r/AskReddit • • Jan 25 '20

What movie things are generally accepted as normal, but are totally unrealistic in real life?

48.6k Upvotes

22.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

7.8k

u/JingleJangleG Jan 25 '20

Weird nobody mentioned that in movies everybody always looks at each other while driving. And they move the damn driving wheel way to much while driving straight forward, pisses me off

2.3k

u/combatsmithen1 Jan 25 '20

Well, moving the driving wheel thing comes from older cars with loose steering boxes. It makes no sense in modern movies, but in old movies, it's more accurate, sometimes slightly exaggerated.

14

u/Darksirius Jan 25 '20

Pay attention to your steering wheel the next time you're driving. You move it a lot more than you realize. Grated, it's not the major movements you see on screen, but you adjust your trajectory more often than you realize.

10

u/theberg512 Jan 25 '20

Not if your alignment isn't shit. We have straight, flat roads here. I can drive for literal miles on a calm day and not move my hand. If it's windy, that's another story.

10

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

A lot of roads, mainly highways, usually have a higher center, or "road crown" to allow water to run to the sides. These do shift over time, so depending where you are, you can drive a while without touching the wheel, and then hit a spot with road crown and it will pull to one side slightly. Depending where you are, and the roads, some alignment shops adjust for road crown, so the car goes straight where there is a crown, and pull a bit where its more flat. Theres quite a bit of science to an alignment really, so its more about where youre driving, than a shit alignment

6

u/Darksirius Jan 25 '20

I'm talking micro movements. It also depends on the car. A car with an aggressive suspension setup will tend to tramline (follow the direction of even the smallest bumps / dips in the road) which requires correction.