During the season break we share in some bonus shorts from previous episodes. This. This one's from episode 28. There's no going back. Moving forward with hill starts. Two of our most recent guests have both talked about hill starts being a problem and about being scared of rolling back so we thought this was an ideal opportunity to pick up on a quick conversation about hill starts. Now Kev, back on season one, we did an episode called don't let stalling stop you. So there is a bit of an overlap here, but hill starts in particular has been mentioned recently. Yeah. It's one of those things that people are scared of and the reason they're scared of a hill start is because, like you said, they're scared of rolling back and there might well be another car behind them, normally at a junction. You know where you're waiting to pull out to join another road and people are worried that they're going to hit the car behind them. So hill starts then becomes a barrier to moving forward. And nine times out of 10, what happens when people are worried they forget what they actually need to do and end up stalling, and then they go into panic and then they can't get the car going again which creates lots more issues rather than just a hill start. So, do you have this a lot with your students? Does this come up regularly in lessons? It's one of those things where people don't realize they're doing hill starts until they can actually see a bigger hill in front of them at a junction normally and they have been doing hill starts. For quite a while, but they just haven't realized. I don't tend to mention to my students that this is a hill. And if you don't get the biting point before, we releasing the handbrake what's going to happen is you're going to roll back. I tend to leave that and what people do is they just move away the way they normally do so they don't consider it a hill start because what happens is they just concentrate in on moving the car forward. That makes sense to me because there's lots of roads out there that are on slight inclines and so actually we're adjusting the amount of gas that we're putting in when we're finding our biting point all the time. Yeah. And what happens is you build up a data bank. I like to call it a data bank of ways to move away. So like, if you was On a nice flat road, you would just find a biting point with a bit of power and off you go, don't really have to think about it too much after those initial lessons. The steeper the hill the more you start to think about it as a hill start, and that's again where the overthinking comes in and people start to worry about other things. Rather than thinking, well if I just get the biting point, add a little bit more power because I need to help the car the car is going to move forward. And that's the problem. People don't think like that because they're more focused on the problem which is the hill start. Now we've got a couple of really steep hills locally to us so we have got some really interesting hills that we can practice hill starts on. And I remember my driving lessons back a long time ago being a little bit nervous about the fact that we were going to go and do a hill start, but actually for me, clutch control and finding my biting point was something that I really enjoyed doing. Once I've done that first hill start I felt that was something that I felt really confident about. And it's something that I've never had a problem with. I actually really loved that sense of control. Really enjoyed that feeling of playing with the two pedals and getting the balance and feeling the biting point and having enough to move away. And I think that was the first time in my driving I felt a real sense of control. So I may have been nervous in lots of other things on my lessons, but never on a hill start. I always felt completely in control there. And what might happen is, you're driving your and driving instructors car who has a diesel engine. Which gives us better fuel economy that's the main reason why we use it. But it's also more user-friendly. So you don't have to use the power when you're moving away. But when you come to drive your car, that you've just bought after passing your test. All of a sudden it's a petrol engine, not so powerful and you use the same method to move the car way and you stall and you bunny hop. We spoke about that in that previous podcast that we did but it's about practicing. Practicing in your car? What, what do I do? If you've passed your test and now you've got a new car. Just familiarize yourself with the clutch and the accelerator. And like you say, play with it, enjoy it and find out what happens. You don't need to do it on hill starts. You can just do it on a nice flat road and just listen. One of my students she made up her own way of doing it because she was using her own car as well. And she said, I just need to make some noise Kev. So every time she drove. She said, I'm just going to make some noise. And that to her triggered that she didn't have to worry about the hill start She just made some noise did what she normally do in the car would only go forward. So if somebody is concerned about the hill starts and they're concerned about rolling back, what is the mistake that they're making? That means that they're rolling back. The actual physical mistake is they're not having a biting point high enough. Or they might come to high releasing the clutch to quick. So if you find the biting point and put a little bit of power in, hear the engine noise, but then keep your feet still. The car will only move one way once you release that handbrake. And then once that hand brakes released and you've kept your feet still, the car's going to move forward because you've got the biting point. The, biting point, will move your forward and with the power, it just helps the car move away on a hill. And that's the actual nuts and bolts of how you move away. It's just on a hill you might have the biting point, slightly higher. Or a little bit more power. But that's it. It's more or less the same as moving away from the flat.