Advanced driving / racing

[manchestermatt1986]

Im thinking of maybe spending some money on training instead of 'bits' for the car. Id like to have a advanced drivers licence just incase the inevitable ever happens and im up against the courts when im being blamed for a accident. No offence intended here at all but if a 25yr old male with a suped up car is going against lets say a 50yr old male in a standard expensive car i can guess which way it would swing without sufficient evidence or witnesses.

And id also just like to advance my driving skills anyway, been watching heel-to-toe and double clutching. But instead of going out and breaking the 2 id like to have a instructor show me the proper way.

Does anyone know any details. Iv looked at oulton park with motorvision but its coming in at £399 for a day, plus wear and tear on the 2   s:shock: :shock: s:shock:   bit much at the mo for my pocket. But as we all know any kind of motorsport/motorhobbie isnt cheap

[dj2k21]

Best off doing your rospa mate, it's very good, usually police officers and race drivers that teach you, but it's out on the road and reduces insurance a fair whack too

[Steve Green]

I did my Advanced driver locally. Taught by two Class 1 police drivers, in a police station. Well worth while, it even included 30 mins in a traffic car and a day on the skidpan at Goodwood.
I took a risk and did my final assesment in my TT Supra. That was fun, driving sensibly in a car that wanted to out drag everybody at lights and junctions, but I still managed to pass.

Its a lot more than grandpa driving, it teaches you to look much further ahead, and Mirror Signal Manoever is really beginners stuff.
Get a copy of Roadcraft, the Police drivers manual, interesting reading indeed.

[Chris H]

Or you could try the I.A.M.....Institute of Advanced Motorist...i passed with these in 2006,i also
insure my cars through them......just to add,if,god forbid,you happen to get 6 points on
your license,you lose your advanced status.  s:roll: :roll: s:roll:

[manchestermatt1986]

Cool, Thank you, im looking into the above replys but can anyone let me know about track stuff aswell. Just to increase my handling and driving capabilities aswell as road sense and capabilities

[proeliator2001]

Track experience will do next to nothing to improve your road driving skills.  You'd be better off with a bit of skid pan training, high speed lane changes, abs/braking training and the like.  You try racing lines on the open road and you'll be eating hedgerow soon enough.  I echo the chaps above, get a bit of ex class 1 training, best bit of driver training you'll ever get.  Simple things like staying towards the road centre line on left hand bends to minimise radius and maximise visibility make a real difference to how easily you can press on when driving real roads.  It's more about observation and keeping the car safe than carrying max speed round any given bend.  And if you're thinking you'd like to reference some extra training in a court room, you'll lose A LOT of kudo with any judge if you say "but I learnt how to drive really fast round Silverstone"   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

[Steve Green]

Track experience will do next to nothing to improve your road driving skills.  You'd be better off with a bit of skid pan training, high speed lane changes, abs/braking training and the like.  You try racing lines on the open road and you'll be eating hedgerow soon enough.  I echo the chaps above, get a bit of ex class 1 training, best bit of driver training you'll ever get.  Simple things like staying towards the road centre line on left hand bends to minimise radius and maximise visibility make a real difference to how easily you can press on when driving real roads.  It's more about observation and keeping the car safe than carrying max speed round any given bend.  And if you're thinking you'd like to reference some extra training in a court room, you'll lose A LOT of kudo with any judge if you say "but I learnt how to drive really fast round Silverstone"   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

+more than 1.
The Class 1 drivers who taught me opened my eyes. I thought I could drive fast until they showed me.
You may not be as lucky as me to get a combined Police/AIM course but I thought it was worthwhile. Even the usual AIM instructors know how to do it properly, it's all about reading the road ahead, difficult to explain until you get to see what they are looking at.
Track experience is fun but if you make a mistake there are run off areas, on the real road there are trees, oncoming traffic etc etc. Very different.

[manchestermatt1986]

with regards to the 'track' it was more the idea of knowing the limits of the car in a safer enviroment. if you slide at 25mph in rain/ice etc and youve had a bit of experience sliding on a track at 60mph+ then i think you would stand a slightly better chance at saving yourself. Maybe not but thats just the theory in my head. But the court side of it was more the aim training etc. haha no i wouldnt say 'well your honour, i think im a new michael schumacher with track experience'   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:  

think ill look into the aim/rospa

[Jaik]

In terms of car control, I've heard a lot of good things about Car Limits. He gets you taking corners faster and faster until you lose it (on an airfield so nothing to hit), then shows you how to do it even faster  s:) s:)

Again, not particularly useful for driving safely on the road 99.9% of the time, but should give you much better control over the car if you have a winter time squeaky bum moment.

[stargazer30]

As some have said theres two separate schools here.  Advanced driving won't teach you to drive a car fast, control a skid, drift etc..  You need car control days, track driving for that.  Like wise car control days/track days won't make you a safer road driver.  The two are different disciplines.  Advanced/IAM is more about safe road driving, hazard perception, reading the road better than the average joe etc..

As for the origonal post about getting into an accident.  In that situation being the young male in a fast car you'll get stereotyped no matter what your driver ability is.  However if you are IAM most likely you won't get into that situation in the first place.  You'll have seen it coming well before it all went south and will be there giving witness details to the coppers instead.

[ChrisGB]

However if you are IAM most likely you won't get into that situation in the first place.  You'll have seen it coming well before it all went south and will be there giving witness details to the coppers instead.

Exactly this! RoSPA or IAM are good road driving courses. They will teach you good common sense driving techniques. RoSPA gives you grades and frequent re tests so is the better option IMO. Learning how to hurl it round corners at maximum speed instead of how to assess the correct speed for the corner will increase your probability of ending up in this situation:

http://www.mr2roc.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22562&start=450

Learn the road craft first. This will give you the tools you need to utilise the speed later.

Chris

[Dac]

Track experience will do next to nothing to improve your road driving skills.  You'd be better off with a bit of skid pan training, high speed lane changes, abs/braking training and the like.  You try racing lines on the open road and you'll be eating hedgerow soon enough.  I echo the chaps above, get a bit of ex class 1 training, best bit of driver training you'll ever get.  Simple things like staying towards the road centre line on left hand bends to minimise radius and maximise visibility make a real difference to how easily you can press on when driving real roads.  It's more about observation and keeping the car safe than carrying max speed round any given bend.  And if you're thinking you'd like to reference some extra training in a court room, you'll lose A LOT of kudo with any judge if you say "but I learnt how to drive really fast round Silverstone"   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

I think that is a moot point. Driving at Granny speeds it's unlikely you will ever need to use advanced car control skills, but I presume the majority of drivers on this forum partake in spirited drives regularly. In that instance, track skills are even more vital. I am strongly in the belief that if every road driver in the UK had mastered track driving skills and drove and maintained their current driving speeds, there would be a drastic reduction in accidents.

I think the main transferable is better judgement and a wiser head to what you may be heading for.

[mrzwei]

Driving at Granny speeds

So do you mean things like 'observing the speed limit'? I'm speaking as a Grandpa so I guess it doesn't really apply to me   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

[manchestermatt1986]

The last two threads are kind of what i was trying to get at.

i want to learn both disciplines.

1. be a better and safer driver for day to day and 'being safe'. I dont want to wreck my pride and joy that has taken me years

2. if i do have abit of a 'day out' and have a bit of spirited driving and over do it by accident i will have some idea of how to handle the situation.

I dont think fast driving is clever or safe but on the other hand some people may drive normal 99% then have a little blast and not have the skills/experience and put it straight into a ditch

On the other hand someone may obide the rules of the road 24/7 as we all do then maybe a sudden downpoor sends the car a drift, or a pothole on a corner. anything that was unexpected and unforseen

Im sure most people on here who have had a crash didnt expect the hazard and probably werent even driving like an idiot

[Dac]

The last two threads are kind of what i was trying to get at.

i want to learn both disciplines.

1. be a better and safer driver for day to day and 'being safe'. I dont want to wreck my pride and joy that has taken me years

2. if i do have abit of a 'day out' and have a bit of spirited driving and over do it by accident i will have some idea of how to handle the situation.

I dont think fast driving is clever or safe but on the other hand some people may drive normal 99% then have a little blast and not have the skills/experience and put it straight into a ditch

On the other hand someone may obide the rules of the road 24/7 as we all do then maybe a sudden downpoor sends the car a drift, or a pothole on a corner. anything that was unexpected and unforseen

I'm sure most people on here who have had a crash didnt expect the hazard and probably werent even driving like an idiot

Very true. It's surprising the everyday speeds people travel at can and do easily create accidents in hazardous areas. As an example the speed people will travel down a winding country road could easily send you into a spin on a downhil corner near a tree that's shed it's leaves in the wet.

You could learn the basics by using a racing simulator like Live For Speed or Iracing.

[Steve Green]

I wonder how many of the contributions here have passed IAM? Are they talking from experience or guesswork?

I was not taught 'granny speeds' but to drive within road conditions. That included everything you might encounter from the road surface, weather and speed limits, everything you might encounter.
There are plenty of country roads around where these skills can be applied at speed, just not track speed.
As said before, track driving is very different, but you still need to drive for the road surface, weather, just not speed limits, and the danger of oncoming traffic abd with the benefit of run off areas if it all goes Pete Tong.

Remember that if you come off the track, you lose the race, consequences on the road are very different.

You passed a standard driving test, take the next step, IAM, then tackle the track training.

Typo corrected. Thanks Chris H

[Chris H]

Steve.............I.A.M.........need to have it the right way round...  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:

[mrzwei]

Are they talking from experience or guesswork?

  s:lol: :lol: s:lol:   Our survey says.......

[Dac]

I wonder how many of the contributions here have passed IAM? Are they talking from experience or guesswork?

I was not taught 'granny speeds' but to drive within road conditions. That included everything you might encounter from the road surface, weather and speed limits, everything you might encounter.
There are plenty of country roads around where these skills can be applied at speed, just not track speed.
As said before, track driving is very different, but you still need to drive for the road surface, weather, just not speed limits, and the danger of oncoming traffic abd with the benefit of run off areas if it all goes Pete Tong.

Remember that if you come off the track, you lose the race, consequences on the road are very different.

You passed a standard driving test, take the next step, IAM, then tackle the track training.

Typo corrected. Thanks Chris H

Since I was the poster of a few recent replies I am assuming that question was aimed at me   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:  

I don't doubt the quality of advanced driving schools, I was merely putting forward the argument that track driving, although specific to car control skills (road surface, weather conditions) does have transferable merits.

And to answer the question, no I have not passed the IAM test but I did read the handbook they request that you read.

[mrzwei]

There is no requirement to pass anything more than the 'driving test' in any Euorpean country so the overwhelming majority of drivers on the road are doing the right thing. It's the people who try to be different that fock it all up   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

This is the way we drive - live with it!

[Steve Green]

There is no requirement to pass anything more than the 'driving test' in any Euorpean country so the overwhelming majority of drivers on the road are doing the right thing. It's the people who try to be different that fock it all up   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

I read a book once. Cant remember what it was about. Most drivers would probably fail a driving test, theory or practical, if they had to take it again without some extra tuition.

Yes it's the one person who thinks they are immortal that the rest of us need to watch out for. They might be immortal, but the person they hit as they carreer accross the opposite carriageway, probably arent.

[ChrisGB]

Track experience will do next to nothing to improve your road driving skills.  You'd be better off with a bit of skid pan training, high speed lane changes, abs/braking training and the like.  You try racing lines on the open road and you'll be eating hedgerow soon enough.  I echo the chaps above, get a bit of ex class 1 training, best bit of driver training you'll ever get.  Simple things like staying towards the road centre line on left hand bends to minimise radius and maximise visibility make a real difference to how easily you can press on when driving real roads.  It's more about observation and keeping the car safe than carrying max speed round any given bend.  And if you're thinking you'd like to reference some extra training in a court room, you'll lose A LOT of kudo with any judge if you say "but I learnt how to drive really fast round Silverstone"   s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

I think that is a moot point. Driving at Granny speeds it's unlikely you will ever need to use advanced car control skills, but I presume the majority of drivers on this forum partake in spirited drives regularly. In that instance, track skills are even more vital. I am strongly in the belief that if every road driver in the UK had mastered track driving skills and drove and maintained their current driving speeds, there would be a drastic reduction in accidents.

I think the main transferable is better judgement and a wiser head to what you may be heading for.

Have to say that the the most effective way to improve the accident rates is to get people to actually think about what they are doing. Road craft and race craft are totally different disciplines with different objectives. There are areas where the two disciplines use similar techniques, but mostly they are focussed on entirely different objectives.

Road driving: Get from A to B at a speed that is both safe and sufficiently swift, so as not to cause delays to your fellow road users.

Race driving: Get from A to A as fast as possible while overtaking your fellow road users and not allowing them to pass you.

Consider a few back to back comparisons:

Oil on surface, on a race track, hopefully the oil flag will be out or you may see the smoke from the blow up that left it there. If neither, there is a very high probability that you will lose control and need to take a considerable proportion of the width of the track to recover control, or go off onto the grass. If you are really unlucky, the tyre wall or barrier awaits you. You are in a cage with a lid on. Shit happens, it is part of racing. You may get hurt, on a bad day worse, but generally, the track, the car, the kit are all designed to cope with the off. On the road however, you will at best have the most subtle of warnings of the oil. However, if you then lose control, you will probably have the most limited of spaces to recover the car and no run off area. You are not in a cage, have no lid on and there will be a high probability of oncoming vehicles.

Hidden ground, on track, the only thing I have ever encountered that was scary in a dip was a poor sod minus his bike. Managed to dodge him but it was close. It had only just happened and the marshals had not had time to get the flags waving. On road I have seen whole cars emerge from a dip, more than one large animal (sheep x 2, deer x 1) laying dead having been hit by cars or similar, a 25 litre plastic drum, a lorry mud flap and quite a few other bits too.

Corners, on track it is all about fastest line or defensive line. Blind corners are rare and if some hazard is there, there will normally be flags out. The mission for the driver is to get through as fast as possible. Turn in points and balancing the car at limit are all important. If you overstep the mark, you have the aforementioned space to recover, run off area, tyre wall, cage, lid. On road blind bends are plentiful. Where a corner is not blind, you have a variable surface, you are unlikely to be on "lap 10" so you will not be quite so sure of the grip level and should not be pushing so hard you cannot respond to one or more of the many road borne hazards.

The three comparisons above show that the two conditions are totally different, so they need totally different approaches. For safe road driving, a decent driver needs to master the art of accurately reading the situation. Look well ahead, reading bends is one element where some race craft could help, but reading all traffic situations is something so tenuously related to race training that the link is almost irrelevant. I have trained a few people with track training and experience on road over the years and most commonly, they tend to take cornering speeds well beyond the magic formula (always travel at a speed that will allow you to stop safely on your own side of the road in the distance you can see to be clear) on roads they know. They also tend to work the car closer to its limits than is wise in situations where the surface may be contaminated. The level of confidence comes from knowing what the car can do. However, it is often this knowledge that encourages the driver to push on without considering all the possible hazards.

For safe fast road driving, I think that top priority has to be defensive driving. Taking a RoSPA or IAM course will equip a driver with the necessary tools to read the road and situation, to know enough about the car and driver limitations to know how much is safe in the situation. Further, this sort of course will have the driver reading traffic situations more effectively, so that they may more effectively avoid accidents and potentially hazardous scenarios.

Adding some good car control and track knowledge to this is definitely an excellent idea. If a driver likes to get going a bit quickly for entertainments sake, they will certainly benefit from having skills needed with a car nearer it's limits, but a good advanced driver will know just how much he or she can safely push. Having the tools to recover a loss of grip is definitely useful, but if you are getting into this situation on road, you are massively increasing your risk of accident.

Don't get me wrong, I drive  nippy car and I am happy to move it along at considerable speed (especially on limit free roads  s8) s8)  ), but from a personal and professional point of view, if I had to recommend track training or advanced training to a driver for road use, I would always recommend the advanced training first. The benefits for the road driver are simply so much greater.

Chris

[Steve Green]

+1. Put much better than I did.
I would rather the other drivers around me had advanced training.
In a company I once worked for, I made it mandatory that everyone who drove commercially for the business, reps and deliveries etc. had to pass an Advanced Test within one year.
The following years, taking mileage into account, the accident rate dropped significantly, nobody complained of being late for meetings, drops, etc.

It has always surprised me that companies are required to do induction training/fire training and to meet legislative health and safety requirements etc. etc. but a copy of a driving licence obtained 15 years ago is acceptable proof of being a safe driver, with no reference made to their personal accident statistics, for an occupation that could have them behind the wheel of a car or van for the majority of their working lives.

Be careful out there.

[Dac]

Im surprised this has generated such a large number of replies, and a message!

ChrisGB - Apologies I have only skim read your post (its a big post!) and I agreed with pretty much everything I read.

I am going to assume that this is my own making for not making myself as clear as I could have been. So here goes...

I am not suggesting that track driving is in anyway a substitute for advanced driving tests, nor am I suggesting that track driving is more beneficial for road users over an advanced driving course.

What I am simply saying is that track driving has transferable merits for road users, especially those more susceptible to spirited drives. What I mean by this is specifically car control, judgement and spatial ability. As everybody likes examples, I am going to use that of shooting. Where target practice is track driving and hunting is road driving. The skills the shooter practices on the range will equip him skills beneficial to hunting as his accuracy will have benefited, and also the mechanism by which shooting becomes more second nature allowing his brain more redundant processing for the business of stalking prey. A trained hunter will no doubt bring home more prey, but a marksman on the range will no doubt be better at hunting than somebody who is not a trained hunter and has not trained on the range.

Again, the advanced driver training is better for road users. I am not saying otherwise!

And to Steve Green, do not lecture me about life experience, my opinion of you from what I have read in the past few days tells me to take what you say with a big pinch of salt!

Regards,
Dean.