Vincent L'Ecluse

After more than 7 years of legal age, I finally get my driving license. Exactly 10 days after my 25 th birthday. There could not be anyone happier than me. It is not that I have tried for 7 years to pass my driving license. It was just that when I indeed get the legal age to drive (i.e in 2001), this was no more into my primary objectives. But when I started to get interested into this project again (in 2004), after having passed the oral test, I did find some difficulties for the practical part. The first one was that driving courses are very expensive in Mauritius when you are just a student. There was no budget voted for this project yet. Then another problem came up: I am someone that always need to understand how something works and why we need to do any steps. So when it came to driving, this was no exception. Why to start on neutral, the change the gears and why the need to find the biting point etc etc.. As usual, did not find anyone to give me the required answers, so I did what I do the best: some RnD (Research and Deduction).

(warning : you need some basic notion of physics to fully understand this article completely)

The car engine

This is the important part of your car. You normally switch it on by turning the ignition key. From a basic principle, you need to be in neutral position in order to switch on the engine. why? When you are in the neutral position, your engine is disconnected from your wheels. This means that the motor is simply made to rotate without any resistance, in other words freely. What I have learned from my machine classes at the university is that some engine, once started can generate enough electrical energy to sustain this rotation, but in order to be able to drive a load more energy need to be injected. This is the reason why we apply the accelerator, to inject more fuel into the system and therefore to create more energy.

The biting point

The biting point is the state in which a car is just about to move. This is achieve by finding the perfect equilibrium between the clutch and the accelerator. What really happen is that when the clutch pedal is raised, the engine is connected to the wheels transmission system. The accelerator shall be apply in order to give some energy to the system. Just remember what was said above, we must give enough energy in order to maintain the engine switched on. The amount of energy shall be such that It must not be too low, so that not to turn off the engine, neither too much so to overcome the rest position. Just think that we need an amount of force to move the car, and here we are just searching the least amount of energy for it just to move.

The gears stuff

This one really fascinated me since a kid. My father as well as his 3 brothers have the abilities to drives since I was a little kid. So when I used to travel with them, I was always thinking why are they changing those gears. Through out the years, I had some friends and cousins that tried to answer this question, but was never satisfied with the answers. The answer came from a university lecturer, who asked this question. Since no one had the answer, he simply answered that this was to protect the car’s engine, nothing more nothing less.  It was all a question of torque couple with inertia (somehow my physic classes have served for the understanding of this concept). When a car is stationary, it required a large amount of energy to move it from rest. This mean that the engine should work harder in order to overcome this inertia. Once the engine has achieved this changed in velocity, this hard work is no more required. So there should be a way to take out the stress on the motor. This is why we change the gears in order to give less works to it. Once a car is running at a constant speed, it take less energy to maintain this state. Just remember that we need force to change a velocity, but it is not required to maintain a constant velocity. This can help for the understanding, I got it from another website

• 1ST GEAR: Think of this gear as. “When I first move”. The engine has to work hard to move the car, you and your passengers from a stationary position
• 2ND GEAR: OK, 1ST gear got you going, so does the engine need to work quite so hard now that it’s got you moving? That’s 2ND gear
• 3RD GEAR: As your speed increases and the car picks up even more momentum, the car doesn’t need to work quite so hard as it did in 2ND gear. That’s 3RD gear
• 4TH GEAR: Now you’ve got your speed up to a suitable level, let’s say 30mph. Your engine doesn’t need to work quite so hard to maintain this chosen speed. That’s 4TH gear
• 5TH GEAR: This one causes confusion. Some engines run happily in 5TH gear at 30mph, others struggle
• 5TH gear is best used when you have a constant speed that your engine is happy with

Turn Signals

This are the signals that shall be given when turning to the right or the left. This one is a little easier to understand. But proper mastering of it is a must. The first question that shall come into your mind is why to give signal? This is simply because you are not alone on the road. There must be a way to communicate with the other drivers on the road. As long as we are going straight, there is no problem, but when we are turning, we surely need to reduce the speed. Things get complicated when some drivers need to do the same thing. Just said that 2 cars need to overtake a car. Doing it at the same time is risky, since each one need to step a little bit to the right, and accelerate in order to overtake the car in the front. By giving the signal , each driver can see that their intention is to overtake a car and they can now anticipate with this information in mind. The more information we have before performing a manoeuvre, the best it is. So everytime you are turning or overtaking, do not forget to use your turn signals.

That’s all for today. I hope that this pieces of information was helpful.