“Fading” is, IIRC, the term used to describe a driving [car, not golf] behavior where, just prior to making a corner, the driver swerves a bit in the opposite direction.
I’m not aware of ever doing this myself, and the majority of the drivers I find myself following don’t do it when they turn, but every now and then I see somebody do this. I find myself wondering, “Why?” I figure that people either know that they’re doing this, in which case I wonder what benefit they see in doing it, or they’re doing it unconsciously, which makes me wonder what subconscious factors cause them to do it.
Any ideas/research about this? Is it some leftover from the days before power steering?
Never heard it called “fading” but most likely they are correcting their mistake of not being in the best position in their lane to “hit the apex” when making a turn. Reality is, that on a public street you should not be driving so aggressively that hitting the optimum apex point is a concern. But everyone thinks they are a race car driver.
See this image to see what I mean. I think what you are seeing are drivers moving over in their lane so they don’t wind up on the “oops” line.
Where I live it’s called a farmer turn. Farmers allegedly do it because they are used to pulling trailers or equipment. I’m pretty sure most of the people who do farmer turns have never pulled a trailer in their lives.
Pretty sure it’s some combination of laziness and impatience, in that drivers don’t want to experience high lateral acceleration, but don’t want to slow down enough to make a tight turn (which would then also necessitate additional forward acceleration after the turn is complete), so they swing wide to facilitate a larger turn radius.
The motives I listed are consistent with drivers’ left-turn behavior, in which - if you are waiting at the front of the left-most lane at a traffic light or stop sign - drivers turning left to come toward you will pass distressingly close to the left-front corner of your car. In fact, if you are still approaching that spot, drivers will actually cross the corner of your lane.
“Farmer turn” is a good description. I’ve never heard it called fading, and with in interest in things like old-school road racing, I think I would have encountered it.
For the most part, such a quirk is dangerous. It tends to startle other drivers, often swings into other traffic lanes and is completely-da-fuk unnecessary unless you ARE driving a big truck with manual steering. Every time I see someone in a modern car, especially a sports sedan or something else with good handling that could probably take a sharp turn at a fair speed, every time I see a car like that make an exaggerated farmer turn, I want to scream “Yes, you stupid asshole, we all see you!”
I think it is a holdover from the 1960’s/1970’s when cars were huge and heavy and some lacked good (or any) power steering. It made sense then to give yourself more room to make the turn.
If you learned to drive at that time, or your parents owned a Ford Galaxy and you learned from them, the behavior persisted in some, even though most cars these days can turn around in a phone booth (another 60’s reference - look it up, whippersnapper.)
‘Fading’, as I know it as it pertains to cars, means ‘brakes losing their effectiveness, possibly from overheating’.
I’ve always assumed that people don’t know the size of their cars. In the case of small cars, I suspect that the behavior may arise from turning into small parking spaces where it is sometimes necessary. Since people don’t pay much attention to where the corners of their cars are, they carry the behavior out into the street.
I drove a '68 Merc wagon for a decade and even with enough overhang to let econo cars park in the shade, I never had to throw it hard a-port to make a stabbord turn.
I think there’s something in what you say but it goes back further than '60s land yachts, to the postwar generations of big cars without power steering, and even more to trucks with “armstrong steering and manpower brakes.”
I park beside a post on the left, and the exit from the garage is a left turn. I usually swerve a little to the right as I pull forward so that the left fender doesn’t hit the post by moving to the left before it clears. Parking in a narrow, right-angled slot requires a similar motion to avoid clipping the inside fender. My wife fails to do this pulling a wheeled vacuum cleaner around a corner - she frequently pulls it around the corner so that the rear end cuts the corner, hitting it. Don’t see any purpose in doing it in a normal vehicle on the hightway.
I heard once about motorcycle racers who would do this; if they wanted to make a hard left turn, they’d turn slightly to the right and not lean into it, so that would cause them to topple slightly to the left. They’d then turn sharp left and already be leaning into the turn. No idea if this is true.
That’s a special case - going from travel in one direction to fitting into a narrow, perpendicular space or road. Getting lined up correctly is essential.
Even here in the northeast where the roads were laid out by town committees when Paul Revere wasn’t available, there are few roads that can’t take a normal turn (without any risk of swerving into oncoming traffic or hitting obstructions), and at reasonable speed. Most areas of the country, especially in newer builds, have very gentle and open turning radiuses.
What you’re describing is called countersteering, and it’s how pretty much every singletrack vehicle starts or ends a turn. Want the bike to turn left? Start by turning bars to right; bike falls to left, and when it’s at an appropriate lean angle, you turn the bars to the left to hold that turn. Want to go straight again? Turn bars farther to the left; wheels get steered back under the bike, and when it straightens up to vertical again, you bring the bars back to straight.
I’ve seen people doing this and at times, it’s a pain in the ass - for example where a lane splits off to feed a turn across the traffic to a junction on the other side of the road - a driver overtakes me into this lane, then swerves back into my lane before making the turn. From experience, I associate the behaviour with boy-racers and I assume they are attempting to emulate professional racers.
This. I see the same people doing this that I see driving hesitantly, slowing when approaching intersections, and other actions that suggest to me they are uncomfortable driving. They approach corners with the same trepidation and over-abundance of caution. Afraid they may climb the curb or hit something when cornering, they don’t even notice that they are creating an even more unsafe situation by “leaning away” from the corner.
Some of these folks look to be older and perhaps having impaired perceptions, some young and possibly inexperienced, which might account for it. Others though don’t appear to have either of those excuses, and must just be lousy drivers.
I’ve only done it in parking lot situations when I’ve had to make room for a passing car and then am too close to the cars on the right to make a clear turn into a space. Maybe I’ve done it occasionally when turning a sharp right onto an angle street (so, greater than a 90 degree turn) but only if it’s a situation where there are cars on both sides and it’s a narrow path.
“Fading” as described in the OP, within reason, is far more acceptable behavior than when someone is making a left turn onto a multilane road and slants in, coming within inches of the facing vehicle closest to them, because they are too damn lazy to move forward and then turn the wheel vigorously to the left to enter the new lane properly.
Thought that farmer’s turn meant going into the oncoming traffic lane to complete a left turn when their was no oncoming traffic, thus allowing the cars behind his tractor to get on their way sooner and not wait for the slow, low speed turn.
I see it as another manifestation of “never turn the wheel more than 20 degrees deflection”.
People will not turn the steering wheel more than is comfortable without moving their hands.
In driver’s ed, we were taught to hold the wheel at ‘10 and 2’ - people will not move their hands from that position and you can pull/push the wheel only so far before you either move hands or ‘cramp’ an arm.
I haven’t seen this much in CA - in the midwest, I saw it quite often.
