[geeks] Mac definitions

[Bob]

>Another factor that was particularly prominent in the large Western
>states is that "single-vehicle fatalities due to operator inattention"
>went up significantly with the introduction of the 55 limit, plateaued
>off at a new level that proceeded to track the ongoing steady decline in
>highway fatalities but at a higher level, and then dropped back to the
>baseline when the 55 limit was discontinued. Car & Driver printed an
>analysis on this ... oh, years back.

>In plain terms? With the 55 limit, it was taking so damn long to drive
>from one city to the next that drivers were falling asleep at the wheel
>and running off the road.

I wouldn't have imagined that coming from a state like NJ where you cross
a stream (if you could see it) and you're in a different town.

>That said, ABS can stop a car in reduced-traction conditions more
>quickly and safely than - sorry, but I gotta say it - the average
>half-trained American driver.

>ABS does not improve the maximum performance of brakes. What it does do
>is make it a lot EASIER to get close to the braking limit, even in the
>hands of an unskilled driver whose knowledge of emergency braking
>techniques ends at "mash the pedal to the floor".

Only problem was that some of them would not like/understand the physical
feedback in the pedal, panic and take their foot off of the brake. 
Hopefully that has changed.

>> I've driven cars with mechanical brakes, power brakes, "power assist"
>> brakes but never got into a skid that I couldn't get out of. Again, I
>> may just drive different.

>Or maybe you just have better driving skills.

Thank you....and could you tell my wife that? :-)

>I'm given to understand most driving schools stopped teaching spin
>control some years back, partly for liability reasons and partly because
>it "alarms the students".

My driving instructor had me go into a spin on  ice to which I
immediately took my foot off of the brake (IIRC it was almost
instinctive).  He had me go into a spin again so I would get "the
experience of what it was like".  Then he had me repeat but pump the
brakes.  The difference was amazing.  Of course, I was also thankful that
no cops were around since we were doing 45 in a 25 zone. :-)

>You want fucking alarming? Try being in a flat spin that you DON"T KNOW
>HOW TO GET OUT OF because the flight school thought spinning the
>airplane to teach spin recovery to you would alarm you. I promise you
>for DAMNED CERTAIN that spin will alarm you.

>...Once. And after that, it won't matter any more.

And if you did recover, I bet the laundry bill was pretty high.

>Side story:
>When I was learning to drive a car, my dad took me to his iced-over
>company parking lot in the middle of winter, and spent the whole
>afternoon teaching me to spin the car on demand, whichever way I wanted,
>and stop the spin with the car pointed any direction I chose.

>Years later, I was driving north up Highway 1 from Cambria in my Z28,
>with a female friend, and came to a spot that's known to the locals as
>Movable Bridge. There's no bridge there any more, because all the rock
>in the area is serpentine, which is slick as shit when wet, and the
>bridge kept creeping downslope and falling off the cliff. When CalTrans
>eventually got tired of rebuilding the bridge, they just hogged out the
>back of the gully and rebuilt the road in a deep horseshoe, kind of like
>a giant chicane. Road looked dry, but as I started into the turn entry
>the rear end started to break away. I didn't think about it, just kept
>power on and steered into it, and we went the whole way around Movable
>Bridge in a four-wheel drift. I casually remarked, "Road was a little
>slick back there, must have sprinkled a little rain," and thought no
>more of it. Until I turned to look at my passenger, who still had a
>white-knuckle death-grip on the edge of the dash and an "OH MY GOD THIS
>IS IT WE'RE GONNA DIE" expression frozen on her face.

>Fast forward to last winter. By now I'm living in central New
>Hampshire, driving an all-wheel-drive Volvo XC70 with active stability
>and traction control. And, half-way across the snowy Lowes Hardware
>parking lot one day, I decided on a whim to see how the XC70 handles in
>a spin.

>And I couldn't spin it. The stability/traction control system wouldn't
>let it spin.

>Color me impressed.

I'll take that as an endorsement.  A few months ago I thought I was going
to need a new car and I was looking into either a Subaru Outback or
Forrester for the 4 wheel drive and such.  The roads around here are in
such bad shape, my little Protege can't take it anymore.  Down the street
it looks like one of those Tom Cruise WotW alien machines is coming out
of the ground in extreme slow motion. Oh, but they're replacing perfectly
good traffic lights using stimulus money.

Bob
--
Phil Stracchino, CDK#2 DoD#299792458 ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
alaric at caerllewys.net alaric at metrocast.net phil at co.ordinate.org
Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, SQL wrangler, Free Stater
It's not the years, it's the mileage.
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