Calm The Eff Down: An Addition
[ July 26th, 2008 ] By: Mark Ozimek Posted in » Ramblings
Charles made a mention about keeping calm to improve your driving a few days back. There are two things that brought this article to my attention recently.
First would be the F1 race in Germany last weekend. For those who follow the F1 races, notice how much Filipe Massa’s driving improved when he stopped pushing the car too hard. It is possible, and perhaps too easy to create strange and unsettling handling issues that unnerve you when pushing too hard. This will just make you nervous and lose confidence in the car. Stay calm, don’t let the pressure affect your driving negatively. I realize this is easier said than done, and requires some practice, which brings me to my second point.
The other relates to driving on normal roads with everyone else. A major problem with cars is that we treat them as our own personal space, when we have to share that space with others on a public road. Invariably, we get frustrated and annoyed with other drivers who don’t do what we want them to. I saw a few good examples of this on the drive home from work today. There was a large backup caused by an accident, two lanes closed on a three lane highway. When it came time to merge to the one lane, everyone went from just driving normally to honking, swearing, cutting each other off, and generally carrying on. Just calm down, use a blinker, and try to set a good example for other drivers on how to behave. This prevents a lot of stress, as well as potential accidents. Both are good things to avoid! By mastering your patience with the insanity of the general population, you will take a large step forward to mastering your calmness on the race course.
July 26th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Good advice! Remember, most people claim that they are “good-to-excellent” drivers.
In fact, 1/2 the world is “below average” but nobody wants to be in the bottom half!
Just because YOU may be a good driver does not mean that someone else can “read” your action and not cause trouble, or even an accident - tailgating, passing on the right, taking that hole shot in traffic can all have disastrous results because not everyone knows how to react - on the track there are a lot of rules for overtaking, passing, wheel-to-wheel conduct, etc. It’s all for safety. On the regular road, those rules aren’t enforced, just left up to common sense and the appeal to everyone to share the road and be courteous… which, they usually are not.
When you get jammed, boxed in, etc…. take a couple breaths, maybe turn on some music (or listen to the engine thrum) and just find your happy space, there in the cockpit of your beloved car. Just consider it a little more “quality time” with your steed.