The rack and pinion design is extremely simple; if you cannot understand the concept, imagine a wheel, a monocycle to be exact. You are sitting on it and are only making an effort to move the wheel, but actually it's not just the wheel moving in circles, you too are moving in a straight line, this combination of the land and the monocycle is probably the simplest of all examples.
Now imagine your monocycle running on a very slippery patch of land, will not your cycle slip? Try putting more weight on the wheel, with the extra friction there will be a lesser chance of a backlash but similarly you will have to use more power for successive pedaling.
The above example was for you to understand the most common problem that exists with the rack and pinion design. That's why all the rack and pinions that you come across these days have jaws or gears on both ends, matching their design so that there is as little backlash or slipping and as little friction as possible why at the same time lesser and lesser amount of force is required to make the wheel move.
Hopefully now you would understand why there are specific friction based roads for cars with rubber tires and why these tires have grooves on them, even the cars we drive as well as the mechanism in them are based upon the rack and pinion design so we better get oriented with what is already around us in such a huge quantity.
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