tasdrouille -
Quote:
Originally Posted by tasdrouille
It is often argued that out of gear coasting, be it in neutral or with the engine off, is dangerous, and even illegal in some places.
Why is that exactly? I have a hard time figuring that out.
The main argument I heard is that you are SOL if sudden acceleration is needed as an evasive maneuver. When exactly do you need to "accelerate suddenly as an evasive maneuver"? You might need to getting out of a driveway crossing oncoming traffic, but that's not quite a situation where you would be coasting. I tried to ask myself this question in a coasting situation, and I wasn't able to find any.
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Here's my take. In the not so long-ago past, cars had lousy brakes. Trucks going downhill could become runaways without in-gear engine braking. Sooooo, laws requiring cars to always be in gear made sense. Cars of today are better, and almost all have power steering/brakes as standard. From my POV, the answer always depends on these three things :
Power Steering : If you have a light car like my Saturn, which was offered without power steering in it's base configuration, then a power steering delete can negate that issue.
Power Brakes : As we have seen in other threads, you can augment your power brakes with additional home made or aftermarket vacuum canisters.
Driving Context : This is the biggest issue, IMO. If you live in a rural area, you can use EOffC much more because traffic density is so much lower. If you live in urban areas, EOffC opportunities are few and far between. In a manual transmission, I do think you can get away with EOnC, because you have to physically downshift to initiate emergency acceleration anyway.
CarloSW2