Car Driving: How to Drive Safe on Steep Slops

When I was a small kid, I could not understand why the drivers of cars, buses and trucks used to put stones as stoppers when the vehicles failed or stopped on gradients- upward-slops and downward- slopes. I slowly understood the reasons for this when I learnt driving myself.

All of us know how difficult is to drive away a stationery car on an upward-slop. It is so because for the simple reason that a stationery car is usually put in a gear and handbrakes applied. Now for driving away, you have to bring it back to neutral gear, press the clutch paddle and drive away. We usually follow this procedure.

Let me list it out stage wise:

Conditions: a car stopped on a steep upward-slop and is in the reverse gear and handbrakes fully applied.

Most of us usually drive away a car from such position as follows:

1. Press brake-pedal
2. Release hand-brake (keeping brakes applied)
3. Press clutch-pedal (keeping brakes applied)
4. Apply neutral gear (keeping brakes applied)
5. Start the engine (keeping brakes applied)
6. Apply 1^st gear (keeping brakes applied)
7. Do 3-actions simultaneously: release brake-pedal… press accelerator… release clutch-pedal…

Result: The car will first rollback a bit and then will move forward. This rolling-back of the car is an error in driving. For correcting this error, we may change our action at the 7^th stage. Let us revise the above stages with corrected 7^th stage.

We should drive away a car from this position in the corrected way as follows:

1. Press brake-pedal
2. Release hand-brake (keeping brakes applied)
3. Press clutch-pedal (keeping brakes applied)
4. Apply neutral gear (keeping brakes applied)
5. Start the engine (keeping brakes applied)
6. Apply 1^st gear (keeping brakes applied)
7. Do 2 actions together: release brake-pedal and release clutch-lever… take both these actions simultaneously, successively and slowly… in order to let the engine drive away the vehicle with the default throttle of the fuel and ignition setting.
   Continue this action until the vehicle comes in motion from the stationary position.
   Now go to the 8^th step.
8. shift your foot from the brake to the accelerator
9. remove your foot from the clutch
10. press the accelerator and drive away as usual

Result: By following the corrected way, the cars will not rollback, before moving forward, when attempted to drive away from stationary position on an up-gradient road.

This is the way a perfect driver drives in adverse conditions.

• Written by Harish Jharia.
• In category Automotive.
• 15 years ago.

Hot Hits: 6462

Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.