Man and machine in perfect disharmony

There’s a major problem with engineering the handling of a car, dear reader. It’s you.

Allow me to clarify. When it comes to engineering vehicles for motion, there are three main components to consider: the vehicle, the terrain and the driver.

We can dispatch the vehicle surprisingly easily – it’s a collection of rubber and metal. Between them, Sir Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke wrote it all down about 300 years ago and they’re still right. It’s got easier since we went to the moon because that meant we abandoned all that prissy algebraic nonsense, rolled up our sleeves, and went numerical. The good news is the numerical bit can wait for another day.