns green should be a punishable offense. I know there's no good way to enforce it, but you should have escalating repercussions; begin with a fine, escalate the value of the fines, eventually suspend the license.
You need to speed up when changing lanes.
Blinkers. Firstly, just using them at all, but also:
You need to let your blinkers blink a couple seconds before changing lanes. You don’t turn your blinkers on while changing lanes. You need to give the people beside you a second to notice your intention. One of my most hated features of newer cars is that quick 3-blink signal a lot of them have where you can tap the turn signal and it only blinks a couple times then turns itself off. People mostly use that AS they change lanes which defeats the whole purpose of a signal.
Also: Turn your blinkers on BEFORE you make the right or left hand turn, not as you are doing it. The other people at the 4-way need to understand your intention.
Deliberately riding in someone's blind-spot for gods know how long is not only unsafe, it's also fucking obnoxious. It might not be legally your "fault" if you do this and get sideswiped for it, but you brought it on yourself. Doubly so if the person you're pacing has had their signal on the entire time and all you're doing is blocking them from changing lanes.
I have replaced a car lengths or seconds guidance with looking as far as I can ahead to predict what the cars near me will be doing on the next 30 seconds or so. If I see brake lights half a mile ahead, that means the car inb front of me will probably be slowing down in about 30 seconds. So I take my foot off the accelerator and cover (but don't press) my brake pedal.
Traffic on the interstate it really pretty predictable IF you spend a significant amount of time looking far ahead instead of only at the far in front of you. Obviously keep watching the car on front of you, but not ONLY that.
Yield sign. It means stop if there are cars, pretty simple concept.
Drive slower when it's snowing... Also, put your lights on near dusk. It's more for other drivers to see you better.
If I start blinking well before I turn from a multi-lane road, and if the lane next to us is open, I don't understand why so many people slow behind me instead of passing me in the other lane. I'm probably signaling so early because I know I'm going to bleed speed before the turn (to reduce brake wear), and I'm going to turn slowly and smoothly like I'm chauffeuring my grandma. When the person who stayed behind me (instead of conveniently passing) runs up my ass and there's still an empty lane beside us, now I'm prolonging my turn just hoping they'll get so impatient they finally go around. Maybe they'll learn something?
I live in an area that has a lot of stoplights. Guess how fast you have to drive to beat them? From 35 to 40 mph, or 60 to 65 mph. I simply did some math after timing a couple of streets. It is not perfect, but it will beat most. Guess which one people want to drive at? 50 mph. Guess which is the safest and most economical? It is 30 mph. Guess what is the most common speed by everyone? 50 mph because by law gives us 10 mph difference from speed limit before we get flagged. Guess how badly stopping from a high speed and waiting then accelerate literally every mile of stop lights does to mpg? Instead of a healthy 40 mpg, depending on if the people who accelerate aggressively don't have slow drivers like me in the group, then people are getting 15 to 25 mpg.
I end up having people swerve around me and accelerate aggressively only to stop at the light, but they are either in front of me or at the front waiting to hit the pedal to the metal to get up to their comfortable cruising speed. I drive electric and don't care about the amazing 0-60 acceleration but rather drive slowly and coast to a stop(as little regeneration as possible by staying at 0 kw usage) I usually get 5 m/kwh and could get up to 6 if I did 30 mph but I just try to follow the flow of traffic and the posted speed limit.
People riding my ass annoy me because I have to trust they are paying enough attention to not rear-end me. Surprisingly, I haven't gotten into an accident.
State specific, but in mine, left turns on red are ok onto one-ways/freeway onramps.
Zipper lanes.
Each person goes one after another in an orderly fashion because it gets people moving faster, but instead you get asshats that either are trying to bully people by not letting them into their lane or trying to sneak in with the person coming into the lane because gee whiz, there’s a small opening!
It makes me so mad to see people not know how a zipper lane works, literally the easiest shit in the world.
Many people are comfortable using maximum throttle.
Almost no one is comfortable using maximum braking.
That just because the car in front of you has a momentary change of speed, you don't need to slam on your brakes. Congrats, you've caused traffic for hours
Passing doesn't save much time when the city you're in has a ton of long red lights, There's a highway I travel daily, rather short 12 mile lap. People will absoluty blast past me going 20-30 above the speed limit, and then 10 minutes later they will be right infront of me at a red light. There's no point in making your ride so much more dangerous just to shave a few seconds off your time.
I also have people pass me, merge back in, and then brake hard to turn off pretty fucking often on this commute. It's insane what people will do.
I absolutely hate when cars turn left into the right lane.
At higher speeds, when you swerve you can't just swerve back to where you were. You need to get the car stabilized after sudden turns.
"Slower traffic keep right."
I don't care if you're going the speed limit or even 20mph over it; if somebody passes you on the right, it's because you were in the wrong lane.
I hate people who hang out in the passing lane as much as anyone, but for those overtaking at 15 mph over the speed of the rest of traffic, allow me to explain:
The rest of us can move over a lot sooner if everyone is driving predictably at a reasonable speed for current traffic conditions.
The person overtaking at 15 mph faster than the wisdom of the crowd - that person is causing the very delays that are slowing then down.
The rest of must move slower and change lanes slower until the reckless driver is well away from us.
If there is traffic because two lanes merge, and you're passing slower cars to zoom up and merge at the last possible second, you're the reason there's traffic. Everybody else has to stop for your inconsiderate ass, and you don't get anywhere faster.
Match speed and merge without braking. If you have to brake to merge, you are the asshole.