Give and Take: Braking in the Social ContextThe other day I sat on my front porch, idly watching the traffic go by. I live very near to the downtown of a large midwestern city, and my two-lane street is a major thoroughfare for commuters heading in and out of the city center. Most people, not unexpectedly, were traveling at least 5 to 10 mph over the somewhat low 25-mph speed limit. But what caught my attention was how late people were braking for the traffic light at the end of my block. Cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles routinely would come dangerously close to the end of the line of stopped vehicles before finally applying hard braking to come to a stop behind the car in front of them. As I watched these hard applications of modern brakes, it made me think about Martin Swig's theory about the beginning of the end of our civilization.
Martin has a theory: The introduction of disc brakes to automobiles at the end of the 1950s is a leading cause for the degradation of civilized behavior our society often displays.
Martin Swig is a San Francisco car enthusiast, the organizer of the California Mille, among other classic car events, a many-time competitor at the Mille Miglia event in Italy, and a vintage racer of great accomplishment. So, his take on brakes does come with some perspective. With old-fashioned drum brakes, he says, drivers were required to be more courteous to one another, as their ability to retard the motion of their vehicles was much less than it is with modern vehicles. In the old days, drivers had to plan ahead and pay much closer attention to their driving, because they couldn't count on their braking system to pull their asses out of the fire if they made a mistake.
I've noticed that one of the things I have to teach racing drivers when they start driving vintage cars is to change their braking techniques. Modern racing cars, with their carbon brake pads and ultra-sticky tires, achieve the fastest lap times when the driver roars up to a corner, slams on the brakes as hard as possible, drives through a path around the corner as if on rails and then blasts down the next straight. Braking as hard as possible at the last instant is a skill that modern racing schools work on to achieve fast laps.
But, driving an old car with sometimes marginal drum brakes requires a different approach. Braking needs to take place earlier and over a longer distance, and vintage drivers need to more carefully blend their braking into the beginning of their cornering. John Buffum, the 11-time U.S. rally champion, used to describe the technique as "in like a lamb and out like a lion," although in Buffum's case it was more like "in like a lion and out like a much bigger lion."
So what does driving cranky old vintage racers with bad brakes have to do with driving in modern traffic? For mediocre drivers, maybe nothing at all. But if you are reading this magazine, I have to assume that you like cars and driving, and you want to be head and shoulders above the crowd. And just as you might do when you are driving on the racetrack, that requires a better awareness of what is going on around you. Most people just aren't aware of the things that are going on in their surroundings. Need proof? Anyone who rides a bicycle in traffic can tell the instant an oncoming driver sees you on your bike. There is almost always a slight twitch of the wheel, causing the car to swerve slightly as the driver is startled by your presence. The bad news is the point on the road where this happens is usually quite close, often about four or five car lengths. This means that our driver is looking about 60 ft in front of his/her car. At 30 mph that distance will be covered in a little less than 1 1/2 sec. No wonder the brake lights seem to come on so late at the stoplight in front of my house.
The situation can actually be worse when our hypothetical driver is following another car. Many drivers seem to fixate on the bumper of the car in front of them, looking no further ahead than that to get information about the traffic that surrounds them. This can be as little as 20 or 30 ft, less than half a second away at 30 mph. If we now imagine the driver of the car in front of our driver is also fixated on the bumper in front and so on up the line, it is easy to see where one accident can cause a chain reaction. Cars do in fact stop much quicker when they crash into each other than they can under heavy braking. Everyone learned in driver's education to keep one car length of following distance for every 10 mph, but when the cars ahead of you are stopped short by piling into one another, even that may not be enough to keep you from becoming part of the accident.
Unfortunately, the correct solution to the problem won't make you very popular among most of the other drivers with whom you share the road. By looking far ahead of the car in front of you, you actually can see and react to things before they become an emergency. It means you can see a light changed from green to yellow and roll out of the gas early, allowing your car to coast toward the traffic light, finally requiring only a gentle brake application to stop. Fine, except the person behind you by that time is glued to your rear bumper and angry because you haven't gone fast enough to get to the point where you both have to stop. Drive like this for a couple of blocks, and you can bet that following driver will find the first opportunity to roar past you so they can be the first one to stop at the next traffic light. Sadly, although you are driving in a safe and even masterful manner, you are causing the person behind you to get angry and probably call you names. What's worse, the latest automotive technology seems to be siding with the rude person who just passed you.