Cars - For Car Enthusiasts

3948 readers

28 users here now

About Community

c/Cars is the largest automotive enthusiast community on Lemmy and the fediverse. We're your central hub for vehicle-related discussion, industry news, reviews, projects, DIY guides, advice, stories, and more.

Rules

Stay respectful to the community, hold civil discussions, even when others hold opinions that may differ from yours.

This is not an NSFW community, and any such content will not be tolerated.

Policy, not politics! Policy discussions revolve around the concept; political discussions revolve around the individual, party, association, etc. We only allow POLICY discussions and political discussions should go to c/politics.

Must be related to cars, anything that does not have connection to cars will be considered spam/irrelevant and is subject to removal.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

172

What driving concept you feel that most drivers don't understand? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

260 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[+] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

But why do you need to be close? I find I can accelerate more smoothly when traffic is starting if I have a nice bit of room. I can start moving at the same time as the car in front (most of the time). Nobody's going to get anywhere faster if I were a few feet further ahead when stopped. Only caveat to that is someone trying to squeeze around for a right turn. Then I try to accommodate as much as possible.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The major determining factor in the time it takes you to get through the light is the number of cars ahead of you, not the amount of room you have for a run-up. What you're talking about might save you a quarter second at the end of the day, but it more likely to not save any time at all and it unnecessarily contributes to traffic by reducing the effective carrying capacity of the road. There are also situations where hanging back can block a turn onto a minor road or into a parking lot and moving forward may let a person behind you turn off the road thus alleviating traffic. Ultimately, there is nothing you can do to make the person in front of you go faster, so just pull up as far as you safely can to make room for other people to join the queue or get around you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You’re supposed to be far back enough to see the bottom of the tires of the vehicle in front of you, but I wouldn’t be so much further back than that