Hello,
I am what is called an "advanced driver" from Israel. I also instruct advanced driving exclusivelly on one-on-one basis and I have now joined this forum to contribute the knowledge I have acquired from various institutions that deal in this field, in order to increase the knowledge and awareness of the forum readers, all for free.
First, preety much all I have to say/can say is concentrated in my online
driving guide and blog. They are mainly oriented towards track driving, but the whole idea is to explore driving as a concept, so I mixed it all up: Road driving, track driving, rallying -- it's all in there.
On the subject of speed, which I gather is a major point in these forums. I live in a country where the driving culture is not very developed: Bad roads, lots of traffic, zero tolerance, semi-"underground" motorsport, and a bad combination of low speed limits on open roads and a legal problem of people violating those speed limits. I join the public protest to increase the speed limits on such roads, in my country and elsewhere, but I differ from many of my associates by standing in agreement to the notion that speeding does kill. So we should do just fine.
I view safe driving as being inevitably based on several elements. The first of which is a mental change of the driver: Reducating the driver for responsibility, awareness, patience, knowledge, skill and perception. These are the personal basis for "constructing" a good driver. Beyond that, the training I offer revolves around adopting new driving habits that will make the driver safer. These include preperation of the car in terms of fluids, tire maintenence, seating position, mirror alignment and steering hand positions, and moves on to more advanced things like steering style and visual acuity for anticipation of what is up ahead, and ends in basic emergency control skills that are supposed to be as applicable as they are efficient. Training like I offer and like bigger institutions or other (greater) instructors offer, have been shown to reduce collisions and collisions severity significantly and, in the personal level, can bring a person inch-close to the "100% safety" vision.
The first thing someone needs to understand is that driving is not a simple and automated action. If it were, we could start driving at the age of, say, 10, with no need for lessons, a test, restrictions, law enforcement, safety installments in the cars we drive and the roads the cars drive on, and would still suffer from no collisions what so ever. We must therefore conclude that driving is an action that requires our aware attention, and not a thing that you do in a "mental auto-pilot". Don't not-think and drive!
Having done that, one might move on to the personal characteristics that make up a good driver. The base here is to understand that modern psychology recognises changes in personal attributes to be quite possible, so we can choose to act in a certain way without it standing in contradiction to our "character". The first thing I want to refer to is
Responsibility. Why do we begin to drive only at the age of circa 16? Because driving obviously requires maturity. Why? Because driving and getting from A to B stands for a powerfull ability: Independence. The modern teenager is fascinated with independence and freedom, and that's the source of the attraction to driving. But, maturity and independence should result in responsibility.
Responsibility is response-ability. It is the realization that the only one in charge of your destiny as a road driver is...YOU. You are your biggest threat and you are your best way around that threat. It all starts and ends with YOU. Even when circumstances are forced unto you, you can take responsibility for the decision of how to react to the given circumstances. In particular, you should avoid from blaming. Blaming is the opposite of taking responsibility for things. Instead of blaming the road/other driver/car for a collision of some sort, instead of even blaming yourself, take responsibility and think of it as a learning experience.
Besides responsibility, another important subject is
awareness, which automatically relates to concentration. Concentration is maintained by planning and by fascination. Being fascinated by driving is the best way to maintain concentration. Treat driving as a value. Awareness also relates to hazard perception, which is the understanding of the peril posed by seemingly naive situations that develop on the road. A driver who is aware to hazards will maintain concentration when driving and not fall into distractions.
The third element is
Patience. Patience relates primarly for kindness and tolerance when driving in traffic or when yielding at stop signs/intersections. Be as quick to forgive other drivers for thier mistakes as you are quick to forgive yourself for your mistakes. Remember, other drivers face the same difficulties as you, sometimes even more. No one wants to crash.
Perception is our way to make sense of the world. We know cars because we have a "mental model" that states what a car is. Perception relates primarly to our point of view: Drivers who seek safety are better than drivers who simply avoid hazards. Drivers who navigate into gaps in traffic are better than drivers who steer away from other cars in the traffic. Another point is the willingness to change driving habits to better driving habits. A third point is again to treat driving as a value. You should want to drive BETTER. Not faster, not even SAFER, but simply bettter. Drive better and safety will come as one of the by-products.
Knowledge is perhaps the element we driving trainers work on the most. The goal is to enrich the student with knowledge about what to do and what not to do, how to respond, etc...
Skill goes deeper into the ability to perform to theoretical knowledge effectivelly. Sometimes, we have to compromise on this subject.
This is the mental stuff: Engineering the driver. Now, it's time to engineer the driving. This begins by a mere mental model for improvement. If we want to improve, we talk about movement from point A to point B. In order to make this movement, we need to pinpoint both A and B. This is "the process": Imagine your desired way of driving, compare to your current driving, and only than take measures to get from A to B. If you do not put both points, present and future, clearly before your eyes, the process is likely to get stuck.
Effective driving works at three levels: The driver himself -- his personal state of being (temper, physical state, fatigue, concentration). The car -- it's mechanical state of being and it's handling. The road -- it's state of being, it's shape, the hazards it poses. Other road users are considered as moving parts of the road. The three levels combine toghether. For instance, other drivers using the horn or lights can have an effect on the drivers personal state.
Actual driving habits begin from creating a safe enviornment in advance:
- Checking tires: I do not compromise on that subjects. The tires are our only, slim contact with the road. Tire maintenence, replacing and inflation are extremlly important.
- Other mechanical checks: Lubricants, coolant, clearity of glasses, brake fluids, dampers.
- Seating position: Extremlly important for awareness, reaction time, broad visual field and maximum car control, comfort and safety.
- Mirror adjustment: Can cut down "blindspots" to a level where they are ALMOST none-existant.
- Hands on the wheel: Quarter to-three. No other posture gives nearly the control or ride comfort.
On the road, it's important to practice the following:
- Steering styles: The manner in which we operate the steering mechanism can effect the effort we use and the response we get dramatically. I teach a selection of advanced steering styles which are too complex to be explained in a brief note like this. I teach one steering style for general use, another one for parking a car with heavy steering, and another for quick steering inputs.
- Visual acuity: This is possibly the most important element I work on with myself and with others. It revolves around looking up and using our eyes to recieve the information, plan our moves and execute our plan. The idea is to look up to the horizon, detect "hazards" and deal with them.
- The combination of smoothness, accuracy and decisiveness, which makes our driving inputs more sympethetic to our car.
- Speed and space management. Space management 360 degrees around the vehicle, reference to changes between the speed limit and the required speed, which are often two different speeds.
- Driving lines: Regardless of the shape of the road, it's up to us to decide when we will go in a straight line and when in a turn and by which severity of turning. The short concept is that when approaching a left-hander, we stick to the right-end of the lane, and patienty wait on the "highside" untill we can "dive" into the inside of the corner and cut almost straight through it.
- Emergency braking: Here I teach a simplified technique: Regardless of the existance or absence of ABS, I stick with the method of sticking the pedal to the metal. It is a technique I was exposed to by several local and European institutions and overall it seems surprisingly efficient. I do teach regressive braking for the sake of avoidance braking or braking in a bend without ABS.
- Skid recovery: Here, my instruction ends with knowing why a car would skid, when it would skid and how. The focus is on the cause of the slide, the tactile feedback recieved from the car, and the corrective inputs required are again simplified to match the abilites of the average road driver. With understeer, the solution is simply to gently roll unto the brake. With oversteer, the solution is to perform an emergency stop rather than trying to recover.
Sessions end with "trails" or goals set for the driver to work on, and with fluent counseling and maintaining his awarness level by montly updates in form of articles in the blog. Any further questions on the theory behind any of the aspects described above will be gladly answered with detail. If a driver follows this plan and manages to execute it nicely, he should be as near as it gets to 100% safety.
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well said
