[Closed] Driving Below The Speed Limit Does Not Make You Less Of A Man

I find gently dropping a gear or two in our 160k Mondeo emitts a dense black sooty smoke screen to put them off. 🙂

How wrong is Surf-Mat

On a scale of 1-2, 1 being wrong, 2 being completely wrong I give him a 3.

The more I read of Surf-Mat's posts the more I think about roosters.

GrahamS earlier

I don't bloody belieeeeeeve it.
(not a bad likeness actually 😳 )

My advice would be if you want to do 50 then do so but if people want to pass then pull over.

In my situation 50 was a perfectly reasonable speed for anyone who is remotely interested in driving appropriately for the conditions, and he had a second lane to overtake me if he wished but he was clearly more interested in showing me the error of my ways*

* I picked him up when I pulled into the outside lane to allow a truck on from the sliproad. This meant Mr Audi had to ease off ever so slightly because I had dared to enter "his" lane for a few seconds. When I pulled back into the inside lane Mr Audi pulled in with me and sat 6 inches off my arse. Presumably conveying his displeasure at my speed and driving was suddenly more important than getting to that sales meeting.

my mate used to run around in his dad's mk2 escort...slight downward pressure on the gearstick made the reversing lights come on...even at 70 in 4th gear....that made most back off.

I'm thinking Foghorn Leghorn. That's one big rooster!

or pulling the handbrake has (allegedly) the same effect without lights....

In my car, touching the brake cuts the throttle so I can't follow surf-mats suggestion of dabbing the brakes while maintaining speed (not that i would anymore, although I admit to doing it in my yoof).

It's quite annoying as in my old Fiesta, if I'd washed the car and the brake discs had a film of rust on them & were a bit 'scrapy' the next time I drove it, I'd just drive for a few yards with my left foot lightly on the brake to get the rust off. In the Ibiza, touching the brake kills the throttle so you can't maintain any speed to scrub the disc.

I imagine it's a trait across other VAG cars.

FWIW, I now just slow down when I am tailgated to increase my gap to the car in front. As I see it, if there is some kind of accident/obstruction ahead this gives me more room to brake into so I can brake more gently meaning tailgating div probably won't end up sat on my back seat.
Or I just move over (and probably in all honesty flick them the bird as they pass).

I am not sure that anyone with a modicum of driver skill should need to use left foot braking on a regular basis. I know some fairly skilled drivers (yes, IAM trained etc.) and none of them use left foot braking in everyday driving.

Can you not heel and toe then, stumpy?

takisawa2 - Member
I find gently dropping a gear or two in our 160k Mondeo emitts a dense black sooty smoke screen to put them off.

I had some bloke in a vectra tailgate me a couple of minutes after one of the boost pipe connections failed on my Ibiza. I had come off the main road onto a minor road & was driving at about 50mph on a very light throttle to limit the 'soot cloud' I was creating.
I waited 30s or so to see if he backed off, then when he didn't I just stuck my foot to the floor. My car barely pulled away as the performance has pretty much disappeared, but the ensuing soot screen soon had him backing off!

Let's face it, people who left foot brake on the road do it because they think they'd have been a brilliant F1 driver if only someone had talent spotted them 😀

Driving home very late one night from Derby up the A52 towards Ashbourne I picked up a tailgater. The road used to be a 60mph limit but has been reduced to 50mph with lots of 30mph sections through villages and it's almost impossible to overtake - windy roads, double white lines, single carriageway. This was about 11pm, nothing on the roads at all, good conditions.

Nothing shook this guy off. I tried driving at everything from 50 to 65, although I always stuck to 30mph through the villages. In the end I just blocked him out, he refused to come through even on the one section of dual carriageway.

Got to the roundabout entering Ashbourne, glanced in the wing mirror and realised for the first time that it was a bloody police car! My guess is he'd just been waiting for an excuse to pull me over like if I used my mobile or something. He'd been really bugging me though, 10ft off my rear bumper for the entire 12 miles of that road. 👿

I had some bloke in a vectra tailgate me a couple of minutes after one of the boost pipe connections failed on my Ibiza. I had come off the main road onto a minor road & was driving at about 50mph on a very light throttle to limit the 'soot cloud' I was creating.
I waited 30s or so to see if he backed off, then when he didn't I just stuck my foot to the floor. My car barely pulled away as the performance has pretty much disappeared, but the ensuing soot screen soon had him backing off!

Dangerous but I'll admit it has made me laugh 😆

Surely trying to produce a big smoke cloud to, which reduces their visability to zero, is far more dangerous than giving a tap on the brake to let them know they are too close?

Can you not heel and toe then, stumpy?

Nice to see ONE person who actually knows about left foot braking!

SbZ and Quirrel - nice angle there. Just tell everyone how wrong you think I am then offer NOT A SINGLE useful bit of input yourselves.

SbZ - you've shown time and time again that you are a pretty crummy driver. I have no idea who this latest stalker geek "Quirrel" is but he is also clearly a driving chump.

1)Points on your license please?
2)Amount of extra training please?

Oh and without googling, explain "sustained" gearchanging to me? What you can't? No there's a surprise.

Answers:

1)Probably many.
2) Clearly none

Neeext.

aracer - Member
Can you not heel and toe then, stumpy?

No, but can't say I've ever felt the need. A lot of modern cars don't lend themselves to it very well due to pedal spacing/heights/throttle response etc.

What has heel & toe got to do with left foot braking though?
Heel & toe is using your right foot to control the brake and throttle simultaneously, isn't it??
Whereas left foot braking is using your erm, left foot to brake while your right foot controls the throttle.

Or were you being sarcastic/ironic and I just completely missed it?? 🙂

Does surfmat know who SBZ used to be?

Go on who did SBZ used to be ?

Have I missed the point too?? Left foot braking is very different to toe and heeling.

[i]Nice to see ONE person who actually knows about left foot braking! [/i]

Left-foot braking is indeed a v.useful advanced level skill with it's uses* mat 🙂 ..deterring tail gaters is not one of them..

(*Bringing back fond memories of my rally-x days)

[img] [/img]

Glupton/smee wasn't it?

Nice to see ONE person who actually knows about left foot braking!

Not trying to stir things up, but what does left foot braking have to do with aracers mention of heel & toe??

From erm, Wikipedia:

"Heel-and-toe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the driving technique. For the similarly-named drumming technique, see Heel-toe technique.
[b]Not to be confused with left-foot braking[/b]"

and then at the bottom of the article:

"Note

An unrelated technique, called left-foot braking should not be confused with heel-and-toe."

full path here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heel-and-toe

OH - might have just had a realisation. aracer, did you mean specifically in my car??

crispo - didn't reduce their visibility to zero, but yes probably a little dangerous. Not sure it's more/less dangerous than lighting up the brake lights. Obviously, I wouldn't have done it approaching a busy junction/roundabout or on a very twisty road or with other cars around. This was just me and vectra boy on a dead straight road. Would I do it again? Perhaps.

Ditto stumpy - I'm rather confused as to what LFB has to do with H&T though clearly H&T is about rev matching (sorry, sustained gearchanging) so either SM is just trying to demonstrate his all round AWESOMENESS in driving ability or is just as clueless as most other people clearly are about techniques that are for racing really, not normal road driving.

couldn get on with Left foot braking, (and utterly pointless on the road i found at the same time)

Heel and toe however, very useful, especially in the snow!

A blip of throttle, while braking into a corner just under normal driving conditions and speeds allows you to shift down to a happier gear without jolting the drive chain and wheels and decidedly reduces the probability of off balancing the car on a slippy bit.

Both my peugeots have/had very close together pedals, and the brake biting point (not resting point) was exactly level with the throttle.

This was just me and vectra boy on a dead straight road. Would I do it again? Perhaps.

😆 HaHa I probably would have to!

Some modern cars dont allow you to do left foot braking because of over sensitive ABS and cutting the power as soon as the brake pedal is applied.

To be fair though for left foot braking to work you have to be going pretty dam quick and near the limit of the cars grip in the first place.

Being in a car with some one who can do it properly though is just amazing the car just digs in at the nose in a way that you wouldnt beleive and it doesnt feel like the rear is sliding at all.

"Heel and toe however, very useful, especially in the snow!"

How does that one work? The whole point of toe and healing is to allow you to drop in to a lower gear so that your ready to exit the corner at high revs and max power. Its also about braking hard in to the corner, on snow thats pointless !

On the other hand using the dab of the handbrake and lots of throttle on opposite lock is great fun.

Thing is Olly in road cars, the flywheel is heavy enough that blipping the throttle will have the same effect as H&T - unless of course you think you're a racing driver and are braking on the absolute limit all the time...

blip may be the wrong word.

"carefully bringing the engine speed up to match the wheel speed while maintaining braking pressure"

Also, i want a copy of that book

Surf_Mat.

To answer your questions:

1) - 0
2) - More than you could ever imagine.

Surrounded By Zulus - Member
Surf_Mat.

To answer your questions:

1) - 0
2) - More than you could ever imagine.

You're not the ex-Stig are you??

I seem to remember you contributing to Police type threads in a fairly informed manner, so are you car-based plod??

this thread is beautiful 😆

Mat, it isn't dangerous for you at all if you blip the brake lights. So if you don't consider anyone other than yourself as being important, your view makes perfect sense.

Nice to see ONE person who actually knows about left foot braking!

SbZ and Quirrel - nice angle there. Just tell everyone how wrong you think I am then offer NOT A SINGLE useful bit of input yourselves.

SbZ - you've shown time and time again that you are a pretty crummy driver. I have no idea who this latest stalker geek "Quirrel" is but he is also clearly a driving chump.

1)Points on your license please?
2)Amount of extra training please?

Oh and without googling, explain "sustained" gearchanging to me? What you can't? No there's a surprise.

Answers:

1)Probably many.
2) Clearly none

Neeext.

Nice attempt at an anti-troll hook.

No points ever.
Limited extra training from bike school.

However I don't spend my days spouting stuff about driving that I found on wikipedia trying to justify LFB which really should have been put as "touching the brake with my left foot to cause the microswitch to activate the brake lights without acutally causing me to brake."

That isn't quite the same as left foot braking, is it! I think if were were to give it letters it would be something like

Surf Mats Left Foot Braking Technique That He Misread On Wikipedia And Thought It Would Sound Cool If He Said He Did It To Stop Tailgaters.

SMLFBTTHMOWATIWSCIHSHDITST

Posting about your driving ability on the internet does not make you more of a man.

IME people who tell you about their wonderful driving skills are often the worst when you have the misfortune to get in a car with them.

Not car based plod. Used to do a nice side line in teaching various levels of driving to people though.

What has heel & toe got to do with left foot braking though?

As Olly mentions it is a useful technique in snow (or off-road in a 4x4) - though personally I'd be more likely to use it when descending a hill than coming into a corner. It allows you to use a bit of brake pressure to keep the speed down whilst shifting down and matching the engine to the speed of the wheels so there is no sudden traction breaking deceleration when you lift the clutch. The shifting down being because engine braking is better than the brakes at keeping traction. Can't say it's something I'd do much though.

I for one feel so much safer knowing that me and my family are sharing the the public highways with middle aged men practising their left foot braking.

If you do an off-road driving course you will hear said often enough "As slow as possible, as fast as necessary" it seems to be a motto of off-road driving. Off-road driving is comparable to driving on-road-snow.

Some modern cars dont allow you to do left foot braking because of over sensitive ABS and cutting the power as soon as the brake pedal is applied.

Sort of, cars with a fly-by-wire throttle will cut the throttle if the brake pedal is pressed. ABS has nothing to do with it.

I meant it as 2 separate foibles about modern cars. Its easier to achieve left foot braking in a car without overly sensitive ABS (which most average cars have).

aracer - your talking about a different type of left foot braking. From what your saying you use left foot braking off road to control speed and grip. I'm talking about left foot braking for basically unbalancing the car to enable it to turn through corners at a higher speed than would other wise be possible.

Yeah took a while to work out your line of thinking, aracer.....

On the Seatcupra website I seem to remember a thread about this with regard to the Leon Cupra.
A bloke was asking whether you could heel-toe & left foot brake or whether the ECU restricts throttle & brake inputs.
There was a bit of a mixed response with some saying that you couldn't do either, while others reckoned the ECU gave you a couple of seconds leeway before it cut the throttle.

Mine seems instant; drive along in 2nd at 20mph, dab brake very gently while on throttle and car slows as you'd expect it to if just braking. More throttle has no effect, which with all the torques of the 1.9TDi I'd expect it to overcome a whisker of brake!

Not sure what the point of it is.

I'm talking about left foot braking for basically unbalancing the car to enable it to turn through corners at a higher speed than would other wise be possible.

Eh?!

LFB purely allows you to apply the power, and the brake (or visa versa) with very little delay in between, hence being utterly pointless on the road, as it will let you get around the corner 1:10th of a second quicker.

to unbalance the car you would need to have the brakes weighted to the rears, as some rally drivers prefer, so that a dab of brake actually acts as a handbrake for a turn.
a quicker way of unbalancing the car for a turn is to countersteer before the turn, and if it does start to step out youve carrie dout a scandinavian flick.

But that doesnt require LFB.

of course i dont know what im talking about at all, but thinking logically, thats how it looks to me.

how does LFB unbalance the car? (other than having you accidently jump on it because you think its the clutch)

This thread reminds me why I very rarely drive now. The roads arent a playground and you're not tommi makinen.

Surf-Mat wasn't talking about any of this LFB though.

He was talking about using his left foot to activate the brakes enough to cause the lights to come on.

That has nowt to do with driving technique or the IAM, it has all to do with [i]moderated[/i]

The roads arent a playground and you're not tommi makinen.

Exactly though of course Smurf Matt is a more more AWESOME driver than Makinen

deleted as I completely got my wires crossed and spouted a load of cak. Trying to work & stick stuff on here.....