I’ve been driving since 1972, and there have been a lot of changes since then.
When I started driving, our cars all had belted tires, not radials. With belted tires, if you cornered too fast, you would skid and lose control, so everyone drove at a sane speed or risked having an accident.
I remember well when the car I was driving, a 1962 Chevy Nova, got its first set of radials; it was like driving a different car. It cornered better, it rode better and the tires were much quieter. Though I wasn’t concerned about it, it got better mileage.
With the advent of radial tires, people all started to drive faster. Unfortunately, their understanding of how to drive did not improve, so there were a lot of accidents because people did not know how to handle the higher speeds.
Let’s talk about friction. There are two kinds of friction, static friction and dynamic or kinetic friction. When you are driving and your tires are not skidding, the friction between the tires and the road is static or pretty good. If your tires start to skid, like on ice or when you brake too hard, that is dynamic friction.
Dynamic friction is much less than static friction and there is almost no control. Though you may want to slow down, you cannot — or steer — because you are skidding. I remember when I was in high school, I was driving home after a youth group event. It had sleeted and there was a glaze of ice on the roads. Luckily, my understanding of how friction works helped me.
At that point I was driving a Plymouth Duster with a 318 engine. The back end of the car was very light and the car had a lot of power so it was easy to spin the back wheels if you tried to accelerate too fast, even on a dry road. That night we were going up a slight slope and most of the cars on the road were skidding all over. I lightly rested my foot on the gas pedal and slowly went up the hill weaving amongst the cars that were skidding. My friend who was with me was amazed that I could drive slowly up the hill while everyone else was sliding off the road.
In the 1970s, anti-lock brakes were invented, which made stopping much quicker and more controlled. Anti-lock braking pulsates the brakes so the tires do not skid, which allows you to be able to steer while slowing down much faster.
The adoption of right turn on red is another recent change in driving which, though it helps traffic move more quickly, lets drivers make risky moves like turning in front of a car that is moving faster than they thought.
I often drive on curving roads near my house and very often come around a curve to find a car or truck several feet across the center line on my side of the road. In their attempt to make better time, they cut the curve too tight, leading to a harrowing situation where they must correct their steering to get back on their side of the road to avoid an accident.
When my father was teaching me to drive, he stressed that when I was turning left I should never turn too soon and cross into the lane of the cars coming to the intersection because that can lead to an accident. He also stressed the importance of always using my turn indicator, not just because the law requires it, but because communicating where I am going helps other drivers avoid running into me.
At some point, the stop sign ceased to mean stop to some drivers, and they merely slowed down. Around the corner from my house are two stop signs that people routinely coast through, which is harrowing if you are in the through traffic lane.
Recently while waiting at a traffic light on my way home from babysitting, the light turned green. But being an alert, defensive driver I saw that a maniac was going to run the red light and speed through the intersection, so I waited instead of going as soon as the light turned. My wife was amazed by the carelessness of the other driver but more so that I saw it and avoided the collision that would have happened if I had gone immediately.
We all need to slow down, pay attention to the laws and common sense and drive safely so that we can all get where we are going in one piece.