I remembered something else about my own approach to driving that
might be useful input for discussion, or might have you all thinking
I'm a raving nutcase... but as best as I can describe it, I treat
a car like the large heavy object it is, and that getting it to
go, navigate, and stop is sort of a bigger deal than it really is.
.
Pick just about any movie that's got a large conveyance involved in
its plot somehow. Titanic? How about many space-adventure type
movies? Where you have ten minutes of sequence with stirring music
passing the viewpoint over the big ship and reviewing it stem to
stern, and then another one later when we finally have our mission,
undock, and engage the warp core or those big ol' crosshead steam
monsters or even set a bunch of sails the right way. It's a careful
process, requiring a lot of thought and coordination between humans
and machines, and even if the end goal is to attain "ludicrous speed"
it happens in a very planned fashion.
.
Or even consider trains. They accelerate and decelerate at rather
modest and consistent rates, with plenty of planning ahead for any
station stop. When conditions warrant, i.e. everybody is on board
and the door interlocks have latched and everybody's checked in,
the train engineer applies torque to wheels, and *waits* for the
results. This isn't a "performance" vehicle, even if it's a bullet
train that will reach 200+ MPH between cities. And you don't try to
beat lights or outrun the other guy when you're driving one. Airplanes
and pilots are generally the same way, with minor exceptions here and
there but they don't keep their tickets long. Now *there's* one area
where following distance is key.
.
So ... that's how I drive. Like it takes a small act of Congress
to authorize putting the thing in "D" and beginning to move, and
then all subsequent navigation becomes designed to minimize the
lateral G-force that any passenger would feel. Sure, sometimes
I'll pull a nice turn apex when nobody's around but generally I
can drive the groceries home or a big load of stuff somewhere and
be completely confident that nothing's going to roll around inside.
My little thrills come from pulling a nice zero-fuel glide all the
way through a busy, complex highway merge with people going every
which way and not having to change speed while still helping others
sort out where they need to go, or beginning another "burn" at a
particular point and having that speed increase perfectly match what's
going on around me to continue on down the road to the next one. I
know that in some cases, my little well-calculated orbital mechanics
create a little "island of calm" on the highways that propagates out
to the traffic around me, but there are enough aggressive, performance-
styled drivers mixed up in the mess and pulling abrupt, unpredictable
"fighter plane" moves that it's hard to spot the subtle effects.
.
So the performance driver wants the vehicle to be a nimble extension
of his own body, like the basketball players I touch on in my little
fuel-economy rant for the public. The energy-efficient driver wants
to balance energy consumption and moving the massive weight of the
ship, and not squander fuel on excess movement or speed changes.
Each requires a certain amount of thought to do well, with the
"performance" side likely containing a few more snap decisions that
may turn out badly, and each brings its own kind of enjoyment to a
particular person. The huge problem kicks in when the enjoyment of
the performance style is thwarted somehow, like heavy traffic, and
then the resulting frustrations are misdirected at other road users.
.
Remember "Asteroids"? You have to burn fuel to move, *and* you have
to burn fuel to turn and stop. In the absence of big hairy rocks
bearing down on you there's a fuel-efficient way to do that and there's
a wasteful way to do it. And there are opportunities to try and navigate
through the rocks via more or less turning and burning along thew way.
The downside of how Asteroids was designed is that you get unlimited fuel.
.
_H*
Linear Mode
