Training vital to curbing road deaths
Monday December 03 2007
Having re-read (for the umpteenth time) a book entitled 'The Racing Driver' by Denis Jenkins, I am of the firm opinion that the Road Safety Authority should buy the copyright and reprint it.
It was published in 1955 and is a bible of car physics -- from skidding to preparing for a crash.
All of the great racing names of the time contributed, including Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart and Jim Clarke.
As Duncan J Martin (Letters, November 30) correctly suggests, we are not versed in some less common driving situations.
The book makes much of "secondary thinking". Put simply, that means when the driver is faced with a situation where there is no time to think, instinct takes over: "Good drivers don't get frights."
One example involved Stirling Moss mending a fuse under the dashboard of a racing car, while the driver was doing 90 mph in a road race.
Up ahead, the road was blocked by bales of hay. Although unable to see it, Stirling sensed the change in the driver's manner and from under the dashboard came the question: "Are we going to hit it?" Experience bought him time.
The book also explains how to keep control during a skid on a bend -- what the car will do and how to control it best, while bearing in mind that skidding sideways isn't the worst thing at all (the car loses speed quickly, as with skidding in a straight line).
The ordinary driver will not have that sort of experience normally, hence "what you don't use you lose" comes into play and panic sets in.
It amazes me that we do fire drills in public buildings, lifeboat people do training exercises and so on, but driver training works on the assumption that little will go wrong.
We should be training people not only on how to drive, but how to control the unexpected and minimise a crash as well.
Simply telling people to slow down, on its own, is not an intelligent approach. Safe drivers have accidents too.
I wondered why I am not so great at parallel parking. It is because I don't actually do it very often. What happens with lack of practice?
The instinct department becomes an empty toolbox.
ANTHONY HALPIN
BRAY, CO WICKLOW
