Advanced momentum management

Driving is a mental challenge.  Yesterday we made the trip from Lake Roosevelt to Cochiti Lake in New Mexico.  Pulling a fifth wheel trailer only enhanced the fun of coping with the insanity induced by cars.  Cars change people.  Once you put a person on the road that might normally be a calm kind human, you often create a crazed man or woman who no longer can resist the gas pedal.  If you were riding a bike would you peddle like hell toward a wall then suddenly slam on the brakes? No, but how many drivers run up to a traffic light that is red and hit the brakes.  Why not let the car decelerate as you glide toward the light?  It might turn green by the time you get there.  The same slap drivers, as Kadizzle calls them will run up behind a slow truck and slam on the brakes.  Every time you get to a congested bigger city the aggression of drivers gets more insane.  If you watch an aggressive driver jockey for position you often see they make little more headway than a sane driver.  The aggressive driver loves to weave in and out of lanes.  When you have a trailer on the back of you truck these obsessive idiots can cause a real mess.

So Kadizzle offers two classes that drive his wife, and his daughters crazy.  Puff driving is the first class.  It mostly teaches starting slowly and stopping slowly.  The goal in puff driving is not to use the brakes.  On a recent trip to Florida with brother in law Ned we took his van.  His van was equipped with a device that would report to the insurance company if he stopped too quickly.  This is a sign of bad driving.  When you hit the brakes hard the little device would emit a ding.  When you got too many dings you did not get the insurance discount.  The whole trick to avoiding dings is looking ahead and avoiding quick stops.  There is no quicker stop than when you hit another car.

Advanced momentum management is similar to driving a train or a large ocean liner.  Start a train too fast and you will tear it apart.  It takes miles to stop a super tanker.  So in both cases you have to manage the momentum.  If you do this with your car it will last longer and hit fewer other cares.  When our kids were small Kadizzle told them he drove from Mexico to Alaska without using the brakes.  For a long time they believed it.  To slow down you have two choices.  You can use the brake or you can cut back on the throttle.  Also you can down shift.   If you see brake dancers you know they are poor drivers.  As you look ahead and watch the brake lights you can tell which drivers understand momentum management and the ones who do not.  Kadizzle has never had the brakes replaced on any car he owns.  The combination of living in the middle of nowhere, and advanced momentum management are the reason.