Block changing

Another little discussed topic is one of block changing.

When my father taught me to drive in nineteen-eighty-something, he was very clear in telling me to sequentially change down through each gear while decelerating. His rationale was to be in the appropriate gear for my speed at any point in time. My driving instructor didn’t disagree.

Things have moved on since then and the mantra behind the IPSGA system of car control is to, where practical, do one thing at a time. Ignoring the I (as information is constantly gathered), we look to break the changes we need to make to speed and direction into distinct phases – i.e. do one thing at a time, do it well:

• Change position
• Change speed
• Change gear
• Change speed (really, the reapplication of power to the driven wheels to maximise control while negotiating the hazard)

So when we’re slowing, it’s all about the SG: we brake (ideally in a straight-line) from whatever speed we were travelling to the safe speed to negotiate the hazard, then we change into an appropriate gear for the speed we are now travelling (still heeding part of my father’s guidance).

So, if the change in speed is great enough, this may warrant a block change, e.g. from fourth to second. Note we are not arbitrarily skipping gears, we are, to paraphrase the Advanced Driving Course Handbook, “changing to our chosen gear without using an intermediate gear”.

Conversely when we finish accelerating, say when joining a motorway, we may make a similar block change into our chosen gear for cruising: here during acceleration we may use 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, then once at our target speed, make a block change to 6^th.

Obviously, and like all facets of advanced driving, it’s situationally dependent and should be done as and when appropriate.

Whenever I drive a manual car, which isn’t often these days, this I find is the hardest part of Advanced Driving to put into practice. Practice makes perfect and without access to a manual car, I don’t get much practice.

As an aside, and follow-up to my last message, we are watching the news carefully around the infection rates of COVID-19 and will make a determination on the 13^th August regarding restarting our in-car operations.

Stay safe on an off the road,

David.