DailyDirt: Drifting Around In A Car For Fun
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
April Fool’s day is fun for some people — and annoying for others. John Oliver thinks pranks are terrible, and he’s gotten some people to make a no-pranks pledge. But for folks who like to waste time and smirk at the discomfort at others, here are a couple videos to watch featuring cars and some crazy driving.
- Driving instructors probably have more than their share of scary moments in a car, so why not prank them on their first day on the job? Professional driver Leona Chin pretended to be an incompetent driver for a bit, then pulled into a closed parking lot and took the car for a real spin. [url]
- Here’s another prank — get some guys to go on a blind date, but don’t tell them that their date is a professional driver before she starts driving like a maniac. BTW, this prank is supposed to sell more Ford Mustangs, too. [url]
- Drifting seems like the cool thing for drivers to do nowadays, so there’s also an autonomous car that can drift. The robot car cheats a little bit because it needs wet pavement, but do you really want an autonomous car that can drift on any road at any time? Imagine the reactions if cars had an autonomous insane mode for drifting…. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: april fool, autonomous cars, drifting, leona chin, mustang, pranks
Companies: ford
Comments on “DailyDirt: Drifting Around In A Car For Fun”
Autonomous Drifting
“… do you really want an autonomous car that can drift on any road at any time?”
Yes, actually. Mind you, I really wouldn’t want it to do so while toting me around.
That said, if the car were to loose traction for whatever reason, I would expect said autonomous vehicle to recognize what was happening and handle the situation as well as possible. If drifting was beyond it’s capabilities, then it should only be in control of a vehicles that go no more than 5mph, limited to private property, and only operates under strict human supervision. 😛
Re: Autonomous Drifting
Yes, ‘sensor panic’ (that’s when something happens, and the various car sensors start feeding data that the cars computers can’t make sense of, so they panic) is a massive concern. I’ve a friend whose trailblazer rolled 5 times because of it when a tire blew out on the interstate – luckily they made it through uninjured, but it seems like the blowout started a “panic” with the ESC/ABS/Traction control systems, caused the roll. I’ve been through several blowouts myself, at much higher and slippery conditions and never had an issue keeping control.
Now, I say this as a robotics engineer (which I trained to be, because I started the “pirate” stuff) but I almost always disable any electronic aids as best I can, be it ABS, ESC, traction control, or whatever other gizmo. It’s bad, but I can’t stand them (might be my racing driver past though, I used to rally and did some track racing until a few accidents combined led to a rethink – smashing your knee to pieces will do that)
“I had fun once. It was terrible.”
– Quote from your average person who hates April Fools online.
Re: Re:
Marvin?
Is that you?
Too Bad It is Staged
Its too bad the Ford commercial was staged. Not 100% staged, but they were definitely actors. They were probably told they were doing a dating tv show. So when she started with the gonzo driving they quickly figured out that it was all part of the show and were able to keep their cool and go with it. Unlike the malaysian auntie in the other video who totally lost her shit, she was great.
I remember when “drifting” used to be called “skidding” and it was something that people did by accident, rather than on purpose.
NPR ran a fake radio story yesterday morning about self-driving cars exhibiting road rage. Can’t seem to find it online though…
Random thoughts
To Rekrul: no, drifting was never called “skidding” — when drifting, only the rear wheels lose traction, the front wheels are still have full traction, when skidding all four wheels lose traction. I like drifting in a front-wheel drive car as a way of taking corners in snowy conditions ever so slightly faster than one could while keeping traction with all four tires. It’s fun, safe once you have the skill, and gets you to your destination a little faster.
To go with the NPR story about autonomous vehicles exhibiting road rage, the New Yorker has a great cartoon of two cabbies, one praising to the other the virtues of “self-honking cars” which really let you concentrate on driving.