Drag & Drop Website BuilderCoasting is one of those words many learner drivers will have encountered, but often don't fully understand. So in this article we'll look at exactly what coasting is, and what the benefits are of avoiding it.
The definition I like to use for coasting is that it is when you are driving with the engine disconnected from the driving wheels unnecessarily. That explanation may not make a lot of sense as it is pretty terse, so let's break it down a little bit further.
What connects the engine to the driving wheels of the car? Or perhaps it is better to ask, how do we disconnect the engine from the driving wheels of the car? There are two ways of doing this; fully depressing the clutch, or putting the car into neutral. Doing either of these means that pressing the gas pedal speeds the engine up, but has no effect on the road speed of the car as there is no link between engine and road.
So what do we gain from having the engine connected to the driving wheels while we are slowing down? There are three advantages to having that connection from engine to wheels.
Firstly, while slowing down the engine is helping to bring your speed down. Lifting off the gas means that the engine is receiving no fuel and wants to slow right down, but the motion of the car is turning the engine much faster. There is mechanical resistance to this that effectively acts as a brake helping to slow you down, and this is sometimes referred to as engine braking. This increases your control over the car as you slow.
Secondly, you are receiving information about whether the car is happy in the selected gear. If you slow down with the clutch up, you will hear when you are close to stalling, telling you that the your gear is no longer suitable for your road speed. To understand why this can be important, imagine you are slowing down to allow an oncoming vehicle through a narrow space. As you start to slow you put the clutch down, and once the car passes you bring the clutch back up to pick up speed again. How do you know if the selected gear is correct? You could work it out by checking your speed, but it is easier to monitor the sound of the engine to understand what is needed, which requires leaving the clutch up as long as possible.
Thirdly, with the clutch up, you can more easily and smoothly switch from slowing to going if the road situation changes. Going back to the example above, if the oncoming car passes you before you need to change gear, you just get back onto the gas to move through the narrow space.
So what leads many learners (and actually many experienced drivers as well) to put the clutch down early when slowing down? there are a variety of reasons why it happens, and often a number of these will be at play.
Sometimes the brain is subconsciously trying to simplify things. Putting the clutch down early is its attempt to reduce your mental workload, giving you one less thing to worry about as you reach complex road situations. In fact, because you are losing an element of control and information, it often makes things more complex and increases workload, and can end up placing you into higher risk situations.
It can be driven by a fear of stalling. Most learner drivers hate stalling, and your brain quickly learns that putting the clutch down removes the risk, temporarily at least. Often all that really happens is you move the risk of stalling from while you are slowing down to when you need to move forward again, while at the same time losing that element of control and information.
Often there is quite a degree of misunderstanding about what effect the clutch has on the speed of the car. Many learners have told me that they think putting the clutch down slows them down. More often than not it doesn't, it has the opposite effect and you will have better control by keeping the clutch up as long as possible (there is a limited set of circumstances where there can be an advantage to putting the clutch down early, which will be looked at in another article, but in the early stages of driving, waiting until you are close to stalling is the best approach).
To maximise your control over the car, the best approach is to get used to constantly monitoring the sound of the engine until it becomes second nature. Every time you start to slow down, tell yourself to listen, and wait until you hear a slight struggle and grumble from the engine before putting the clutch down. It takes time and practice for most people. To begin with your brain is struggling to do several things at once, but as you practice and improve, your brain does more stuff automatically, freeing up mental capacity to deal with other things.
If you can do this it can have quite an effect on other areas of driving. Coasting while slowing down can often lead to approach speed problems at junctions, clearance problems with parked vehicles and issues with stalling once you can move away amongst other things. Tweaking how you are controlling the car when you slow can have big knock on improvements throughout your driving.
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