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
Two questions: why shouldn’t you, and why can’t you.
First, why shouldn’t you? Because you will crash your car, either by skidding or rolling. The car has a lot of momentum trying to move it forward and if you ask the tires so change direction too much and too quickly, they won’t be able to.
Secondly, why can’t you? Well, you can but it’s just harder. And it’s harder because cars are specifically designed to make it harder.
Here’s a mini-history of power steering. In the beginning there was no power steering. The steering wheel was directly connected to the wheels, and it was quite hard to steer. When maneuvering at slow speeds where you wanted to turn the wheels a lot, it was really hard. You needed quite a lot of strength.
Then came power steering. When you turned the steering wheel, the car would detect it and help you turn. It became much easier to steer than before, particularly when you wanted to turn the wheels a lot.
However there was a problem at high speeds. It was so easy to turn that when to turned the wheel just a little bit, like you want at high speed, it felt like the steering wheel was just floating: there wasn’t enough control.
So they made adaptive power steering (or various other phrases for the same thing). It was designed so that at low speeds it would help you turn the steering wheel a lot, to allow you to maneuver easily, and at high speeds it would hardly help at all so you felt like you had control, and didn’t turn the wheels too much by mistake.
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