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

submitted 1 year ago by TeckFire to c/cars

266 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?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The zipper merge only works best when there's traffic. If there's no hold up in either lane, merging when there's an opening is best, otherwise you increase the risk of slowdown at the end of the merge.

Also, technically it isn't faster. It's just more space efficient. I do think everyone should do it in traffic though as it is a single easy to follow rule.