Driving uphill
Aim: To understand the effect that uphill gradients have on the car when pulling away and general driving and how we change our control inputs.
Even a slight uphill gradient on a road can alter the control inputs required to move the car. A gradient can be a slight, barely noticeable slope or even a very steep incline.
We’ll find a quiet road with a slight uphill slope and practise pulling away changing gear and stopping.
When pulling away uphill, we’ll need to use a little more gas to get moving, the steeper the slope, the more gas we’ll need.
When we change gear uphill, we may need to leave it in a lower gear for longer to build more speed first as we’ll lose a little momentum in between when changing gear.
In addition to pulling away uphill and general driving, we’ll also look at driving very slowly and clutch control on the same slope. We’ll also try revering when facing uphill and also look at emerging at uphill junctions.
Tip: If we look ahead when driving and see that the road is becoming a uphill slope, the speed of the car will decrease. We can anticipate this and prepare to add gas and change down a gear if needed to maintain our speed