Hi guys, i’ve noticed in racing games and in real life that the faster you go the less you are able to turn the steering wheel, why is this?
In: Physics
The simplest answer is that you don’t really need to – when you are driving fast you only need to make tiny adjustments to the wheel – as a tiny adjustment made over a long distance will result in a pretty big end result.
If you turn the steering wheel right to its full extent, this will allow most cars to turn tight enough to do a full circle in less than 10m.
If you were travelling at 100kph/60mph, that is equivalent to just below 28 meters per second. So full steering lock at motorway speed would result in your car driving a complete circle in about 0.035 seconds.
Or, more realistically if you were to wrench the steering wheel to the side on the motorway, you would very suddenly lurch off to the side, probably lose grip and slide, and crash spectacularly – all you actually need to keep yourself driving along the smooth curves of a motorway is tiny steering inputs.
Cars do actually help us do this naturally – when driving along the forward motion of a car will want to keep the wheels reasonably straight (as turning them creates friction against the road) and this will cause the wheels to return from steering hard in one direction to fairly straight. This is amplified at speed, so the car will actually hold itself fairly straight for you.
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