Rant Rant Rant Rant and Spam.

[aiglet]

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.

Comments

[tibicina]

Well, arguably, from a handling the car position, not a traffic position, what you want to do is brake/slow down just before the curve so you enter it more slowly and then accelerate through it and leaving the curve.

Also, in many places the speed limits on the serious curves are much lower than on the straighter sections.

[funjon]

no, you don't want to touch the brakes in a curve, EVER.

If you have to touch your brakes you were going too fast to begin with.

She's 100% right, you want to apply a slight amount of acceleration through the curve to increase grip.

[gdmusumeci]

I think tibicina is correct: maximum cornering performance involves hard braking to the maximum safe corner entry speed, then releasing the brake and applying increasing amounts of throttle through the corner apex and exit.

However, I've never seen the speed limit actually decrease for a curve in the US. (The yellow and black signs are merely advisory.)

[tibicina]

Well, okay, advisory, yes, but when the advisory speed limits are 20 or more mph less than the normal speed limits, which they frequently are around L.A., it still behooves one to slow down.

[aiglet]

I think we're hitting the difference between "braking in a curve" and "braking in*to* a curve."

[aiglet]

Well, yes.

I'm specifically objecting to the people who get into the curve and seem to think "oh, fuck, curve in the road" and slam on their brakes about 1/3 of the way into the thing.

[tibicina]

Yeah, /that's/ about the worst thing you can do.

The other phenomenon which I understand, but which is still annoying is when the freeway goes over hills and across valleys and always has that compression thing because people naturally speed up on the downhills and slow down on the uphills and then you get this weird slow-fast-slow-fast thing happening.

[almeda]

Not to mention people hitting the brakes at the apex of the hill because OMG THERE ARE CARS. Which perhaps have brake lights on.