People always get caught up in who is at fault for causing an accident. Everyone is always looking to point the finger at the responsible party, and for good reason. Beyond the normal human habit of scapegoating, the determination of fault in an accident can have lasting effects on your driving record, whether you are issued any tickets, and even what your legal liability is should someone have been injured. Within this framework, yes, you do want to establish who is “at fault” for an accident.

But this mentality can be very dangerous too, as it simultaneously seeks to absolve one party from any fault in the accident. Barring a 50/50 fault determination (usually done by insurance companies where the facts do not easily point to one person being at fault), one party is always at fault, and the other party is always completely not at fault. I reject this philosophy for 2 reasons: 1) there is always something you could have done to avoid the accident, and 2) it promotes more accidents by not holding people responsible.

You Could Always Have Done Something
In 99% of accidents, there is always something that you could have done to avoid the accident. This holds true equally for the at fault and not at fault parties. For example, imagine you have right of way going through an intersection and the crossing road has a stop sign. You toodle along aimlessly through the intersection and get sideswiped by someone who ran the stop sign. By any measure, the person that hit you is at fault. But there are things you could have done to possibly avoid the accident. You could have slowed down at the intersection to ensure that no one was going to run the stop sign and plow into you. Are you required by law to do this? Absolutely not, and few people would actually do this. But where the risk is an accident, and all the inconveniences that go along with that (dealing with your insurance company, the police/tow truck, finding a new car, getting a rental car) the benefit of ensuring that the intersection will be clear can be worth it.

Promoting More Accidents
Which brings me to my next point - because people simply blame the at fault driver, they do not drive as defensively as they could, and that leads to more accidents. Take my example above - if you drove more defensively and looked to make sure no one would run the stop sign, that accident could have been avoided. Yes, it is not your legal duty to do so, but vigilance and defensive driving will always lead to fewer accidents.

Reality
You obviously cannot take every single precaution imaginable, as then you would never actually get anywhere. But adopting the mindset that you are at fault for not avoiding an accident will help keep you out of trouble. As far as I’m concerned, the only time you absolutely cannot blame yourself is when your car is parked and you are nowhere near it. Even instances such as getting rear-ended at a stoplight can be partly blamed on you: would honking your horn have alerted the driver in time? could you have moved out of the way? Admittedly, these measures are slight, but they are nonetheless proactive steps that could have been taken.

The question of how far ahead to look is big and important one. Common wisdom is that you should be looking through a corner, to where you want the car to go. Clint is a strong advocate of this technique, and it is what is taught at virtually every performance driving school.

Why Look Ahead?
There are a couple of reasons why it may be better to look ahead. The most important is that you can see if any incidents are debris are up ahead. If you are focused 10 feet in front of your car and you miss the car up ahead that just spun, well, that is going to be a major problem very fast. The other, and most tauted, reason for looking ahead is that we naturally tend to end up where we are looking. I.e, if you start to spin and focus intently on the wall you don’t want to hit, you will tend to steer the car directly towards the wall. Obviously this example is a bit extreme, but the same argument applies to your basic line. Advocates of looking ahead cite your “hands following your eyes” as the reason to look ahead.

Why I Look 10 Feet in Front of Me
I actually do not follow common doctrine as far as where I look. I effectively play a high-speed version of connect-the-dots, literally looking and driving from one reference point to the next. In a corner, I’ll look for my brake point, then look for my apex, then look for my track out. The difference between this and common wisdom is that with the “Look Ahead” technique, you are looking at or past your track out point as soon as you hit your turn-in point.

Looking at each reference point along the way works for me because it tells me NOW and far more precisely how my Line is at any given point in a corner. If I know where I need to apex corner X and I see that I’m hitting the apex early or late, I can start making the necessary corrections NOW. This helps keep me out of trouble, and can prevent having to make more dire and drastic corrections later on. Read the rest of this entry »

DISCLAIMER: The opinions and analysis expressed in this post should not be construed as legal advice, nor do they establish any attorney-client relationship. Consult with an attorney to ensure you understand the law and any consequence that might stem from your actions or inactions.

The end result is typical: a suspect flees from police in a high-speed car chase, only to have his plans foiled by an officer running him off the road. We see it time and again in the movies and on TV, and indeed we come to expect, at the very least, the police have the legal right to do this. But for the very reason that high-speed pursuits are so dangerous, so too is purposely running the fleeing vehicle off the road. As was bound to happen, the legal question of whether the police actually have the legal right to run a car off the road was raised in Scott v. Harris, decided by the United States Supreme Court last year. Scott v. Harris, 127 S. Ct. 1769 (2007).

The facts of the case are typical of most high-speed chases. 19-year-old Harris was clocked at 73 mph in a 55 mph, 2-lane road. When the officer tried to pull Harris over, Harris fled, reaching speeds of almost 90 mph, weaving in and out of traffic, and running red lights. At one point, he was cornered in a parking lot, but evaded police by making a sharp turn and strking a police cruiser. After fleeing for over 6 minutes and 10 miles, Officer Scott (the officer Harris had struck) requested permission to perform a “Precision Intervention Technique,” or “PIT” maneuver. That is just a fancy way of saying that he wanted to hit Harris’ car to cause it to spin out. He got the go ahead from his supervisor, but Scott felt the vehicles were traveling too fast to execute a PIT maneuver safely. So, ironically, he just hit Harris with his bumper, causing Harris to lose control of the car which left the road and ended up crashing badly in a ditch. Harris was rendered a quadripilegic from the accident.

Harris sued Officer Scott, alleging that his constitutional rights were violated by Officer Scott’s aggressive maneuver. There were a number of legal issues at play, but the ones that relate to driving and terminating a chase are whether terminating the chase constitutes a “seizure” under the 4th Amendment, and then if Officer Harris’ act constituted “excessive force.” Neither party contested the definition of “seizure,” which means that when the Police halt your vehicle after a high-speed pursuit, they have technically just seized your car. Read the rest of this entry »

This article is written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience with a Mercedes powered by vegetable oil.

Over the years, I’ve always gazed somewhat longingly at BMW and Mercedes vehicles from the 1980s and early 1990s. I don’t know what it is about them, but they just seem to have gotten it right. My mom has a fantastic E30 325i that is exceedingly well kept, and drives like a charm, about as close to a four-door Miata as one can get. The E30 sure has the sporty end of things licked.

You’d never guess this Mercedes could run on used veggie oil, would you?

Alas, there has always been a bit of a draw, at least to me, of the older diesel-powered Mercedes cars. Maybe it’s the ridiculous fuel economy, maybe it’s how they cruise on the highway so well, maybe it’s how they just absorb every bump in the road, quite the opposite of the Miata. Maybe it’s how quiet they are on the inside, maybe it’s how long overbuilt and low-revving diesel engines last. Then again, maybe it’s that, in terms of dollars and/or cents per mile, they can achieve infinite fuel economy via vegetable oil power.

The thing is, as the price of a gallon of gasoline has risen, so has the price of diesel-powered vehicles, compared to their gasoline-powered counterparts. So you have to do a LOT of driving to save any money. The number of companies selling veggie-oil conversion kits has also increased.

One day I was over at a local Miata guy’s shop staring at a popped motor, and another Miata guy (building a 302-powered Miata in the same shop) dropped by in a diesel Mercedes, silver with red leather. It was borrowed, but it was for sale. 1986 190D, 2.5L 5-cylinder non-turbo, automatic. And, it already had a veggie oil kit on it. At $1500 (a comparable kit is $1000 or so, and “only” 175,000 miles- nothing for a diesel like that. Read the rest of this entry »

Just about every form of racing involves some sort of manipulation of a transmission. The transimission is simply a set of gears that turns the rotation of your engine into the rotation of your drive wheels. Every car has a transmission, as without a transmission you are just revving an engine that isn’t attached to anything.

Why Do We Need Multiple Gears?
This is an important question. In short, there is a set range of rpms that your car’s engine will operate in. Usually this would be an idle of just under 1000rpm to around 6000-7000rpm (though different engines have different redlines). Additionally, every engine will produce the most power, torque, and efficiency in a smaller segment of its rev range. I.e., for my Miata, I get all of my power starting around 4500 rpm and going up to the redline of 7000rpm.

Different gears allow the engine be able to operate in its optimum rev range at a wide variety of speeds. Think of how a bicycle works, and you should see that the same applies to cars and car engines. The engine on a bicycle (your legs) can only turn at a relatively small range of rotations (your pedal strokes/minute). If you only had 1 gear, you wouldn’t be able to ride your bike very well. You would either have no power at low speeds, in exchange for a faster top speed, or lots of power at low speed by no ability to go fast as your legs couldn’t move fast enough. Having multiple gears (over 20 in modern bikes) lets you keep you legs moving at their optimum rate over a larger range of speeds. The same holds true for cars, but can be accomplished with only 5 or 6 gears.

What is a Clutch and Why Do We Need it?
A clutch is simply a means to disengage the engine from the drive wheels. It is needed because a gasoline engine cannot go down to 0 rpm without stalling. As such, you need a way to introduce slip in the drivetrain so that when you’re wheels are at 0 rpm (stopped at a light, for instance), you can gradually bring them up to the same speed as the engine.

Why Bother with a Manual Transmission?
This also is an important question. For most people driving to and from work, they don’t care what gear their car is in as long as the car moves like it is supposed to. This mentality does not work when trying to extract maximum performance from a car. As a driver, you want to use the gear that puts the engine in its optimum rev range for any particular corner or situation. Automatics can do this to a degree, but they do not have the foresight to downshift before a corner and hold that gear throughout the corner.

Holding a gear in a corner is very important on the track because it lets you be smooth in your throttle application. Think of what happens when you get on the throttle in a corner - you want to slowly and smoothly apply power to gradually shift the weight onto the rear tires. If you give too much gas too suddenly, the car can spin. Now imagine what happens with an automatic transmission: you go into a corner, slowly give the car more gas, then the transmission realizes it needs to down shift. Now the tranny downshifts violently, the car lurches, and all of that smoothness you are trying to extract goes right out the window. Worst case scenario: you spin.

The Engagement Point and How to Make Your Car Move
Thats all well and good, you say, but I just want to make my car move. So, here is how you do it: press the clutch pedal IN, which disengages the engine from the drivetrain. Now you can select whichever gear you want using the shifter. Put the shifter into 1st gear. Now slowly begin releasing the clutch pedal. At a certain point, called the engagment point, the clutch disc will begin to touch the flywheel of the engine. When it does, power will be transferred to your wheels and the car will begin to move forward. Make sure you hold the clutch at the engagement point for a few seconds to get the car slowly and smoothly up to speed, otherwise you will either stall the car or screech your tires as you accelerate the wheels instantaneously up to speed.

In its simplest form, think of 2 spinning discs touching each other. The flywheel is connected to the engine, and the clutch to the rest of the drivetrain. As you push in the clutch pedal, the clutch disc moves away from the flywheel, allowing slip into the drivetrain. This point is crucial to being smooth - without holding the clutch pedal at the engagement point for a little bit, you are just slamming the 2 discs together. If they aren’t moving at exactly the same speed, there will be much lurking and bucking as the engine and drivetrain are instantly snapped to the correct speed.

The reaction I typically get when someone finds out I race cars and will be driving them around is usually one of absolute terror. The image they always have is of my car screaming along at the speed of light, weaving in and out of cars, and generally driving them within an inch of their life. This image should be particularly amusing to anyone familiar with my normal street driving, as I drive particuarly cautiously on the street despite my abilities on the track.

While initially I may have been offended at these reactions - as they are, in essence, an attack on my driving abilities and judgment - that has since melted away into general amusement. I am amused because the reality is exactly the opposite of what most people think. People are MUCH safer riding with a driver who has extensive track experience, simply because such a driver actually knows what the car is capable of and what to do in an emergency situation. The basic and obvious examples are knowing cornering and braking limits, particularly how LOW they are in the rain. More advanced examples would be how to recover from understeer or oversteer. And most advanced is literally using all of the same Line analyses that are used on the track and applying it to other cars on the road.

To highlight that last point, let me briefly list a number of things that I may be thinking about at any given time while driving:

Read the rest of this entry »

When people think of Olympic sports, we tend to think of sports powered by some sort of muscle power. The 100m dash, skiing, basketball, all of these require muscles to be accomplished. Really, this view harkens back to the original Olympics of Ancient Greece, where the Games were a testament to the pinnacle of human strength and physical accomplishment. In that light, the thought of an Olympic sport involving a motor seems almost sacreligious.

But I would argue that the modern Olympics as a competition of human physical strength is a myth. A quick look at various Olympic events shows that there are many events where physical strength plays little if any role in success. Any of the shooting disciplines are excellent examples. Yes, I will concede that there is a certain amount of strength and stamina required to hold a pistol or rifle dead steady for 60 consecutive shots. But having competitively shot several shooting disciplines myself, I can honestly say that they are almost entirely mental sports. Absolute mental concentration on your sights, target, and trigger control is what truly sets the world’s best apart from the simply mundane. Contrast that with the physical build and strength requirements to be competitive in something like the 100m dash or the shotput and you will see that while both are sports, one rewards physical prowess and one mental prowess.

Then of course there are the equestrian events, where the brunt of the work is done by the horse, not by the rider. Yes, there is a physical demand to riding a horse, but the ultimate action is entirely a function of the horse and its ability. Anything else would be like arguing that a car brakes primarily by the effort of pushing the brake pedal, rather than the effort of the braking system itself. I see no fundamental difference between telling a horse what to do and telling a car what to do. If anything, I would argue that driving a car is harder, as you literally have to make every fine correction that a living animal should be able to make on its own.

There is also the little-known fact that there actually has been a motorsport in the Olympics. The 1908 Olympics in London featured 3 motorboat events, each of which made 5 laps around an 8-mile course. Due to a rather severe gale during the events, only 1 of the boats actually made it to the end of each race, meaning that only a gold medal has ever been awarded in Olympic motorboating. Read the rest of this entry »

A crucial step in driving consistently around a track is being able to find and utilize reference points. Reference points are simply things on the track that you can easily find again and again that tell you where your turn in, apex, and track out points are. Sounds simple enough, but it can take longer than you’d think to find suitable reference points to let you be consistent. The most important thing to remember is that THERE IS NO WRONG REFERENCE POINT. By that I mean any reference point that YOU can find and use is the best reference point for you. If there is a dead fly right at an apex and you can spot it on every lap, that is a better reference point than a giant boulder that you never see.

Consistency Rules
Reference points are the key to being consistent because they provide a definitive measurement of where to make your inputs. Going by “feel” will get you close, but virtually everyone will benefit from the extra refinement of having a solid point at which to make any given input. Even the top-level pros are constantly scanning for and using reference points everywhere. Particularly as your speed increases, feel becomes a less and less precise measure of where to make your inputs. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest problems I see when instructing students on a racetrack is that they will enter corners fast enough that they cannot slow down in the corner itself. The issue is that when you push the envelope enough, you risk spinning from either lift-throttle oversteer or brake oversteer. The threshold for either brake or lift-throttle oversteer is MUCH lower than the ultimate cornering capability of a car, and that can get people into trouble. Its not that my students intend to take these risks, they simply don’t have the exposure or experience to realize the precipitous position that they can put themselves in.

The typical scenario is I have a fast student rapidly approaching a much slower student. The fast student enters a corner at his usual pace and rapdily gains on the slower student, forcing the faster student to slow down to avoid a collision. I’m aware of the dangers that this presents and always warn my faster student well in advance to slow down and give the slower car more room.

To drive the point home, I always explain a situation I had several seasons ago. I was driving at Watkins Glen, and was very fast through the right-hand sweeper just after the chicane. There was a slower car much farther in front of me, far enough in front that I thought I would catch him on the straight, not in the corner. So I went balls-to-the-wall through the right hander and, sure enough, quickly found myself right on his tail. Now I was trouble: If I’d have lifted, I’d have spun. If I’d have braked, I’d have spun. And if I continued on the path I was on, I’d smashed into this car. And because I had banked on using the entire track, I couldn’t really use my standard straighten-the-wheel-and-get-on-the-brakes technique to slow down, as that would have taken me off the track into the wall. Fortunately, I was able to lift off the throttle and straighten the wheel enough to not hit the car without spinning.

This just reinforces the dangers of committing to a corner. There is nothing wrong with going all-out in a corner, but make absolutely sure that once you cross that point of no return you can make it all the way through the corner without incident.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions and analysis expressed in this post should not be construed as legal advice, nor do they establish any attorney-client relationship. Consult with an attorney to ensure you understand the law and any consequence that might stem from your actions or inactions.

While most officers treat people fairly and courteously, there will always be instances where some officers enter questionable territory or outright violate people’s rights. In these cases, justice is usually hard for the citizen to obtain, as the evidence usually boils down to “he said/she said.” In such cases, deferrence is usually given to the Police. Wouldn’t it be easier to prove your case if you had an actual recording of the encounter, as then you would have irrefutable evidence of the alleged violations of your rigths? It certainly would. But unfortunately, the very tape you had hoped would exonerate you and bring you justice could very well send you into a legal nightmare you had never imagined. You see, in Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court held in Commonwealth v. Michael Hyde, 434 Mass. 594 (Mass. 2001), that secretly recording a police officer constitutes a violation of Massachusetts’ wiretapping statute (Chapter 272: Section 99. Interception of wire and oral communications).

The facts of the case are fairly straightforward. On October 26, 1998, Michael Hyde was stopped by the Abington police in his white Porsche for having an excessively loud exhaust system and an unlit rear license plate. The stop quickly became confrontational, with Hyde insisting that his long-hair and appearance was the reason for the additional scrutiny paid to him that night. Unbeknownst to the officers, Hyde had been recording the entire traffic stop. Hyde then filed a complaint against the officers, and used this recording as evidence. The officers were cleared, and much to Hyde’s dismay the department filed charges against Hyde for having secretly recorded the encounter. Hyde was convicted and appealed up to the Massachusetts Supreme Court (the highest court in Massachusetts). The court affirmed his conviction. Read the rest of this entry »