You have to try this please, it takes 2 seconds.. I could not believe this! It is from an orthopedic surgeon.............. This will confuse your mind and you will keep trying over and over again to see if you can outsmart your foot, but, you can't. It is pre-programmed in your brain!

1. While sitting at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles...

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number '6' in the air with your right hand Your foot will change direction.

I told you so! And there's nothing you can do about it! You and I both know how stupid it is, but before the day is done you are going to try it again, if you've not already done so.

Send it to your friends to frustrate them too.


As a follow up to this, I once had the clutch rod on my Morgan +4 break during a race. A problem when we still drove our cars to race meetings.

I had driven the car with a broken clutch on a number of occasions quite successfully, but with the pedal operating as if still working. This time the pedal was no the floor, & I could not coordinate my changes & revs. I found a lump of bungy chord which I used to hold the pedal up, & behave as if working.

With my left foot now working as usual I had no trouble changing gears driving home, except for traffic lights. This must prove that it is your left foot that controls your actions, not your brain.

Hasbeen,

Clutchless changes on a crash box, now that takes me back many years!

In fact, in my youth my father insisted that I learn to do it "just in case".

I used to do clutchless changes in the 12/50 Alvis as a matter of course and once for real when a clutch finger (exposed clutch and separate gearbox) fell out of my 14/75 Alvis, no hope of finding it, but fortunately, I'd stopped on a slight slope and was able to start in top gear with a bit of help from the starter.

----

I tried the right foot thing, definitely works!!

Stalled a bit but I forced it. Easier the second time. Yes, I can do it.

Both feet or both hands are easy to change from same to opposite, like a diff. It's doing reverse gear in 4WD front-hand axle that damages your leg clutch..

Dear Hassie,

Thank You. It was fun and it did work.

Hasbeen,

Intuitive stuff like how to ride a bike is 'Systems 1' thinking and largely automatic. You can balance, steer and so on that took some time to learn. Operating the car controls, eg clutch and pedal, practised to Systems 1. When in control of the vehicle, Systems 2.

Riding a bike as in going somewhere requires thinking - deliberate attention, deliberate thinking and choices. That is Systems 2. Anyone who mounts a bike and the brain goes on automatic or say into rumination about the job or spouse's nagging, is likely to end up under a car.

Highly skilled and practised racing drivers can do more things intuitively but the vehicles are going one way and they are in fact highly attentive (Systems 2) to the choices they have to make and of course to the critical, risk, factors. Racing drivers are also 'in the flow', which requires deep concentration and can appear automatic, even to the driver, but it isn't. In fact they are doing far more thinking and exclude all else but the task at hand. 'Flow is a state of effortless concentration that is so deep that you lose sense of time, of yourself, and of the surroundings. You are completely immersed in the task. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the pioneer of the flow state, calls it “optimal experience.”'

I would say that the thing that concerns me most when driving is the difficulty of maintaining myself in the present. I do things like checks of rear vision mirrors, mentally talking myself through recognition of road hazards and noting differences in road surfaces and so on. Anything to be more mindful of what I am doing. Enjoying the drive, really experiencing it, helps.

leoj, part of the business of changing gear in a crash box is your coordination. Like the background programs in your computer, these are not something you are aware of, but is a skill developed until it is unconscious. You have one foot working the brake & accelerator, a hand in the gearstick, & the other foot working the clutch. Stop one working & the unconscious act requires conscious thought again. That conscious thought is no where near as efficient as the trained reflex.

After this occasion I bought a 1947 Hillman Minx, who's synchromesh had long since died, & drove it around for months, with my left foot in the parcel shelf, to train myself to change gear clutchless, without my left foot action.

I had a similar but different experience at Bathurst in the Formula 1 Brabham Repco. If trying hard, perhaps overtaking or lapping a car, I would use 4Th gear, [about 150 MPH at 9700 RPM] right across the top of the mountain. However, changing up to 5Th across there was only about a second slower, & in those days when 100 miles around Bathurst broke most F1s, gave the machinery a little rest.

The problem was coming up to Skyline, where I needed 3Rd gear. The movement of the gear stick was too small to be able to feel which gear it was in, & trying to look down would probably kill you. Ridiculously, after checking oil pressure, water & oil temperatures out of McPhillamy I could not remember which gear I had selected just a few seconds before, & with a helmet & ear plugs I could not hear the revs.

I had to check the rev counter, to see by the revs what gear I was in. It was only a few seconds since I had selected that gear, but those things become so unconscious, when your full concentration is required to balance the car on throttle, you have no memory of it.

Hasbeen,

As I said elsewhere, driving a car on the road (let alone racing!) requires far more concentration than flying a small plane, and having driven more or less sedately around Bathurst many times (I used to work at Karingal Village) and I can only imagine what it must have been like at speed.

I takes me hat off to you and your mates!

great hasbeen

Hi there HASBEEN ol' mate...

Well, that's all the confirmation I really needed, you've really pulled just too many negative 'G's' both while racing, and in Navy Fighter Aircraft? If my dear wife was to witness me struggling to lift may right foot off the ground, twirl it clockwise, while 'air writing' the number six....? I'd probably end up in the Psych. Ward of the Repat!

Speaking of Clutches. Did any of you ever have a Girlfriend Clutch. Remember when the Gear stick was Steering Wheel & in the old cars with Mechanical Clutches the link would get worn out & the Clutch wouldn't work. You put a leaver in connected to the Clutch housing near the Gear box, when you wanted to change Gears she pulled the leaver back, you changed gear, then she pushed it forward again. Scherimple Sherlock. Aaah! the good old days. ;-) Remember whennnn.......

Dear Hasbeen,

It took me a bit of practice, but after 6-7 tries I got it right: the right foot circling clockwise and the right hand doing the figure '6'.