Originally Posted by
Uplinker
If, owing to a quirk of physics, our cars veered to the right with increasing speed, and to the left with decreasing speed...
That is exactly how a motorcycle and sidecar configured for the right side of the road behaves.
- The faster you go, the more the sidecar drags you towards the near side of the road.
- Under acceleration the sidecar tries to make you spear off the road.
- Under brakes the sidecar tries to steer you into oncoming traffic.
To mitigate these effects, the bike is leant slightly away from the sidecar and the sidecar wheel is toed in significantly towards the bike, but this only helps,it certainly doesn't come anywhere near eliminating the joys of riding a sidecar.
And now your comments have me wondering whether it would be possible to dynamically adjust these "trim" conditions at least for different speeds.
Or I could just keep a safe distance from my friend's sidecar. My inner engineer is finding it difficult to resist getting involved, even as the bit of my brain that tried to ride one 39 years ago is howling in protest.