Driving tips and other life stuff

Improving your acceleration: pressure on the road

Harsh acceleration is one of those driving styles that can be easily fixed. It usually boils down to tweaking a few bad habits and giving yourself more time.

So if your ingenie feedback is looking a bit too close to the red zone, here's how you can improve to earn yourself a top discount.

Get in the right gear

It sounds simple but making sure you're in the right gear for the situation you're driving in will work wonders for your acceleration feedback.

Choosing the wrong gear can make the car accelerate too slowly or too quickly, which could be a hazard for other drivers if they're expecting you to react differently.

If you're at a roundabout or junction and you've worked out that you have enough time to move out into the traffic, but then realise you're stuck in the wrong gear and can't accelerate at the speed you need - you're going to find yourself in a tricky situation.

Other drivers

Equally, rushing to put your foot down as you're feeling pressured by other drivers is not going to help your confidence behind the wheel or your driving feedback. Yeah - it can be pretty stressful when other drivers behave badly on the road, but try to keep your head cool and your acceleration smooth.

The majority of drivers out there are patient and just want to get home like you do, so try not to panic about other drivers thinking you're taking too long to accelerate off. That's how mistakes (often dangerous ones) happen.

Don't let another driver take away your good driving discount.

   

If you're getting less than good driving feedback for your acceleration, try and change your mindset as soon as you get in the car. Imagine you were helping your little brother or sister with their driving - you'd want to show them the safest, smoothest example of good acceleration.

Maria
ingenie's Driving Feedback Team

Avoid over-revving

Although this isn't how your black box works out your acceleration feedback, revving too much will waste fuel and make it harder to control your car. It's also distracting and at times, intimidating for other drivers.

Often we find that new drivers who are over-revving aren't fully comfortable with their car yet. Every car is different so if you're learning, just passed or just changed cars, go for a drive on a familiar route and practise stopping and starting (even on hills - eeek).

Get to know how your engine responds and you'll soon get use to the amount of pressure you need to put on the accelerator.