Roadcraft: The Police Driver's Handbook

Pugzilla

Information-Position-Speed-Gear-Acceleration

Anyone got the book and follow this system used by Emergency Services and "advanced drivers"?

Takes a while to get used to.

Mc Love

I did try to use the correct way of accelerating/changing gears I read about it somewhere before that they use in the police force. I think its when you are changing gears, instead of disengaging the clutch when changing gears, leave it pressed in and engage the accelerator pedal to have the revs at a certain limit and then change your gears. It's a smoother transition.

Cuddlesworth

Mc Love wrote: »

I did try to use the correct way of accelerating/changing gears I read about it somewhere before that they use in the police force. I think its when you are changing gears, instead of disengaging the clutch when changing gears, leave it pressed in and engage the accelerator pedal to have the revs at a certain limit and then change your gears. It's a smoother transition.

Easier said then done. They don't actually recommend driving without using the clutch do they?

Edit: just googled it. Its normal advanced driving practice(situation awareness stuff), not clutch-less driving.

savagethegoat

I think that's largely redundant on modern cars, although it is the way we (well I anyway) drove back in the day, changing down anyway.

Pugzilla

It emphasises keeping braking and changing gears separate. I normally would do both at the same time.

shietpilot

Mc Love wrote: »

I did try to use the correct way of accelerating/changing gears I read about it somewhere before that they use in the police force. I think its when you are changing gears, instead of disengaging the clutch when changing gears, leave it pressed in and engage the accelerator pedal to have the revs at a certain limit and then change your gears. It's a smoother transition.

I think you're talking about rev matching. This is when you blip the throttle when down shifting. When you want to down shift you press the clutch in, change gear and before releasing the clutch pedal you press the accelerator a bit to bring the revs up to where they would be if the car was already in the lower gear at that speed and instantly release the clutch pedal.

This way you can be as fast as you want releasing the clutch without getting the big jerk you would get when releasing the clutch pedal fast without blipping the throttle.

It's actually a very good technique but very hard to get used to. Once you master doing it smoothly you can try heel & toe (doing the same technique whilst braking at the same time )

On old (very old) cars with no synchros you would also need to double clutch when up/down shifting and blip throttle on the down shift. It goes something like:
Clutch in
Neutral
Clutch out
Blip throttle (if downshifting) / Let revs drop to where they should be if going to a higher gear (if upshifting)
Clutch in
Change gear
Clutch out

Cars are very easy to drive these days as you see :P

frozenfrozen

yes I found it very hard to get over BGOL as a concept. It is currently acceptable in down hill tight turns to blip on the downshift while braking, in roadcraft. Other than that you are definitely supposed to blip on downshifts while following roadcraft, but not while you are braking. Their reasoning is that you should be braking far enough ahead of a hazard that you can split up the different inputs to the vehicle which would upset the balance.

I've skimmed the whole book a couple of times, could never read it cover to cover though as it's a bit hard to not just put it away after trying to get your head around a new concept which goes against what you usually do

Pugzilla

This is good at explaining how to do rev matching. It's harder than it looks.

jca

Pugzilla wrote: »

This is good at explaining how to do rev matching. It's harder than it looks.

When they can't spell braking I glaze over it just looks like normal driving (to me anyway) I let the dsg do the work,no point in having a dog etc...

millington

jca wrote: »

When they can't spell braking I glaze over it just looks like normal driving (to me anyway) I let the dsg do the work,no point in having a dog etc...

You couldn't rev-match a DSG anyway

jca

millington wrote: »

You couldn't rev-match a DSG anyway

I was joking. I forgot that people don't do jokes on boards.....