{"id":3619,"date":"2014-02-10T06:50:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-09T20:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:27:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:27:49","slug":"driving-barefoot-driving-in-thongs-driving-in-high-heels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/driving-barefoot-driving-in-thongs-driving-in-high-heels\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving Barefoot; Driving in Thongs; Driving in High Heels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pair-pink-flip-flop-007\"<\/a>\u201cYou can\u2019t wear those when pay for homework<\/a> you\u2019re driving,\u201d my father said, pointing to the high-heeled shoes I was wearing at the tender age of sixteen when I was getting one of my first driving lessons.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s no way that you can operate the pedals properly in those.\u201d So I ended up taking that lesson driving barefoot.<\/p>\n

I have to confess that I like driving barefoot.\u00a0 People talk about enjoying the feeling of the steering wheel and the more hands-on method of driving provided by manual gearboxes or paddle-flapper semiautomatic gear shifting.\u00a0 But not much has been mentioned about the sensory pleasure and subtlety of what you do with your feet. If anything, the trend seems to be to use your feet as little as possible, given the trend towards auto-braking on top of automatic transmissions and cruise control.\u00a0 A naked foot applies brake and accelerator (OK, I drive an automatic) with minute shades of control.\u00a0 A little pressure here, a slight bit of easing off here, a brief flicker of the brake there.\u00a0 Simply shoving one\u2019s hoof down for maximum acceleration followed by jamming on the brakes seems, well, crude. Like scribbling with a vivid marker, whereas driving barefoot is more like delicate pencil sketching.<\/p>\n

Cars tend to like that sort of driving, too, as it doesn\u2019t create as much wear and tear.\u00a0 So does your wallet, for the same reason.<\/p>\n

However, the problem with driving barefoot comes at the end of the journey, as where you\u2019re parked is less likely to be pleasant to walk on without something between you and the elements. Quite often in the warmer months, that something is a pair of thong sandals (aka flip-flops or jandals or whatever else you want to call them \u2013 you know the things I mean!).\u00a0 All the same, I don\u2019t drive in them.<\/p>\n

Contrary to popular myth, it is legal to drive barefoot (how could it not be?) and it is also legal to drive in thongs, except, apparently, in Victoria.\u00a0 However, it isn\u2019t safe to drive in thongs, even though a lot of people do it, especially in our warm climate.\u00a0 There have been road safety studies in various parts of the world, and it seems that thongs might slip off and interfere with the operation of the brake and the accelerator because they can jam underneath the pedals.\u00a0 Describing and visualising how this happens can be tricky \u2013 the best bet would be to go out to your car in a pair of thongs and, with the engine off, fidget your feet around a lot and see what happens.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a dumb idea to kick your thongs off and leave them floating around by your feet, as they can still get stuck and\/or in the way.\u00a0 Chuck them into the passenger seat or stick them in the glove box (who keeps driving gloves in the glove box these days, anyway?).<\/p>\n

You do get some stories about people not braking properly when driving barefoot because a sharp stone is sitting on the brake pedal and they jerk their foot back automatically.\u00a0 But how often does this sort of thing happen really?\u00a0 I usually go through a little ritual of sliding my feet up and down the brake pedal before I start the ignition (partly because I\u2019m readjusting the seat after my husband\u2019s been driving), which gets rid of any stones.<\/p>\n

And as for high heels\u2026 well, obviously, not many of you guys wear them.\u00a0 They do put your feet at an awkward angle for applying the pedal (into the passenger seat with them and drive barefoot again).\u00a0 They also have next to no grip and slide off pedals at the wrong moment into the bargain.\u00a0 However, this wasn\u2019t the case for one car I\u2019ve driven.\u00a0 This was a late 80s Alfa Romeo <\/a>of my grandmother\u2019s, and the accelerator pedal was at an awkward angle that meant that you had to either raise your heel from the floor to operate it or floor the thing.\u00a0 How Italian is that? Either high heels or furious driving.\u00a0 The more recent Alfas have, thankfully, corrected this fault.\u00a0 However, in my grandmother\u2019s car, I struggled along for most of the trip getting a very sore ankle and calf as I drove along with one heel in the air. Then the sneakers came off and I ended up using my bare toes to operate the accelerator. It still hurt and I was glad when that trip was over, but it was a lot better than the high heels.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/zaymi-listing.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou can\u2019t wear those when pay for homework you\u2019re driving,\u201d my father said, pointing to the high-heeled shoes I was wearing at the tender age of sixteen when I was getting one of my first driving lessons.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s no way that you can operate the pedals properly in those.\u201d So I ended up taking that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3619"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12017,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619\/revisions\/12017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}