so, yesterday wify is driving down konig from niagara falls blvd…
we go around the curve near the church and some bright red f-body decides he should try and hit us while turning onto konig. wifey hits the brakes, he hits the brakes and no collision.
i told her that if she had only sped up, there would have been no chance for a collision. how can you teach the thought process that if you take your time to slam on the brakes and hit the horn, you wasted valuable time you could have used to avoid a problem? I dont even know if the horn on my car still works?
oh, and as he then pulled out behind us he had his head sticking out the window and was yelling something… i was too busy checking on the little one to care…
but, i’ll bet it was not ‘hey, thats a sweet saturn’
Really can’t teach that. Unless you can drill every possible scenario that she may encounter on the road. Some people just panic and lock up hit the brakes and pray.
Thus is the reason for ABS, chasis’ that catastrophicly understeer, ect.
I watched a TV show on the differences between man and woman specifically
under the task of driving, and it was interesting to find there are severe mental
differences in how we go about that task. I believe it was found that men had better
intuition than woman did, along with a faster “calculating” time of what manuver to
perform in the event of a needed scenerio.
Not that it cant be done. But it goes farther than teaching the counter intuitive.
You will need to teach her the basics of car control, get her into auto-x to sharpen reaction times and appropriate responses, teach her not to panic in unexpected situations.
Some skills take years to develop. Experience behind the wheel is the key. It will likely take years and she will most likely be very frustrated at you saying “why do i need to know this…” ect, she may not want to be bothered with it. You have to WANT to learn somthing like this.
Teaching just bits and peices is more dangerous than not teaching at all. If you teach her not to be afraid and speed up it will be very easy for her to overdrive the limits of the car in a DIFFRENT situation and end up in a worse situation.
The trick is giving her the tools needed not just to act but act APPROPRIATELY to the unexpected.
She can’t act appropriately unless she knows intamately what the limits of the car are and how it will react to diffrent inputs.
For now the best thing she can do given her experience level is exactly what she did. Slamming the brakes may not be the ideal solution in this situation, but there is one thing that is always gauranteed. It will give more time and slow the imact speed if there is an impact.
Fast Reaction Time + Proper Conditioned Response = No Accident
So what would need to be done is to modify her conditioned responses. It seems like she has conditioned herself to address any danger on the road by braking. The only way I know of to change a conditioned response without actually practicing is to mentally rehearse different scenarios.
Good luck with that. It’s been my experience that people, but women especially, but women you’re dating even more-so, do not take well to driving criticism. I’d just make sure she drives something with a lot of stars under the crash test category.
yeah, i have been in cars when the driver (male) locks up the brakes when plowing through a snowy turn and creams a curb, when a bit of e brake and throttle would have saved the car…
she is a lot better than she used to be…
there have been instances where she did do “the right thing”
to me it just seemed so obviouse that he was not paying attention and going to turn.
we were only going ~20 mph, but it soo would not have been worth the arguing
that would have resulted and the trying to match 1 year old black paint.
i had a near-accident about a year ago on elmwood, where some woman turned right in front of me (maybe 15-20ft?) when i was going about 30, way too close to have stopped. spun the wheel and cut into the empty oncoming lane and then back into my lane, completely missing her. there was definitely no time to think about what to do, and i had to think about what i did after the fact as to how i avoided it. in situations like that instant reaction and correct intuition is key, as even if someone had been taught what to do but had to think about it, it would have been too late.