Tramlining

TweetMarch 16, 2009

Our tip for the week concerns tramlining. You may not have heard the term but tramlining refers to the tendency of a vehicle to want to follow longitudinal seams or ruts in the highway.

On a multi-lane highway, many of the lanes are severely rutted from heavy truck traffic. When you follow through those lanes, or if you do a lane change, you'll quite often find that your vehicle almost has a mind of its own. It wants to follow those ruts. And some vehicles can really duck and dive when you're passing through them.

The wider the tires on the vehicle, the more of the problem that you'll have with tramlining and that's one good reason to stay away from oversizing your tires. It's enough of a problem with stock tires. Now, people who modify their suspension, like lower the suspension or go to negative camber for high performance driving are even accentuating this problem more; another reason to keep to a stock setup. However, any vehicle can exhibit the problem of tramlining on certain areas of the highway because of the severe rutting.

The main thing you want to remember is to keep both hands on the steering wheel in the proper position. When your hands are both on the steering wheel in the right position, you'll make the correct steering inputs slowly and carefully to keep the vehicle on course. If you're driving with one hand or your hand's in the wrong position on the steering wheel you're going to have a severe problem. Another good case for staying away from cellphones.

That's your Tip of the Week!