Thursday, October 13, 2011

132. BRAKES

Keeps going down a hill from being too much of a thrill

* Some hilly roads have runaway ramps - sharp upward inclines off the side of the road with barriers at the end - ostensibly for trucks with malfunctioning brakes. I would not want to have to use one of these!
* When I travel from Maryland back to Pennsylvania, the turnpike has some fairly significant hills. Without brakes, how fast I would be going by the time that I reached the bottom! (This sounds like a high school physics problem.) Or, how quickly I would crash when I tried to make a downhill turn!
* At the same time, sometimes I like to refrain from braking and instead use gravity to my advantage. E.g., on Route 1, there is a gradual hill about a half-mile long in University Park on my usual route coming home from work. I try to be going fairly slowly when I reach the top of the hill. Then, I just coast down the hill, usually reach about 45 MPH, but then slow down comfortably before the red light at East-West Highway.

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