Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Off camber

An off camber corner is one that is banked outwards. Think of it as the opposite of a nicely banked NASCAR corner, where the banking helps improves your cornering ability.

Off camber corners in the snow are a great way to meet a curb. If you try to take an off camber corner in the snow at the same speed you'd take a normal corner, there's a good chance that you're going to slide out. There are people in my neighborhood who have trouble with this concept.

A lot (maybe even most) roundabouts are off-camber for drainage reasons (so water doesn't pool up in the middle). If there's as little as an inch of new snow in my neighborhood, I can be almost guaranteed that there will be tire tracks up and over the curbs on the outside of our roundabout. I figured that eventually trial and error would educate all of the drivers in my neighborhood, but after several years people are still nailing the curb. I suppose it doesn't much matter if you're in a truck, but you're likely to damage a rim (or worse) in a car. Regardless, it makes me chuckle every time. The tracks I find the most amusing are the ones that go all the way to the curb and then abruptly stop.

1 comment:

  1. Nice! I've done it around a skid pad on snow, but never that well. Maybe I'll do out and do that at lunch and see what the neighbors think.

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