Safe Speed Forums

That has implications of lane hopping to try to stay in the fastest lane, which isn't quite what I meant.

Perhaps a better example would be catching up a slower car on a motorway and deciding whether the car in front will have moved out of my way before I reach them, whether an approaching car in the overtaking lane would catch me before I caught the car in front, whether I had an option to pull into a gap in front or behind them, whether I could pull in front and pass the car in front and move back before they caught me, whether I could ease off slightly to arrange that they were past me so I could move out behind them before being baulked by the car in front. Even in simple scenarios there are lots of permutations. It's something that I think we all do almost without conscious thought, but complex enough that I find it hard to describe. I guess these are all just variations on a theme, along with timing traffic lights, roundabout gaps and so on. Observation, anticipation and planning are common themes to all these situations.

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Peter Humphries (and a green V8S)

I spent the day with Steve Haley of MIND DRIVING fame.

I asked him about rhythm, and he said...

'You know a factory has rhythm.'

He went on to describe a trip to an old fashioned ornamental glassworks. This is where guys with blobs of glass on long blowpipes perform a process then pass their workpiece on to the next chap for the next stage.

The amazing thing was the way it all work in synchronism. One guy was finishing his job at exactly the moment when another guy needed the workpiece for the next stage.

He described how they swung the blowpipe towards the next guy who wasn't even waiting, but swinging to the same pickup point at the same time. Perfect harmony. Perfect synchronisation.

THAT'S what the rhythm thing is really about. Perfect harmony. Nothing too soon. Nothing too late. Like a driving production line.

Steve really is a fine fellow. Buy his book via the link on the front page: http://www.safespeed.org.uk

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety