Vision is the key to driving crash-free

Opinion

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This article was published 29/07/2015 (3698 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Philippe Létourneau never stops being amazed.

He’s the high-speed driving expert for Canada’s Worst Driver and the chief instructor for the BMW Driving Experience. And, as bad as the drivers on CWD appear, he insists it’s all real.

“We do use humour to keep the show interesting, but everything they say, everything they do is real,” Létourneau said. “Nothing is staged and there is no acting.”

He’s amazed, but also frustrated. It doesn’t have to be like this.

“How long do we have for this interview?” he said laughing when asked what role governments could play in making driving safer. “This is a big, big issue for me.”

Letourneau said governments do a good job of teaching the rules of the road, but the instruction largely stops there.

“I don’t think there’s enough training (his emphasis) on driving. We do a good job teaching parallel parking — and we all know how dangerous it is to parallel park — but there’s no training on getting out of dangerous situations, front-wheel skid, rear-wheel skid, that sort of thing.”

As chief instructor for BMW, Létourneau said the main skill most drivers lack is the proper use of vision. Part of that is evolution, or as the instructor for my day at BMW Driving Experience said, we’re built to look down, to forage for food.

But effective driving demands looking far down the road, at least a kilometre when travelling at 100 km/h, which is nearly 30 meters (six car lengths) per second. Not at your hood or at the taillights of the car ahead.

So the exercises we did, in the parking lot of the Toronto Congress Centre, were almost all about where we were looking. For example, for the high-speed braking manoeuvre and for the swerve-and-avoid assignment, there was a tall traffic cone far ahead of the braking and avoidance zones. That was the target for our eyes.

Because hard braking pitches the car forward and the tendency for most drivers is to keep looking forward, most people’s vision becomes downward as the nose of the car dives. So instructors kept badgering students to get their eyes back up quickly.

Braking doesn’t always solve every problem, so you need to get looking up again quickly in case you now need to steer to avoid an obstacle.

He said average drivers attending his classes are typically completely deficient in understanding the dynamics of a vehicle.

“Every class, we ask ‘When you apply the brakes, to where does the weight of the car shift?’ and we often get people putting their hands up and saying ‘Uh… the back?’ “

To be sure, that’s 100 per cent wrong.

How hard to brake? In a panic stop, you should be “annihilating” the brake pedal, as our instructor put it. “I have $100 in my pocket for everyone who breaks off their brake pedal,” he told us over the two-way radio. “It’s been there a long time and it’s going to be there for a long time to come.”

Some of the exercises also taught control, which starts with using your car’s dead pedal effectively. It’s hard to release, slightly, brake pressure when you’re using the brake pedal to keep you from crashing into the firewall. In an emergency, push hard against the dead pedal with your left foot to press you firmly into your seat. You’ll be able to use the wheel and pedals more effectively.

Or as one instructor from my past put it: “The steering wheel and pedals are controls, not supports.”

The school also taught corrections for oversteer and understeer and ended with a fun timed run through a short autocross course. I was less than 2/10ths of a second from winning.

It’s far more instruction in the key concepts of driving in a day than most new drivers get during an entire run through driver training. Yet, it’s only scratching the surface. Those who graduate from the BMW Driving Experience become eligible to take the BMW Driving Perfection, which takes instruction to a new level yet.

A full-day course at BMW Driving Experience costs $625, not including what it may take to get to the location of the course nearest you. As Létourneau said, it makes the perfect gift for a young adult just starting a lifetime of driving. You can learn more at bmw.ca.

“We might think of giving them a new iPad or laptop, but this is something that can set the stage for a life of safer driving,” he said.

“Of course, I’m preaching from my church, but it’s important to get people to realize driving is a serious task.”