Lights go red and amber. Move hand four inches from where it rests on the handbrake, and put car into 1st. Move hand 4 inches back, press handbrake button. Wait for green.
Yes, my gear lever and handbrake are that close. I can have one finger on each.
Mostly though I find one of the other lights, or a green man, to give me some more warning.
I had 3 separate phone calls from Ford service making sure I was aware of the risk I was taking by refusing a brake fluid change at 2 years.
There are men going round the planet at 17000mph and yet, after 60 years, no-one has managed to come up with a brake fluid that does not collect water or a system that is not exposed to atmospheric moisture. Grrr...
I suspect it's the regulations not keeping up with technology. Old incandescant brake lights used reflectors and lenses to direct the light and the source area was quite large. The modern LED things may produce the same measured light level at x m on y axis but it comes from a, or series of, *very* bright pin points. It's this change in source size that produces the dazzle.
I'm not a great fan of some LED car lights, the flicker annoys me, then they tend to be bright point sources that dazzle (I wear glasses, which possibly doesn't help but then *lots* of drivers wear glasses).
LED traffic lights at night are also too damn bright. You can barely see where to drive against the green glare from the set at Langwathby bridge when heading into the village from Penrith. It's not really dazzle just the sheer amount of light causing your iris to stop down so dark things, like the entrance to the bridge, "disappear". Once past the lights your iris opens back up and you can see again.
When I go to Piha (near Auckland) I've learned to always engage a low gear as I start the long steep descent to the coast. Getting three quarters of the way down and having the brakes start to give out is an interesting experience.
Yeah, -30 not uncommon at all, and colder still isn't unheard of. Heating bills get a bit interesting. It's unusually warm at the moment though -
80 degrees the last few days. I think we had snow on the ground by this time last year.
So far I've escaped clouting one, although my wife got a fawn last year with the car and it's still showing some of the scars...
Our van's got some deer battle damage too, but that was at the hands of the previous owners. Several of the car repair places around here give out prizes for worst damage caused by deer impact :-)
From the experiences of my youngsters, I would say they are taught engine braking, but often can't do it, so end up clutch-in and braking hard. But all my women friends do it also, so maybe it's the fact that many more driving instructors are female these days...
Wrong No performance driver EVER doesn't have the engine NOT connected to the driving wheels except for the briefest time when changing gear and no performance driver EVER has the engine anywhere near idle at any time..the RPM is ALWAYS 'on the cam' and ready for maximum power.
In 30 years off watching motorsport the sole exception I can recall is qualifying 1000 bhp+ turbo cars where blipping the throttle with the clutch depressed mid corner helped the turbos keep spinning.
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