Safe Speed Forums

The campaign for genuine road safety
It is currently Fri Apr 19, 2024 21:24

View unanswered posts | View active topics


Board index » Discussion Forums » Brainstorming

All times are UTC [ DST ]



Post new topic Reply to topic  Page 1 of 1
  [ 11 posts ] 
  Previous topic | Next topic 
Author Message
SafeSpeed
 Post subject: Driving's an art...
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 03:01 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 06:46
Posts: 16903
Location: Safe Speed
Years ago the ABD likened driving by numbers (i.e. to speed limit) to painting by numbers - It's not a good way of doing things, and certainly not the best way.

But I've just been pondering that there might be much more in it. If it's an art, then...

[I actually wrote a load of waffle, then deleted it]

What is an 'art'?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
willcove
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 07:37 
Offline
User
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2004 18:41
Posts: 893
A art it most certainly should not be. Art is an extension of the artist's imagination or interpretation and if driving were an art the most revered could well be the modernist who treated the rule of the road as an unnecessary fetter to be cast aside in the goal of personal expression; or the surrealist who would only stop when the lights were on fish!

No, driving is a craft - not an art - and as with all crafts it takes years of experience and constant practice to become a skilled exponent and to retain that level of skill. Unfortunately, as with all crafts, mistakes are made "on the way up". While an apprentice stonemason might ruin a piece of stone when he makes a mistake the consequences of an apprentice driver getting it wrong could be far more serious.

_________________
Will
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
SafeSpeed
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 08:48 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 06:46
Posts: 16903
Location: Safe Speed
willcove wrote:
No, driving is a craft - not an art...


Craft, yes, I like that. Of course I've been studying roadcraft and Roadcraft on and off for over 20 years, but I don't believe I've ever called driving a craft.

But I think you may have been thinking of an overly-narrow definition of 'art', because craftsmen are quite correctly said to be 'skilled in the art'.

I looked it up in the OED and found:

Quote:
art /A:t/ n.1ME. [(O)Fr. f. L art-, ars, f. a base meaning <nfasp>put together, join, fit’.]

I Skill. (As a non-count n.)

1 Skill as the result of knowledge and practice. ME.<unknown>b spec. Technical or professional skill. ME–L17.c Human skill, as opp. to nature. LME.

2 The learning of the schools; scholarship. Now arch. & Hist. ME.

3 The application of skill according to aesthetic principles, esp. in the production of visible works of imagination, imitation, or design (painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.); skilful execution of workmanship as an object in itself; the cultivation of the production of aesthetic objects in its principles, practice, and results.

The Renascence of antique literature and art in the sixteenth century.

II Something in which skill may be obtained or displayed. (As a count n.)

4 In pl. Certain branches of (esp. university or school) study serving as a preparation for more advanced studies or for later life, now esp. languages, literature, philosophy, history, etc., as distinguished from the sciences or technological subjects. (In the Middle Ages the elements of a course of seven sciences, the trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.) ME.<unknown>b sing. Each of the subjects of the medieval trivium or quadrivium. Only in ME.

5 A practical application of any science; esp. an industrial pursuit of a skilled nature, a craft. LME.

b A guild or company of craftsmen. rare. M19.

6 A pursuit or occupation in which skill is directed towards the production of a work of imagination, imitation, or design, or towards the gratification of the aesthetic senses; the products of any such pursuit. L16.

7 An acquired faculty; a knack.

III Skilful or crafty conduct.

8 Cunning; artfulness. ME.

9 An artifice, a stratagem, a wile, a cunning device. Usu. in pl. LME.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
willcove
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 09:33 
Offline
User
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2004 18:41
Posts: 893
SafeSpeed wrote:
But I think you may have been thinking of an overly-narrow definition of 'art', because craftsmen are quite correctly said to be 'skilled in the art'.

IME craftsmen are correctly said to be "skilled in the art" when there is a design element involved. To me, the basic difference between an art and a craft is that art involves design (i.e. creativity) while crafts follow rules. Of course, it is possible (and usual) for a craftsman to create art (e.g. a stonemason to produce sculpture) and for there to be a blurring between the artistic and craft elements of a particular work.

IMO, on-road driving is very definitely a craft rather than an art. We don't want drivers to get creative on the public road, we want them to be predictable. However, in competitions it's a different matter and in some of those circumstances driving has truly become an art (e.g. drifting and stunt driving).

Perhaps I'm being a little pedantic, in which case I'll get my coat!

_________________
Will
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
SafeSpeed
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 09:45 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 06:46
Posts: 16903
Location: Safe Speed
willcove wrote:
Perhaps I'm being a little pedantic, in which case I'll get my coat!


No no, I'm with you all the way. This stuff - these shades of meaning - are very important and useful to me in PR and broadcast work. And this is brainstorming too.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
Grumpy Old Biker
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 09:48 
Offline
Gold Member
Gold Member

Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 15:27
Posts: 683
Location: New Forest
An advanced motorcyclist is an art form – no doubt.

I can watch a true master of his craft and recognise the shear beauty of his control.

Once, I was with my wife and we saw a motorcyclist walk to his bike and pull away. In those few seconds I could confidently predict he was either an instructor or off duty police rider. It was poetry in motion.

As hard as I try, I can’t see the same distinction with car drivers but I’m sure it’s just as much an art form.

_________________
It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
Toltec
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:00 
Offline
Life Member
Life Member
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jun 22, 2006 13:54
Posts: 1711
Location: NW Kent
I would take art to be something that requires most though not necessarily all of; emotion, instinct, intuition, skill, experience, an aesthetic purpose, something beyond the ordinary and perhaps not rationally definable.

As for driving, I can take pleasure in a perfectly executed corner or negotiation of a tricky junction in the safest, smoothest manner. I can sometimes 'feel' what another driver is going to do and compensate for it with the minimum of effort. The problem is 'Art' almost implies there will be very few true masters. I certainly am not.

Then again take it as physics, observation, mental and physical skills honed by experience and you have a craft. A competent craftsman can produce a piece of work perfectly suited to its purpose, which in itself may hold its own beauty, and can consistently do this time and again.

A craft can be taught to someone with reasonable aptitude, art goes indefinably further.

So maybe driving is both, we should all be competent craftsmen striving to become artists.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
Toltec
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:09 
Offline
Life Member
Life Member
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jun 22, 2006 13:54
Posts: 1711
Location: NW Kent
Grumpy Old Biker wrote:
As hard as I try, I can’t see the same distinction with car drivers but I’m sure it’s just as much an art form.


On a bike you are just so much closer to your medium, the difference between working the clay with your fingers and sculpting stone with remote control power tools.

I wish I had not thought of that, I am going to be down all day now - I do not ride bikes anymore.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
Grumpy Old Biker
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:23 
Offline
Gold Member
Gold Member

Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 15:27
Posts: 683
Location: New Forest
toltec wrote:
So maybe driving is both, we should all be competent craftsmen striving to become artists.


We are all craftsman of wildly varying abilities. Driving/Riding is a craft.
The police call it Roadcraft.

Art defines the human skill within that craft and I suppose a true artist is the master of his craft.

_________________
It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
SafeSpeed
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:32 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 06:46
Posts: 16903
Location: Safe Speed
I so wish that there was a term that commonly included drivers and motorcyclists. I worried about the bikers, especially the old grumpy ones, when I was composing my first post in the thread. Unfortunately 'motorists' is usually taken to mean car drivers, although I see no basis for that.

Grumpy Old Biker wrote:
As hard as I try, I can’t see the same distinction with car drivers but I’m sure it’s just as much an art form.


I think the drivers' art shows mainly in two places...

- In the relationship with 'traffic'. With a truly skilled driver the surrounding traffic 'melts' into something unimportant - even 'distant'. There's no conflict because every potential conflict is anticipated and neutralised. There's no hold up because the true artist is constantly threading through traffic and passing other vehicles (and there's another element to this that I'm having trouble defining... something about 'pressure' - wafting up to the traffic jam somehow minimises the jam itself.)

- In balancing the forces on the vehicle. This is where the skilled driver works higher in the derivitives of speed, controlling speed and rate of change of speed and rate of change of rate of change of speed and possibly even the next derivitive... The terms are
- speed
- acceleration
- jerk
- jounce (3rd derivitive)

They also apply to lateral forces, of course. The net effect of controlling at least to the level of 'jerk' (=rate of change of acceleration) in all three planes means that energy flows smoothly into and out of the suspension in all four corners giving a sensation of supreme smoothness.

And the highest form of this second 'art' blends accelerations (forces) across the planes as well as within them. Roadcraft doesn't go this far - it separates braking and cornering for example. But there's heaven in the blend...

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
Grumpy Old Biker
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:34 
Offline
Gold Member
Gold Member

Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 15:27
Posts: 683
Location: New Forest
SafeSpeed wrote:
I worried about the bikers, especially the old grumpy ones, when I was composing my first post in the thread.


:lol: Love it… I really feel I have arrived.

SafeSpeed wrote:
I think the drivers' art shows mainly in two places...


Beautifully put, although I’ve never heard of ‘jounce’, but I think I know what you mean. Many of the skills are clearly common between 2 and 4 wheels although the mechanics of a bike are so obviously different. Slow speed riding is an craft all on its own.

I suppose what makes driving/riding a real craft is that there is much that simply cannot be written down in simple terms (the paint by numbers analogy). The true artist is able to take the craft beyond a pure functional level and constantly creates new blends of skills. A fluid art form.

When I study other road users, I suppose the motorcyclist is easier to judge because he is so exposed. Posture and body movements can reveal much.

I really can’t see that someone walking to a car, getting in and driving off could ever tell me so much about the level of skill.

_________________
It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished
Top
 Profile Send private message  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  Page 1 of 1
  [ 11 posts ] 

Board index » Discussion Forums » Brainstorming

All times are UTC [ DST ]

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You can post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
[ Time : 0.021s | 13 Queries | GZIP : Off ]