Advanced driving.

[n2oinferno]

Personally in an emergency braking situation I try to flip the car onto its roof and use the increased friction from the enlarged contact patch of the roof against the road.

[Corradooo]

^^^ this guy knows what he's talking about




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[wheelhaus]

Originally Posted by paulca

I'm not trying to impress them. I just find it amusing that with all their aggressive punchy driving they don't actually get anywhere faster.

Of course it's more fun driving aggressively and the more you have to do the more involved you feel. My point still stands that newbies should not be given this advice straight up. It also stands that driven sensibly there is no need to rev match or anything of the sort. Save that for when you are hooning it and raking the knackers out of the car. Just do that somewhere quiet and safe.

This is in response to your entire argument, not just the above quote.

Your opinions are certainly valid, assuming everyone falls into a clear cut stereotype, and yes I do clearly understand what you're trying to say. However, arguments like these are founded in absolutes and often grossly miss the point of addressing a community's general opinion. I think "sport driving" is accurate, but "advanced driving" is a little pretentious, more like "responsible safe driving" would be accurate.

Saying that rev matching, double clutching, etc are done to get from point A to point B faster on public roads, is asinine and everybody should know this. You're stating the obvious. Saying such techniques causes a safety hazard is a stretch, at best it's marginally true. It's like saying 51 is more than 50. Absolute hard truth, this cannot be argued. Well duh, of course it is, but is the difference really worth an epic argument?

The counterpoint to your entire argument is one word, "fun". People drive sports cars on public roads because they are fun, the feedback and sensations are enjoyable, engaging in using the machinery in "advanced" ways will simply engross you more in the boring act of driving your stupid passenger car from point A to point B at the boring speed limit.

I can drive my BRZ slowly and smoothly and actually have fun, simply by being engaged in the act of driving with all my silly mind-stressing high-workload techniques. They keep me engaged and focused on what is happening around me. If I were instead to focus ALL my brain power on just moving through traffic, I might as well drive an automatic Accord (or other boring everycar) with all the driver aids, automatic braking, lane assist, rear camera, automatic parallel park, driver monitoring and other electronic BS, my god will this thing wipe my ass as well? Sweeeeeet Jeeeeeesus I'd be soooooo bored... Painfully bored. I'd be WAY more likely to fire up the cell phone, play with the radio, or speed just to keep my brain from falling off the edge of the earth in a coma. To me, THIS is far more dangerous.

If a MT noob wants to learn how to double clutch, so be it. I applaud it. Of course it's not required in a modern car, but it's fun. If he can barely shift and chooses to practice DC'ing in rush hour traffic, then he's an idiot and there's nothing we can do to help him anyways. Good judgement is learned.


Fun. That's what this car is about. "Sport driving" and "responsible safe driving" techniques can certainly coexist in one person and be utilized at the same time. Not everyone who rev matches a downshift is a boy racer trying to drift every intersection. Stereotypes are a bitch aren't they?

[DarkSunrise]

Haven't read this whole thread, but I will just add that heel-toeing on the street makes it much more intuitive and smooth on the track.

When you're at the track diving into a corner at 100 mph, trying to slow in time to make your next turn, that's not a good time to learn heel-toe. You're better off learning and refining the technique on the street, and bringing that knowledge with you to the track.

And there's no downside on the street. Rev-matching is always good practice, whether upshifting or downshifting, and it happens to be fun.

Wait what's the problem again?

[litemup]

Originally Posted by wheelhaus

This is in response to your entire argument, not just the above quote.
...

Fun. That's what this car is about. "Sport driving" and "responsible safe driving" techniques can certainly coexist in one person and be utilized at the same time. Not everyone who rev matches a downshift is a boy racer trying to drift every intersection. Stereotypes are a bitch aren't they?

[STV3]

Originally Posted by DarkSunrise

Haven't read this whole thread, but I will just add that heel-toeing on the street makes it much more intuitive and smooth on the track.

When you're at the track diving into a corner at 100 mph, trying to slow in time to make your next turn, that's not a good time to learn heel-toe. You're better off learning and refining the technique on the street, and bringing that knowledge with you to the track.

And there's no downside on the street. Rev-matching is always good practice, whether upshifting or downshifting, and it happens to be fun.

Wait what's the problem again?

Apparently OP has to stare at his RPM gauge to rev match and it distracts him.

Also it seems that the UK has manual police cars and ambulances and they don't rev match either.

Oh and saving your brake pads and putting less stress on your drive train is bad.

[paulca]

Originally Posted by wheelhaus

This is in response to your entire argument, not just the above quote.

Your opinions are certainly valid, assuming everyone falls into a clear cut stereotype, and yes I do clearly understand what you're trying to say. However, arguments like these are founded in absolutes and often grossly miss the point of addressing a community's general opinion. I think "sport driving" is accurate, but "advanced driving" is a little pretentious, more like "responsible safe driving" would be accurate.

Saying that rev matching, double clutching, etc are done to get from point A to point B faster on public roads, is asinine and everybody should know this. You're stating the obvious. Saying such techniques causes a safety hazard is a stretch, at best it's marginally true. It's like saying 51 is more than 50. Absolute hard truth, this cannot be argued. Well duh, of course it is, but is the difference really worth an epic argument?

The counterpoint to your entire argument is one word, "fun". People drive sports cars on public roads because they are fun, the feedback and sensations are enjoyable, engaging in using the machinery in "advanced" ways will simply engross you more in the boring act of driving your stupid passenger car from point A to point B at the boring speed limit.

I can drive my BRZ slowly and smoothly and actually have fun, simply by being engaged in the act of driving with all my silly mind-stressing high-workload techniques. They keep me engaged and focused on what is happening around me. If I were instead to focus ALL my brain power on just moving through traffic, I might as well drive an automatic Accord (or other boring everycar) with all the driver aids, automatic braking, lane assist, rear camera, automatic parallel park, driver monitoring and other electronic BS, my god will this thing wipe my ass as well? Sweeeeeet Jeeeeeesus I'd be soooooo bored... Painfully bored. I'd be WAY more likely to fire up the cell phone, play with the radio, or speed just to keep my brain from falling off the edge of the earth in a coma. To me, THIS is far more dangerous.

If a MT noob wants to learn how to double clutch, so be it. I applaud it. Of course it's not required in a modern car, but it's fun. If he can barely shift and chooses to practice DC'ing in rush hour traffic, then he's an idiot and there's nothing we can do to help him anyways. Good judgement is learned.


Fun. That's what this car is about. "Sport driving" and "responsible safe driving" techniques can certainly coexist in one person and be utilized at the same time. Not everyone who rev matches a downshift is a boy racer trying to drift every intersection. Stereotypes are a bitch aren't they?

This is one of the few actual sensible responses to my argument. Thank you.

It's more the brigade that insist that double clutching and rev matching are required to be driving properly that pisses me off, as it's simply bollox. Sure newbies should be given the opportunity to learn these things, but in their own time, it should not be given to them as "do this or your driving wrong".

"Advanced driving" as it's called here is surprisingly less boring than you might expect. I suppose it depends on the type of traffic you are facing. Sitting at 20mph on a crammed motorway at rush hour might leave you little opportunity to plan and anticipate as you don't have many options available. Slicing through city traffic (bearing in mind we don't have grid layouts here) is a different story. I find it quite relaxing and engaging.

What I find boring is closing myself into the car and ignoring the world outside and simply following the 2 red lights in front. This is what most people do. They play with their cell phones (even though that is illegal here), fiddle with the radio, talk with passengers and generally not pay the slightest attention.

Advanced driving is less about driving the car in a fancy way and more about spending enough time analyzing traffic that when you spot a child on one side of the road pointing at a small dog on the other that you should be checking your mirrors and getting on the brakes. Or watching the head of the person sitting waiting at the next junction, are they looking or are you looking at the back of their head, are they going to pull out without looking, should you honk at them so they look and see you? Maybe just re-positioning yourself away from the danger is all you need. etc.

And yes, there is an air of "Health and Safety committee" to the advanced driving institutes. I'm not sure I agree with all of their ways and I certainly don't drive that way all of the time. However sending newbies away with a hugely increased workload while they ARE still thinking about every gear change is asking for trouble, imho. Learning to drive a manual is a fairly high workload on it's own till you get it down, adding unrequired fancy foot work to the mix is dumb.

[sklimo]

If you need "advanced driving" to get to work you can't drive for shit

[Andrew025]

Originally Posted by paulca

This is one of the few actual sensible responses to my argument. Thank you.

It's more the brigade that insist that double clutching and rev matching are required to be driving properly that pisses me off, as it's simply bollox. Sure newbies should be given the opportunity to learn these things, but in their own time, it should not be given to them as "do this or your driving wrong".

"Advanced driving" as it's called here is surprisingly less boring than you might expect. I suppose it depends on the type of traffic you are facing. Sitting at 20mph on a crammed motorway at rush hour might leave you little opportunity to plan and anticipate as you don't have many options available. Slicing through city traffic (bearing in mind we don't have grid layouts here) is a different story. I find it quite relaxing and engaging.

What I find boring is closing myself into the car and ignoring the world outside and simply following the 2 red lights in front. This is what most people do. They play with their cell phones (even though that is illegal here), fiddle with the radio, talk with passengers and generally not pay the slightest attention.

Advanced driving is less about driving the car in a fancy way and more about spending enough time analyzing traffic that when you spot a child on one side of the road pointing at a small dog on the other that you should be checking your mirrors and getting on the brakes. Or watching the head of the person sitting waiting at the next junction, are they looking or are you looking at the back of their head, are they going to pull out without looking, should you honk at them so they look and see you? Maybe just re-positioning yourself away from the danger is all you need. etc.

And yes, there is an air of "Health and Safety committee" to the advanced driving institutes. I'm not sure I agree with all of their ways and I certainly don't drive that way all of the time. However sending newbies away with a hugely increased workload while they ARE still thinking about every gear change is asking for trouble, imho. Learning to drive a manual is a fairly high workload on it's own till you get it down, adding unrequired fancy foot work to the mix is dumb.

I think the reason I think your initial argument is silly, is I consider this to be normal driving. Something that everyone should already be doing.

[jamomatt]

So basic driving that anyone should have when getting a license is now considered advanced driving?

[sklimo]

Originally Posted by jamomatt

So basic driving that anyone should have when getting a license is now considered advanced driving?

In England apparently yes

[paulca]

For your learner test you are required to show observation, planning and anticipation, but the advanced driving it is to a whole different level, well beyond what "Normal" driving includes.

Basically unless you have tried any advanced lessons or done any observation rides you might not get just "whole different level" I mean.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by paulca

This is one of the few actual sensible responses to my argument. Thank you.

I wrote a fairly carefully worded, long, and (to my mind at least) sensible response just on the last page, but you seem happy to ignore it. Maybe sensible (in your mind) means "doesn't completely disagree with me"?

Originally Posted by paulca

It's more the brigade that insist that double clutching and rev matching are required to be driving properly that pisses me off, as it's simply bollox. Sure newbies should be given the opportunity to learn these things, but in their own time, it should not be given to them as "do this or your driving wrong".

As I mentioned in the last post that you ignored, double clutching and rev matching are separate, and to lump them together like this demonstrates (to my mind) that you are more interested in rhetoric than in actual driving safety and techniques. Double clutching is unnecessary on any modern synchronized gearbox, but rev matching is absolutely required to drive a manual properly. It's not a fancy technique - it's simply the practice of ensuring that your engine speed and transmission speed are matched prior to engaging the clutch whenever possible. The funny thing is, you basically even acknowledge this in your original post (specifically, with your statement that " 3. Modern road cars make gear changes fairly rapid, not allowing the engine revs to fall very far").

Rev matching on an upshift is simply the practice of shifting briskly enough that the revs have only fallen slightly while in neutral - ideally with the right amount of delay such that when you engage the clutch in the next gear, the revs have fallen the appropriate amount. When shifting at 2000-3000 rpm, such as in normal street driving, this is a pretty short pause, since the rpm doesn't need to drop very much.

Interestingly, in high performance driving, you don't generally rev match on upshifts, since a shift at 7000rpm usually requires the revs to drop down to 5000 or so. This would require a noticeable pause on upshifts, which is counter to the idea of driving fast. Because of this, you generally would start releasing the clutch before the revs have fallen far enough, and use a bit of clutch slip to smooth out the shift. In normal street driving though, where the revs only have to fall by a few hundred rpm, there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't want to rev match on upshifts, and it improves smoothness, decreases clutch wear, and even improves safety (which goes back to my point from the previous post about driving on slick surfaces).

As for rev matching on downshifts? I think I already covered that with my last post. I can give you a link if you want.

Originally Posted by paulca

"Advanced driving" as it's called here is surprisingly less boring than you might expect. I suppose it depends on the type of traffic you are facing. Sitting at 20mph on a crammed motorway at rush hour might leave you little opportunity to plan and anticipate as you don't have many options available. Slicing through city traffic (bearing in mind we don't have grid layouts here) is a different story. I find it quite relaxing and engaging.

Planning and anticipation in order to drive smoothly and safely doesn't sound "advanced" to me. It sounds like what everyone on the road should be doing (and yes, I absolutely agree that people in general don't do this nearly enough).

Originally Posted by paulca

What I find boring is closing myself into the car and ignoring the world outside and simply following the 2 red lights in front. This is what most people do. They play with their cell phones (even though that is illegal here), fiddle with the radio, talk with passengers and generally not pay the slightest attention.

In that case, I think you're tilting at the wrong windmills here. The kind of person who is interested in perfect rev matches, sports cars, and "high-performance" driving is not the kind of person who closes themself into a car and ignores the world outside.

Originally Posted by paulca

Advanced driving is less about driving the car in a fancy way and more about spending enough time analyzing traffic that when you spot a child on one side of the road pointing at a small dog on the other that you should be checking your mirrors and getting on the brakes. Or watching the head of the person sitting waiting at the next junction, are they looking or are you looking at the back of their head, are they going to pull out without looking, should you honk at them so they look and see you? Maybe just re-positioning yourself away from the danger is all you need. etc.

Once again, none of that sounds "advanced" to me.

Originally Posted by paulca

And yes, there is an air of "Health and Safety committee" to the advanced driving institutes. I'm not sure I agree with all of their ways and I certainly don't drive that way all of the time. However sending newbies away with a hugely increased workload while they ARE still thinking about every gear change is asking for trouble, imho. Learning to drive a manual is a fairly high workload on it's own till you get it down, adding unrequired fancy foot work to the mix is dumb.

Learning to drive a manual is indeed a high workload at first. That's one reason why I think people should generally learn to drive an automatic first, so they aren't trying to learn shifting while simultaneously learning everything else about driving. That having been said, I still firmly believe basic rev matching is part of driving a manual, and it is just as important as proper gear selection or the ability to start smoothly from a stop.

[daiheadjai]

Fwiw I double clutch downshift strictly out of habit. It certainly isn't necessary.
Heel-toe, however, does allow for smoother transition from braking to accelerating at corners (since I will be in the right gear to exit)
For me, smooth driving is the goal (my passengers don't know I'm driving manual until they see me shift?)

That being said, you certainly should learn to walk before you can run. I think the whole situational awareness thing should be instilled in all drivers, regardless of the transmission or car.

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