Students become double winners after course

Practice makes perfect. We all know this saying, but when it comes to automobiles, we very seldom follow it. For most of us, the day we get our licence is also the last time we ever think about attending driving courses, or even work at becoming a better driver.

Twenty people, randomly-drawn father-and-child winners in Wheels’ Father’s Day contest, went back to school on July 15, completing BMW’s full-day Advanced Driver Training course at Xxxxxxxx. The program isn’t about speed, but control: proper seating, emergency braking, collision avoidance and skid control.

“These exercises are meant to simulate emergency situations,” says Kelly Williams, lead instructor and a former race driver. “You can’t really practise this, because where would you? Most people don’t have the ability to set up these situations.”

Without the luxury of a closed course — and often with the solitary goal of teaching just enough to pass the exam — many driving schools never delve into these potentially life-or-death scenarios.

Len Goldberg of Thornhill took his last auto schooling at age 16, and a motorcycle course at 20; he’s now 65. His son Ben, 30, had taken a day’s racing instruction held by Bridgestone. This day starts with Williams teaching the proper position: most people adjust the seat too far back, she says. Despite his racetrack training, Ben admits he seldom uses the proper nine-and-three steering wheel position: “I’m a one-hand driver, on the side or on top,” he says.

A water truck wets the asphalt for the emergency braking course. The cars are equipped with special switches that turn off their anti-lock brakes (ABS) and electronic stability control, so drivers go through with and without it. Many drivers, including several of the students, don’t really know how ABS works: it doesn’t stop the car any faster, but because it prevents the wheels from locking up, it allows drivers to steer around obstacles while braking. In this case, it’s avoiding “Matilda,” a large red traffic cone in the middle of the course.

“It’s amazing how well ABS works,” Len says, after he successfully drives toward Matilda, then brakes hard and steers around her. “You’re coming up at 70 (km/h) to the cone, but you don’t hit it. This is teaching me to be more defensive. You have to be, because people are always going through stop signs and red lights.”

It’s an important lesson for Kathleen Wylie, 26, who admits lacking confidence after she was a passenger in a serious crash. She was taught to drive by her father Daniel, 61, whose last driving course was to pass his test at age 16.

“The big thing I’ve learned is looking where you want to go,” Kathleen says. “I usually just think about stopping, but it made me think more about steering while braking. I now think of more I can do when braking.”

On the skid control circle, drivers learn to control understeer — when the car ploughs ahead instead of turning — and oversteer, when the back end comes around and the car spins.

Daniel Wylie pushes the car too hard on the skid pad and spins out completely; the next time around, he steers just enough to bring it back under control. That could be the difference between crashing and getting home safely.

“You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to pick up pointers here,” he says. “I’ve learned to maintain heavy braking to activate the ABS and keep my foot on the brake. I’ve had a panic stop in my own car, but I didn’t know to do this.”

Williams says her toughest students are veteran drivers.

“People who’ve been driving for a long time struggle because they’ve been doing it the wrong way for so long,” she says. “They’ll see how much of a difference it makes to use the right seating position and both hands on the wheel, but the most common thing is that they’ll go right back to using one hand on the way home.”

Several students told me they were doing very well in the exercises. When I asked Williams, she had other opinions on a few of them (I’m sworn to secrecy on their identities).

“Everybody thinks they’re a good driver,” she says. “If everyone was a good driver, we wouldn’t have crashes. The majority of drivers everywhere are not as good as they think they are. Driving is a skill, and just because you do it every day doesn’t mean you’re good at it.”

Kathleen Wylie agrees. “I’m nervous about getting into an accident, and this is going to help,” she says. “It’s too bad they don’t make everybody take this course before they get their licence.”

For more information on the BMW driving courses, see www.bmwdrivertraining.ca.

jil@ca.inter.net

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