how to drive to maximize your passengers comfort

It’s all about braking.

The first thing we are taught when we learn how to drive is how to brake, then, how to accelerate. What if I told you that 90% of your driving can be done without ever touching the brakes?

Braking (hard) is a form of discontinuity. For passengers, it can be one of the most uncomfortable things to experience. They jolt forward, often unexpectedly, and are more prone to getting carsick. If you want to be the most loved driver in your friend group, you should learn how to drive without slamming the breaks.

It’s silly, but I’ve been preparing my whole life for how to do this. Growing up, my bike’s brakes always made a terrible sound every time I hit them, so I reinforcement learned how not to every touch them. It is pretty simple to do this in cars, but just takes practice.

Also, if you are about to crash into something or run a red light, please use your breaks. This advice is not meant to be used all the time.

  1. Abuse regenerative braking like it’s nobodies business.
    1. I don’t even care about the power you get back from using regen, but I love that it provides a very smooth, continuous slowdown (especially if you are using a heavier car, like a VW ID4). On the Tesla, the regen brake is actually so good that taking your foot fully off the pedal will be jerky, so make sure to apply it slowly.
  2. Start slowing down wayy before the streetlight or stoplight (using regen, or just a soft brake).
    1. This prevents a hard stop!
  3. Use topography to your advantage.
    1. If you’re moving on hilly, curvy roads, use the acceleration on the uphill to get just enough speed that you can fly on the downhill without speeding too much and without touching your brakes. This is really fun and also really good for your brake health!
    2. If you are using this on a curvy road, apply acceleration in the first 1/4 of the curve and then use that for the rest of the turn. Obviously this doesn’t apply in traffic.
      1. There is more fancy math to explain exactly when to accelerate in a turn, which I probably couldn’t explain. TLDR is to do it at the beginning, into the steepest part of the turn.