There are many and varied driving skills one can pick up. There’s the ability to nail a park first time, the ability to rescue a slide, or the ability to actually get in the right lane well before your highway exit comes up. My question is this—what weird driving skill have you picked up?
I consider myself a capable driver, but far from an exceptional one. I’ve got a few track days under my belt, and I’ve learned how to keep a car out of the wall on a mountain pass. I can even drive a manual! But as far as special skills go, though, there’s one in particular I learned back in my hometown.
I used to live just off a main road, signposted at 60 km/h (~37 mph). That road featured a roundabout, ostensibly an obstacle that required one to slow down and steer around it. However, us locals knew that with a deft hand on the wheel, you could holeshot this thing without touching the brakes.
Was it a useful skill? No. Did it scare passengers when you unexpectedly whipped straight through the empty roundabout? Yes. Was it safe? Actually, yeah, it was pretty much a straight shot. Obviously, not something to be performed with traffic around, but if the road was clear? You could make it through, no problem.
This is largely a useless skill. It didn’t teach me a superhuman level of car control, nor did it translate into quick laptimes when I headed to the track. It was just a fun thing us locals took pride in. That was our roundabout and we knew how to nail it.
Friends of mine had their own abilities. I knew a guy called Pitchwizard who made his money stacking shelves in his younger years. When he’d check out of the mall carpark late after hours, he had plenty of space to master the 180-degree handbrake turn in his dope Honda Civic.
I was so impressed when I rode passenger that I later picked up the talent myself in my MX-5. As someone who grew up in the Australian culture, more often obsessed with the more basic entertainment of mere burnouts, the oft-maligned handbrake turn was a more delectable artform to my youthful tastes.
Since this is Autopian Asks, I’ll now yield the floor to you. What special unique skill have you picked up behind the wheel? You get bonus points if it’s only applicable to you, your friends, or some incredibly specific geographical location. Go!
Image credits: PhotoPum RanaRoja via Unsplash License, Google Images, Lewin Day
I learned heel and toe shifting to keep an 85 Prelude that ran on 3 cylinders with massive vacuum leaks from stalling, both at lights and in slower traffic. When I had nicer cars that translated to performance at least. In that car… survival.
I’m able to upshift and downshift without using the clutch and without shredding the synchros…
I spent the early 2000s trying to be a pro drifter, but the useless skill I also developed around the same time was skipping gears for MPG. my 04 350z consistently got 27 mpg just from 1-2-4-6 shifting. I do it with my current car, but it doesn’t make much of a difference.
Backing the BRZ into a 2-car garage that was originally built to be a one-carriage carriage house.
Used to work as a tug driver at FedEx and got very good at backing with multiple freight container trailers behind me.
Now back the BRZ in after the wife has parked and get right up to the wall with my rearview between wall studs.
Born and raised in floriduh. I have an instinct for telling when any two people are about to wreck/become a road rage statistic.
Spending a significant portion of my youth living on a farm and mucking about driving all sorts of machinery provided me with the opportunity to develop my weird skill – shifting gears without needing to use the clutch. Trucks, tractors, semi’s, the forklift, dad’s ute, and even mum’s car. No vehicle was safe from me showing off to my brothers.
No doubt this equally useless and impressive skill was learned through necessity due to the fact that farm machinery rarely gets the maintenance it really needs once it’s reached a certain age. When the old ute needs a clutch, it doesn’t get one, the owner gets a new truck and the farm hand gets his now downgraded ute. Good times
I’ve got Colorado Native winter driving skills. Honed from living in the mountains, at ski resorts, and doing the I70 corridor commute in the worst of snowstorms and carnage often. I just don’t get stuck unless I’m in something that shouldn’t be in the snow and even then, we will get it where it needs to go if we need to.
I also spend a lot of seat time in sim racing, and that translates very directly to on road skill and composure.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/16rhqwh/oc_finally_got_one_heading_west_in_colorado_on/
That was me driving into the mountains for some fine leafing in the fall.
Oh crap! Weird! I used to be able to break up weed and roll a joint on my lap while driving and using the visor mirror to view the tray on said lap. I have great depth perception for front bumpers with no spotter, had some people stop in their tracks watching me pull into or out of parking spots thinking I was going to clip a bumper.
Did we grow up together and attend the same high school?
Those were the days.
Now rolling one on a chairlift was a bit of a challenge at times though. YMMV?
I’m pretty good at applying pinstripes to the side of my car utilizing brambles along a favorite fire road.
Still haven’t quite mastered getting each side to match, though.
Flooring a car in reverse, straight or to back out of a parking spot, flick to neutral while stopping progress, and then putting it into drive for a smooth exit. Also, four wheel drifts in snow to turn in intersections at speed, or just in general. Oh, and driving with my knees. Misspent youth delivering pizzas will teach you limits of an econobox.
Driving with my knees. I need both hands to open my beer and roll a doobie.
Is hypermiling a driving skill that would be considered weird?
probably by anyone that doesn’t get it!
Well I’ve gotten quite good at it and can usually beat the EPA fuel economy numbers… sometimes by a wide margin.
In my view, demonstrating that you can go fast is nothing special with overpowered modern vehicles.
Knowing how to drive them efficiently takes a lot more skill.
I think hypermiling without working it into conversations would be the real skill.
I have developed a highly tuned – ass accelerometer – I can feel the slightest change in yaw angle and force. this comes in handy during winter driving, and detecting hydroplaning.
Same, even when driving in a straight line I can just feel a “disturbance in the force” if I hit water or ice
I knew a guy who could smoke a bong while driving a manual.
I grew up doing this, but it’s even more fun with a burned out clutch.
I’ve thrown wheel chains on an old truck I have that has a 5×4 twin stick transmission. ’77 GMC 7500 tandem. It goes really slow and really fast…
I had to think about this for a bit. The most unusual is the ability to use manual ABS. As a cellist who is familiar with vibrato I have applied this technique to pressure on the brake pedal. I had a stripper car from ~2000 that had no ABS. Driving with a professional co-worker to a field assignment we encountered what many would describe as black ice (I don’t, it is just ice to me). I applied this technique to stop the car and spent the next 10 minutes explaining to him that it was me and not the ABS pumping the brakes. It works. I actually used this today. I also have a sixth sense. 55 years of driving over 2 million km with only one very minor claimable accident (45 years ago) and no write-offs. TBF the accident was after only 3 hours of sleep in light rain and it wasn’t technically my fault. Handbrake assist in snowy turns – check. I have never been so far off the road that I could not get myself back out and on my way again. Use of “poor man’s Positraction” (handbrake again on RWD) – check. Also 6 or so high performance driving schools and some formal racing without an off. Skid recovery – I have only had the ESC engage once ever – AFTER I had already corrected the skid. I prefer to switch off the TC/ESC if the car will let me.
Fun fact: ABS, TC, and ESC are useless if all four wheels are sliding. Dumping the clutch usually has a magic stabilizing effect (shift to neutral in an AT).
As a fellow cellist, that’s not how vibrato works. At all. Aggressively stomping a pedal has absolutely nothing to do with delicately rolling your finger.
As a driving enthusiast, no, pumping the brakes is not the best way to stop. That’s why you will never see a racecar driver pumping the brakes. You will see them carefully feathering the brakes and riding the limit of traction. Because that is a significantly better way to stop than pumping the brakes.
…I’m guessing you’ve never had to stop on a slick, ice or snow-covered surface. No one here is talking about pumping the brakes on a freaking racetrack.
I’m not sure anyone here understands how ABS works, given the amount of smileys the people who think they’re mimicking ABS are getting.
Hey that’s super cool! Drummer here. My right foot is pretty fast. I’ve owned quite a few vehicles without ABS, and I can do a pretty good job of manual ABS. It worked pretty well for me, but now all my cars do have ABS and TC and all that stuff, and at the end of the day, the computers are better than I could ever be.
I’ve gotten pretty good at drifting my F250 diesel and whipping it around corners faster than a vehicle that size should go. I live in CO and I always try to use the 4×4 as little as possible unless there is a lot of traffic around. It’s really long, has a ton of torque, and has a limited slip so it’s actually really easy to control in a drift.
I’ve also been driving it as long as I’ve had my license (coming up on 14 years), so it’s pretty much second nature to drive. In fact, when I got my license it was the first vehicle I drove around regularly. Couple that with bi-weekly trips up to Winter Park (over Berthoud Pass) and I got pretty good at driving it up mountain roads. I think it still scares my wife sometimes.
Developed the spidey sense about drivers about to do stupid things back in the early 80s when I started riding motorcycles.
Prior to that, we moved out from the burbs to a farm when I was 15 and learned how to drive a Ford 8N wheeled tractor and an IH TD-9 crawler tractor.
Recently? How to anticipate when the light is about to turn green so I can wake up the auto stop-start engine in time to not cause a delay.
I think in most countries in Europe have the lights give a sign that it’s about to be green. But your skill comes in really handy where there are different lights.
I can back up any trailer and nail where I want it first time every time.
I have no idea why I have this skill, I don’t drive semis and rarely trailer anything.
Shorter trailers are harder…..the longer they are…the easier they are to back up.
I’m pretty good at backing trailers as well…but the last one I had to do was a U-Haul car dolly. JFC it was impossible!
I can find reverse in a vintage manual VW.
I was good at heel-toe downshifting in my old bugeye WRX thanks to a couple of traffic circles on my daily commute. 184k miles on the original OEM clutch.
First car was a 68 Beetle…..I loved doing heel and toe in it.
First car was a Type III. I was at a bit of a loss the first time I drove a Toyota.
I got really good at using the automotive telepathic device, the ATD.
Listen, hear me out. It’s weird.
My car has this sticky-thing on the steering column. And I found if I bap it just so, there’s this clicky noise in the cabin, a soothing rhythmic noise. Somehow, I’m not sure, other drivers can hear it?
So I found if I bap the ATD before I change lanes, other drivers tend to give me more room than when I don’t. I’ve calculated enough stats to be 70% certain it’s the stick.
I’ve seen those sticks and actually use them despite owning BMWs. However, in some cities you have to do it just right, giving only one to three clickies just before you go over the lane divider – otherwise nearby drivers race up to see if there’s more than one pretty flashing light on your car.
I’ll probably never use this again, but back in high school my parent’s had a ’59 beetle that I learned to drive in.
In Charleston SC there is one tight right turn down town (East Bay onto Broad), that requires you to slow way down. No biggie, except that braking and down shifting at the same time I had to take my foot of the gas, and when the temperature was mid-20’s or below the engine could stall. The trick was to pull the choke in and out which not only gives a richer mixture, but also gives a quick squirt of gas into the carb.
So the while my feet were busy with the clutch and brake, left hand works the turn signal and then steers while right hand shifted from third to second and then pulled the choke in and out and then went back on the wheel to finish the turn. At the age of 16 I was pleased to figure this out for myself.
Naturally, if there was a red light or I had to wait for pedestrians I did it the easy way and just came to a full stop and shifted into first. Boring.
Automatic chokes adjust the mixture for you, but there’s no way to trick them into briefly serving as a hand-operated accelerator. And now fuel injection makes this a truly pointless skill.
I’ve gotten quite skilled at removing my mirror from my car simply by backing out of my garage
Driving RWD in the snow (say 4-6″).
Once made a 37-mile trip through neighborhood streets, surface roads, and multiple freeways and ramps – with moderate traffic – without ever having to brake or stop. It was like parkour.
My second car was an ’85 Caprice…throw 140# of sand in the trunk and the fucker was unstoppable. I have fold memories of me plowing through 9″ of snow, waving to my neighbors struggling with their FWDs.
Of course, I had to stop several times to clean off the windshield using a handful of snow since the wipers were frozen in their hidey hole and the washer pump didn’t work. But I’d still end up re-passing people on the way in to work.
Later on, the electric choke took a shit. It was a struggle to start, then it would idle at some ungodly speed for 20+ minutes. Once I got stuck in a long line of creeping traffic on a 2-lane snowy road, squeezing the hell out of the brakes to keep it from taking off, rear wheels spinning back and forth the whole time. I should have just replaced the choke, but ended up eventually sending the entire carb out for a rebuild. That was a long winter.