Those people are my paycheck and the same ones who complain about their lack of brake longevity, rotor warp, bulb life, and fuel mileage. I decided to try it today. Furthermore, given my steering wheel and seat position trying to use my left foot has the top of my thigh brushing if not bumping the steering wheel. I just think that the whole idea is loopy.
But I went 20 years doing nothing but a clutch and had no left foot for the brake. So I suppose right foot is just natural to me. Asking my left to do it feels sort of like eating with the wrong hand. I believe left foot braking is bad because people in a panic situation may press their feet to the floor. If one foot is on the gas you can see the problem.
Err on the safe side. If you brake with your right foot it will be impossible to push on the accelerator, period. With all due respect I disagree. And while there hasn't been a ton of research in this area — most is decades old — data suggests it happens disturbingly often.
Schmidt originally came to the idea through his broader ergonomics research in the 80s, finding that when people repeatedly try to execute a simple movement over time say, touching a stylus to a target on a screen , their force and accuracy varies by a surprising amount.
He says those deviations are because of underlying neuromuscular variability and compares them to the slight randomness in movement that makes a top basketball free-throw shooter occasionally miss a shot. Meanwhile, in the '80s, Virginia Tech engineering professor Walter Wierwille conducted the only experiments to date specifically on pedal error, filming participants in driving simulators.
They were small-scale trials, but he was surprised to find that an average driver touched the wrong pedal surprisingly often. Less serious errors — such as a driver briefly tapping the wrong pedal or accidentally pressing down on both pedals — happened much more often than someone stamping hard on the gas went they meant to brake.
But when someone does hit the gas instead of the brake, psychologists such as Schmidt believe our instincts can fail us, exacerbating the problem. In a New York Times op-ed , he described a hypothetical case:. Surprised that the car moved so much, he would try pressing harder.
Of course, if his right foot was actually on the accelerator, the throttle would open and the car would move faster. This would then lead the driver to press the "brake" harder still, and to bring about even more acceleration.
Eventually, the car would be at full throttle, until it crashed. Admittedly, we don't have great data on how often this actually occurs. But Schmidt's analysis of decades' worth of North Carolina car crash data found more than 3, cases of it. And most happened during normal, unhurried conditions in which the driver simply touched the wrong pedal and kept pressing it harder, thinking it was the brake.
Other research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests that older and shorter drivers are most likely to be involved in pedal error crashes, the latter because they have to reach farther for the pedals in the first place. The frequency of pedal error is a very controversial topic, in part because it blames drivers for unintentional acceleration, rather than manufacturer defects.
But whether or not it causes more crashes than defective electronic systems and sticky gas pedals, it certainly happens in at least some cases — and we might have a solution. The principle of maintaining momentum, even drifting the kart through certain corners is essential to achieve faster lap times. Left foot braking makes that possible. It seems to me that the transfer of that technique to larger racing cars would also be a good thing.
But, just in karts, doing so is hard on the brake pads and fuel consumption too. I tried to find out for myself that using left foot braking helps not to reduce the turbo boost by not letting go of the throttle when braking. And felt that the turbo lag is iliminated but, it needs a lot of practice to master the technique.
I left foot brake when I go pick up milk. But I also right foot brake. In the pro challenge car I have which features a bike engine and sequential gearbox, I left foot brake, but you are right you have to learn to completely come off the throttle for it to be effective. Thinking with that mindset has helped me with my left-foot braking and trail-braking. I read a piece on the advantages of left-foot braking around 60 years ago and, since I drove an automatic transmission, I decided to give it a try.
It took a while for it to be a natural reaction to go for the brake with my left foot, but once I became proficient with the technique I have never looked back. Of course, it can be such a thing, but when properly done, I suggest there is no safer, more comfortable way to operate the vehicle with two pedals and my brake parts last longer than most. With all this in mind, I would suggest caution with regard to experienced drivers attempting to make the conversion to the left foot.
I do, however, advocate teaching the technique to beginning drivers who will likely drive nothing but automatics in their lives. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. I brake almost exclusively with my left foot -- a highly controversial practice -- and specifically because of that, no squirrel was squished.
Left-foot braking has long been one of the most hotly contested topics in driving. Detractors claim it makes no difference at best, and is a horrible and dangerous practice at worst. However, you can stop 70ft faster in an emergency situation if you use your left foot properly more on that number in a second.
That's a potentially life-saving difference. I've said so before , and I'm saying it again: if you are in a new car, with an automatic transmission, then you need to brake with your left foot.
When you drive, you rely on muscle memory to operate your pedals. It's an incredible thing, really, that your body reflexively knows to lift up, move over, and press down with your right foot, all without conscious thought. That's actually part of the problem, though, as studies have shown time and again.
Pedal location isn't standardized, so when you get into a car other than your own, the foreign pedal placement becomes a problem when your foot moves to its pre-programmed position. But even if you never drive any other car but your own, there's still a significant margin of error when you lift your right foot up and move it over to the brake.
The NHTSA had a great look at Pedal Application Errors , which included this beautiful nugget: "The farther the foot is from the intended pedal when the driver initiates a movement toward it, the larger the variable errors will be in hitting the pedal due to the greater force. This is particularly relevant when the driver makes a hurried braking response. Translation: when you're stressed, your control over moving your foot is inconsistent. It's therefore a scientifically supported notion that when you've got your left foot covering one pedal, and the right foot covering the other, pushing your left foot straight ahead onto the brake reduces the capacity for error.
I want to be clear here: the No. But even with zero distractions and a quart of coffee pumping through your veins, using your left foot to brake will save you valuable time and thus distance in an emergency.
A brilliant study from the University of Iowa establishes total driver reaction time as 2. That means that the act of moving your foot over to the left, then pushing down on the brake pedal, requires an additional 1. That's huge.
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