Left foot braking anyone?

[theholycow]

I have no dog in this fight but I couldn't resist this one...

Originally Posted by R.I.D.E.

In almost 1 million miles no person has ever been injured riding in a car with me. Can you make the same statement?

I'm well over half a million miles, and not yet half your age (and probably 25% of your years of driving experience)...and no person has ever been injured while I was driving.

I thought you said that you have permanent injuries from a car accident, but I probably remember wrong and you really said that you have permanent injuries that would be exacerbated by a car accident.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

'k I'll 'fess up to being an LFBer. I do it for same reasons as R.I.D.E. when traffic gets horrendously tight you need every fraction of a second advantage. However, that doesn't describe 90% of the driving I do, so mostly I'm leaving it to the right foot. The other time I do it is in winter, both for a "poor mans LSD" and to steer the back end of the car. You can "calibrate" your left foot somewhat by lightly touching the brake with it while braking normally with your right. Heel and toe is next to impossible in Marvin due to the gas pedal sitting a good bit lower than the brake. Usually you can only do it in vehicles that give you knee room around the center console.

If you wanna get fancy you can pulse the pedal almost as fast as ABS if using both feet for an emergency stop.

There's some high speed maneuvers that are practically impossible without one foot on each pedal in a FWD auto. Stuff like obstacle avoidance at 60mph when you've got VERY limited space, where you have to do brakes, gas, brakes, gas in approx half a second while whipping the wheel half lock and back again... which is basically a double skid and power pull out.... don't practice that though, you'll flip the car.

[Jay2TheRescue]

Adding up the mileage I've put on my personal vehicles over the years I get almost 500,000 miles, add to that the mileage I put on my gov't truck. When I was hired the truck has 1,500 miles on it, when I quit the truck had ~50,000 miles on it (I was the only one who drove that vehicle). I would also estimate that in my volunteer services for my community, driving an ambulance 3 nights a week for 10 years I usually put ~ 200 miles a shift on my ambulance which puts my ambulance mileage at just over 300,000 miles...

This puts me just over 850,000 miles. Being 37 years old that's a lot of mileage.

-Jay

[thisisntjared]

Originally Posted by SD26

No heel/toe people here?

when i heel/toe its still right foot braking...

[R.I.D.E.]

Holy Cow you are correct, I meant to write passenger instead of person.

The accident was due to the pavement being stripped from the road and the manholes being left protruding 3.5 inches above the pavement with no asphalt collar around them. When my left front wheel hit the 3.5 inch protrusion the car went up on the two opposite wheels, across two lanes of oncoming traffic (no cars there) hit a curb, flipped end over end and landed on the roof of a Dodge Dart and caught on fire. I was unconscious inside the vehicle. My head knocked the windshield 50 feet out of the car.

A passerby pulled me out of the burning car, through the passengers window, which was about 6 feet off the gorund. My scalp was peeled back to the bone from just above my right eyebrow to almost the middle of my skull. They gave me two units of plasma on the 8 mile trip to the hospital, lost over half the blood in my body, but broke no bones. (kind of a tough ole S%&). Next day I was black and blue from my right ankle to the top of my skull. The car was a melted mess. They gave me novicane and stapled my scalp back together.

On the same road 15 years earlier a Vega was driving when they stripped the pavement from the road. The driver straddeled the manhole protruding form the pavement and it hit his differential, ripped the propshaft out of the tranny. The rear wheels were toe'd in 45 degrees each.

After the lawsuits the city decided to make to contractors place asphalt aprons around the manhole covers. In Hampton they put the manholes in the middle of the lane of traffic.

So, to correct myself no other person has ever suffered an injury while riding in my car.

regards
gary

[GasSavers_GasUser]

I have a commercial licence (involving training/driving/safety etc etc etc) and have never been taught to brake with my left foot??

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

I bet they didn't teach you how to shoot and drive and make J turns out of an ambush either.

[R.I.D.E.]

And they dont teach you to pull off the road to let the guy who is going to smash into the rear end of your 59 Corvette, miss the car in front of you by 2feet and thank you for saving his a$$, two weeks after a young lady was hit in the rear and fried when the flames went 100 feet in the air when the gas tank was ruptured.

Most people don't leave enough space or pay enough attention, and die.

regards
badger

Good to see you back RW!

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

My old dad used to tell me. "Aim to be where everyone else isn't, failing that pick something soft and inexpensive."

Originally Posted by R.I.D.E.

Good to see you back RW!

Thanks, been busy, still am, there'll be a thread about it eventually.

[almightybmw]

funny story about driving skills not taught in a manual.... a friend of mine missed being hit by a cop car going to fast around a righthand corner. Cop pushed through, friend saw it happening, and dumped the clutch. His trucks backend swung around (into the intersection), cop slid through where his truck used to be. Cop hit the flashers, got out, and made sure he was okay. And then commended him on his fast thinking and driving skill. He was the only one at the light, so his actions affected no one but the two involved. I'm sure he would have chosen a different action had there been a car next to him, or cars traveling through the intersection.

We make jokes about how the cop should have cited himself for general speeding and reckless driving. haha.

They don't teach that in the manuals. Just because they don't teach left foot braking in instruction manuals doesn't mean its not a valuable skill to know.

Something Gary said "every member would rather ride with me driving than drive themselves."
That speaks volumes about driver skill, regardless of what skills you use. 2 weeks ago I was driving with several friends in the car, and the topic of driving came up. All 4 of them agreed they feel safer with me driving than any of them. That meant a lot to me considering the stupid things I've done with passengers in the car in the past. ha. One of them was in the car when I spun out at 60mph down a mountain road. Another was in the car when I successfully drifted around a roundabout 3 times smoothly. Nothing like a little hooning to push your abilities.

Not that I advocate doing that on public roads of course. But you know what? I don't care if you think I did something stupid. "But what if there was a person there?" There wasn't. There won't be. If there is, I won't do it. Justifying my actions to you (anyone who reads this) means nothing because some (Jim T.) won't understand. Their minds are closed to learning.

best stop rambling before something something happens...