Driving Techniques...

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Had to hand in my take-home exam at my prof's house this morning. Took my dad's minivan and decided to have a little fun on the way...

Was pretty rainy today. Caution! Slippery when wet.

Saw an empty back street. *Grin*

Made the turn onto the back street early and a bit too fast. The family touring tires on the minivan are good enough for most, but when pushed hard on rainy days they quickly lose grip. I could feel the front wheels start to lose traction.

Rather than back off the throttle and let the tires do their thing, I decided to have a little more fun. I punched the throttle. The front tires lost complete traction and started to spin, inducing the minivan into a mild sideways drift.

Now boys and girls THAT is understeer.

To recover NEVER touch the brakes. You will just loose control and cause the car to spin. Most likely you'll end up spinning into a ditch or crashing your car into a lamp post...and there is nothing cool about that. Instead, ease off the throttle and let the tires recover. Don't try to steer too much into the turn because your wheels will gain traction faster if they are pointed straight.

For passengers it's pretty scary...but if you watch someone else do this from outside the car, it looks pretty cool. Too bad no one else was watching. Heh. Oh well. Who says you can't have fun in a minivan?

Hmm...I seemed to have gained a reputation for driving fast amongst one group of my friends. This is because after a party at my friend's house I was driving a student from Germany back home. It was 2 AM so I was driving a wee bit faster than usual. Now Mr. Autobahn-boy has started to claim I was driving double the speed limit. Jeesh.

I thought those Porsche/Mercedes-Benz/BMW drivers and their autobahns could take their speed. Obviously not. Wimp.

Anyway this was brought up as an issue, as I had promised to drive another friend out to the airport. He was worried and started to interrogate me on ICQ about this:

Him: "Rumors says that you drive quite fast..."
Me: "Who says that? *****?"
Him: "Yes, sir...he said you drive about 120 going up to SFU"
ME THINKING: Pffffft. That's NOTHING! Besides, people drive up at that speed during the day...
Me: "Really? I wasn't going that fast, was I? *grin*"
Him: "I don't know, you were the driver, not me...1 Q, you got airbags and seatbelts in your car?"

When he asked me about the airbags, I was going to respond and tell him: "No. But it does have bags of confetti that burst open on impact, and a little recording that plays a song and says 'Congratulations! You're a winner!' That good enough?"

I resisted.

Me: "Nah...don't worry. I drive the speed limit during the day...you'd think ***** would be used to this...coming from Autobahn Germany and all."
Him: "Yeah, that's true, with lots of no speed limits hwys.....but he just said you drive fast, that's all."

I tried to reassure him that my car was safe.

Me: "Don't worry. Just to reassure you. My car is constructed from dual corrugated cardboard, and has a seeing eye dog that barks when it gets too close to other vehicles. Plus it has a 1 star crash rating from the government..."

Heh.

Name of German student withheld. Wouldn't want his German citizenship to be revoked or anything.

Posted by Dave at December 15, 2001 02:44 PM