Rant Rant Rant Rant and Spam.
I do most of my driving these days in stop-and-go traffic. It irritates the hell out of me, especially since it's almost entirely caused by some idiot "tapping" his brakes because he saw his shadow^W^W^W didn't like road conditions.
1. Do not hit your brakes unless you absolutely, positively are going to run into something or someone if you don't. If you need to slow down, take your foot off the gas instead. It's truly remarkable how fast a couple of tons of assorted metal and plastic will slow down if it's not being powered. Also, this method saves money and gas, since you're not wasting the energy you used to get the car up to the speed you're braking from. So, no braking. Not even in curves. In fact, especially not in curves.
2. Do not brake in curves. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but if you're at all worried about the curve and the road, you need to hit the accelerator, not the brakes. (There's a very long scientific explanation of this that anyone who cares about the science will already know, but it boils down, as far as I understand it, to increasing the force with which your tires are impacting the road, thus increasing their friction against the road surface, which is what keeps you from skidding. Also, if your axles are angled and your brakes aren't, since the car body doesn't bend, that's not going to be pretty.)
3. In order to be able to hit the accelerator, you must have the room to move in. Hence, do not ride up on the back bumper of the guy in front of you. If he hits his brakes, you'll have to brake harder than he does in order not to hit him, and the guy who's riding your bumper will have to brake harder than you, and hurrah, this idiot in front of you has created a nice traffic jam in your lane. (It's quite common on my commute to have just one lane stopped dead while everyone else is proceeding nicely.)
4. The best way to do this is to move through traffic at a constant speed, or as close to it as you can get. Usually, you want to pick something that's close to the average prevailing speed of traffic. (Note that if the traffic is going 30-and-0, that leaves you at 15MPH.) The advantage to this is that you get a nice big hole open between you and the guy in front of you (and anyone who merges into it will probably run up on his back bumper and then hit their brakes), which means that when he slows down, you can keep going your same speed without worrying for a little while, in which he will hopefully have picked back up again. Again with the nicely saving money and gas, since you're not doing the accelerate-brake thing. Seriously, if you ever watch truckers in traffic, they're pretty much all doing their best to move at a constant pace. Some of that is because they need the big hole to brake in (lots of weight means lots of momentum to stop if they have to -- don't cut the truckers off!), but some of it is also to save on the cost of gas.
If everyone behind you is also moving at a constant speed, you'll actually manage to clear up the traffic jam, at least for the people who might otherwise have gotten stuck way back behind them. (See also the quite illegal practice of "wolfpacking," in which trucks will take up positions next to each other and all go the same speed in order to clear things up behind them. CHP does this too, opening up gaps in the traffic that people can spread out into a bit and hopefully get the average speed up.)
5. Not that anyone I know is enough of an ass to do this, but don't go slower than the average speed of traffic in your lane in the name of "traffic calming." I think this is a California perversion, since I've not run into it anywhere else. People will deliberately drive 55 in the far left lane, because they think that people going faster than the speed limit are reckless and they're trying to slow those people down. This is not only annoying if you get stuck behind one of these people, it's actively dangerous to them. I almost hit one of these guys a couple of days ago, because he was around a curve from my line of view going 55 in what was, for me, an 80MPH lane.
Sadly, I don't think this will reach the people who need it most, but at least I feel a bit better for having been able to pretend it will.
1. Do not hit your brakes unless you absolutely, positively are going to run into something or someone if you don't. If you need to slow down, take your foot off the gas instead. It's truly remarkable how fast a couple of tons of assorted metal and plastic will slow down if it's not being powered. Also, this method saves money and gas, since you're not wasting the energy you used to get the car up to the speed you're braking from. So, no braking. Not even in curves. In fact, especially not in curves.
2. Do not brake in curves. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but if you're at all worried about the curve and the road, you need to hit the accelerator, not the brakes. (There's a very long scientific explanation of this that anyone who cares about the science will already know, but it boils down, as far as I understand it, to increasing the force with which your tires are impacting the road, thus increasing their friction against the road surface, which is what keeps you from skidding. Also, if your axles are angled and your brakes aren't, since the car body doesn't bend, that's not going to be pretty.)
3. In order to be able to hit the accelerator, you must have the room to move in. Hence, do not ride up on the back bumper of the guy in front of you. If he hits his brakes, you'll have to brake harder than he does in order not to hit him, and the guy who's riding your bumper will have to brake harder than you, and hurrah, this idiot in front of you has created a nice traffic jam in your lane. (It's quite common on my commute to have just one lane stopped dead while everyone else is proceeding nicely.)
4. The best way to do this is to move through traffic at a constant speed, or as close to it as you can get. Usually, you want to pick something that's close to the average prevailing speed of traffic. (Note that if the traffic is going 30-and-0, that leaves you at 15MPH.) The advantage to this is that you get a nice big hole open between you and the guy in front of you (and anyone who merges into it will probably run up on his back bumper and then hit their brakes), which means that when he slows down, you can keep going your same speed without worrying for a little while, in which he will hopefully have picked back up again. Again with the nicely saving money and gas, since you're not doing the accelerate-brake thing. Seriously, if you ever watch truckers in traffic, they're pretty much all doing their best to move at a constant pace. Some of that is because they need the big hole to brake in (lots of weight means lots of momentum to stop if they have to -- don't cut the truckers off!), but some of it is also to save on the cost of gas.
If everyone behind you is also moving at a constant speed, you'll actually manage to clear up the traffic jam, at least for the people who might otherwise have gotten stuck way back behind them. (See also the quite illegal practice of "wolfpacking," in which trucks will take up positions next to each other and all go the same speed in order to clear things up behind them. CHP does this too, opening up gaps in the traffic that people can spread out into a bit and hopefully get the average speed up.)
5. Not that anyone I know is enough of an ass to do this, but don't go slower than the average speed of traffic in your lane in the name of "traffic calming." I think this is a California perversion, since I've not run into it anywhere else. People will deliberately drive 55 in the far left lane, because they think that people going faster than the speed limit are reckless and they're trying to slow those people down. This is not only annoying if you get stuck behind one of these people, it's actively dangerous to them. I almost hit one of these guys a couple of days ago, because he was around a curve from my line of view going 55 in what was, for me, an 80MPH lane.
Sadly, I don't think this will reach the people who need it most, but at least I feel a bit better for having been able to pretend it will.