Understeering in a corner

[Tony Montoya]

What did I do wrong? At a four way intersection there is a right turn-off that is quite a bit less than 90 degrees, you have to turn more than 90 degrees because the intersecting roads are not square to each other. It is from an 80 kph to a 60kph but you have to watch for pedestrians so you go maybe 30kph. The car would not turn and I couldn't keep it in the lane and was forced to cross into the next lane. I din't panic because based on the light sequence and the turning cars I knew there could be no cars in the way unless somebody did a U-turn. Did I just go too fast?

I almost hit a speeding Honda today also because the car in the lane next to me was three car lengths behind me and when I decided to go right into that lane. I signalled, then I did a head check and some kid in a civic going faster than me came from the third lane I guess into the middle lane right beside me. He scared me because I almost turned into him. I mean I never moved right but with this car if you think of moving you are about a 1/10 of a second from being in the next lane. The blind spot on the right is the toughest to control and if we hit it would have been my fault as I came from the left.

 

[PushHands]

Did I just go too fast?

At any point when the car reacts in a way that you did not anticipate, you are going "faster" than you can comfortably control it given your current setup. This is a receipe for disaster and is amplified if your vehicle of choice has two wheels.

This my sound odd at first thought, but if you want to learn how to drive a car fast, go to the track. The repetition of hitting a series of identical corners will allow you to narrow your focus to specific weaknesses and address them one by one.

 

[NSXDreamer2]

The rather long wheelbase (for a compact sport car) couple with a slower steering ratio, big OEM steering wheel without powersteering and by some slow hands produce a very big turning radius. In situations that is much larger than a 90 degree turn which is small and abrupt, like those 30km corners you mentioned, any nsx will feel not at home for that.(there's no track had that kind of turns, most track have wide road width with smooth entry/exit). NSX is not a perfect autoX car, but if you would like to find out if your car had problem or you just quite simply had slow hands Go to Auto X and learn some handling of your own car.

Alignment and tire condition could play a little role on your mishap.


On the blind spot note, I couldn't be more amazed how well engineering the car is, even with 3 track tires stacking on top of my passenger seat with two helmets sitting side by side on the passengerside glove box. I can still see my mirrors and the rear glass hatch let me "check" the on coming traffic. I suspected that your mirrors are not adjusted properly. To certain you have blind spot free mirrors, you should be able to catch the cars beside you when they vanished from your rear view mirror. Unless they are dead side by side with you, but at that point, you should be able to see the car's frontend as nsx small greenhouse and low stance is not big enough to block any size of a car.