Many (many) moons ago, I was young and dumb, and I had a license. We've all been there. I've done some silly things behind the wheel of a car. I'm sure you have as well. Here's one of my stories.
My way to work was relatively uneventful, traveling mostly boring stretches of freeway, but one place where I did enjoy having a bit of fun is the onramps, offramps and interchanges. I have always been one to know exactly where the point of convergence was between my talent, and the capability of my car, and I often drove close to, or right at it. Of course, in finding this point, there were times where I unintentionally exceeded one or more of those limits. Needless to say, I understand physics as they apply to cars, and how changes affect these parameters.
I had gotten larger wheels and wider tires not too long before this, and was still in the process of testing to see where that line was, but on this particular piece of road, I knew exactly what could be done, because I had been doing it for a couple of weeks every day. I had to cross over the freeway and enter a descending cloverleaf onramp that had two lanes: the inside was the normal lane, and the outside was the 'carpool only when metered lane', but I got there before it was to be metered. As I was crossing over the freeway, I see a semi-tuck enter the cloverleaf ahead of me. Devious and impatient, I move to go around him on the outside, right at my limit of adhesion. He quickly realizes that he turned in too soon and too tight, and begins to expand his radius so that he doesn't drag the trailer up on the inside curb. This reduces my lane... significantly, and I'm near enough to passing him that I'm confident that I can squeeze through before the lane merges back with the non-carpool lane, or he reduces my lane such that I can't get through - so I go for it.
I am already committed. I know through my extensive physics research that with less steering, I'm going in the grass. If I apply the brake, the rear-end is going to take over the charge and press on without me. More steering input and one side hits truck, one side hits grass, and I can't guarantee the shiny side will remain facing up. More gas will likely do about the same. I've got a real nice four wheel drift going on, and while the gap I have available to me is closing, it is going to remain large enough until I am past the truck.... and that's when I see that some service worker has strewn gravel on the cloverleaf, right in my path. Pucker factor +10. The rear end comes around a bit as I counter, and add more gas. The Colin McRae in me looks out the side window to see where we are going, keeps the power on, and controls it with steering input. I can tell you, that's the beauty of all-wheel-drive. I maintain the slide until the cloverleaf straightens out enough for me to let all four wheels come to grips with traction, and I continue my acceleration onto the freeway. It wasn't until I was in top gear at cruising speed with the cruise control turned on that I think I was able to breathe again, and contemplate just what had happened.
Don't try this at home kids, we're what you call 'experts'.
No comments:
Post a Comment