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by Jim Kenzie
Some car safety researchers say driver training doesn't matter. But if training helps to make better doctors, lawyers, pilots - and researchers -how can it not make you a better driver?
In this, the best of all possible jobs, I get to take (or teach) at least a couple of "advanced" driver training programs each year. While we really do have some of the world's best programs, it's always interesting to see how other countries handle it.
Last spring, part of my Rule Britannia Tour of England was the Drive and Survive training program, conducted by Richard Innes and his band of merry men at Ford U.K. motorsport headquarters on the former World War II Boreham airfield, near Chelmsford, about an hour northeast of London.
We were going to be turning loose a bunch of Canadians in expensive British cars on the wrong side of the road in a country filled with roundabouts - wouldn't you want some training before such an assignment?
Innes custom-tailors training programs to the needs of the group, in this case, teaching the colonials. The first step is a classroom session. Our team leader was Paul Catlin, whose presentational skills could easily land him in your local Komedy Kabaret.
Behind Catlin's humor was the seriousness of the situation. Although I'd kill to have Britain's "normal" driver test as our "advanced" test over here, there are still thousands of reported car crashes in England every day. And just under 5,000 deaths annually - proportional to population, better than Canada and remarkable considering the traffic congestion and some truly rolling-bomb cars they drive over there.
Our first driving consisted of a spin through the countryside. Drive and Survive places great emphasis on "reading the road", because in England, the roads are very narrow, and corners come up quickly and often without warning. Tricks like watching the tree tops, and determining which way they go can help you "see" beyond the next corner.
Taking the "vision" line through a bend (as opposed to the racing line) involves drifting slightly to the centre line when leading into a right-hander (on a Canadian road) or towards the shoulder on a left-hander lets you again "see" further into the corner.
One trick that took some getting used to was to look at the point where the right and left edges of the road appear to meet. If that point seems stationary, you're going fast enough. If the point is moving towards you, you're going too fast. If it's moving away, you can take the corner with ease. It's a difficult thing to visualize at first. But I'll bet the really good rally drivers instinctively know it, even if they aren't aware of it.
It's also an example of how vision, in so many ways, is important to driving. (We'll deal with that in a later column.)
Back at the airfield, Innes, Catlin and Scott LeMaitre got out the "toys". A couple of Ford Sierras were sitting up on cradles with "caster wheels ' on hydraulic cylinders, which lift or lower the car at each corner individually.
The car's road wheels do the steering, braking and accelerating. But, depending on the "weight shift", you can simulate understeer, oversteer or no-steer at all, at the touch of a button in the diabolical instructor's hand.
This is the same equipment John Powell uses at his Mosport Park school, incidentally, and is useful in simulating the "feel" of a front-wheel or rear-wheel skid at less threatening speeds. Easier on the tires too.
So if you're thinking of visiting England but are afraid of driving there, take heart.
First step: buy a wonderful little book called Driving in Britain: A North American's Guide to the Ins and Outs and Roundabouts of Driving Over There. It's a self-published tome by Torontonian Rob Lockhart, and is available for $12.95 through Rampant Lion Communications, P. O. Box 405, Don Mills Ont., M3C 2T2. Funny and informative.
Then contact Drive and Survive, and get into one of its programs. The address is Boreham Airfield, Boreham, Chelmsford, Essex, U.K., CM3 3BG. Telephone 011-44-245-466-749 or fax 011-44-245-468-869.
If you're a car enthusiast, you won't really enjoy England unless you drive over there. Follow the above advice and you'll be fine.
... The Toronto Star, Saturday, Oct. 24, 1992
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