Editorial: The Truth About The Truth About Driver's Ed

Joe Autera
by Joe Autera

In a recent editorial on TTAC, Jack Baruth described a harrowing incident that nearly led to the demise of his beloved Volkswagen Phaeton. The editorial claimed the incident was the masturbatory fantasy of every “driver training” and “active safety” advocate. He concludes that he lived to write another day not because of his driver training, but rather dumb luck. Not so fast, Mr. Baruth.

From his story, we know that Jack was operating a vehicle capable of .82 g’s lateral acceleration at a rate of 123 MPH in the left lane of an AASHTO-compliant interstate highway. As a crash was unfolding in front of him, he recognized that his only avenue of escape was partially blocked so he rapidly decelerated to a speed of 70 mph and then executed his first steering input.

By his own admission, Baruth’s only inputs: hard braking and slow steering. What we don’t know is whether solving this particular problem in the way that he did required the skills of a highly trained driver, the technological wizardry of computer aided driving systems or whether the outcome can be attributed to just plain luck. To see if we can’t figure that out, we’ll have to take a closer look at the three critical components of this and every other behind-the-wheel emergency: the driver, the vehicle and the environment.

Because the crash took Jack by surprise and presented a relatively complex set of problems, it most likely took him 1.2 seconds to understand the problem and come up with a plan to resolve it. It likely took him another .3 seconds to get from the throttle to the brake pedal. By the way, that’s not me saying that; it’s Dr. Marc Green, the world renowned psychologist whose 34 years of research into driver reaction time is universally accepted by accident reconstruction experts around the world.

By then, Jack VeeDub had traveled 271.22 feet.

Based on Jack’s recounting of the tale, the first steering input was made at 70 mph. At that speed, the tightest radius his black panzer would be able to tolerate before it began to slide or lift was 398 feet.

For argument’s sake, and given that Jack had to drop two wheels off the road surface in order to get his 6.24 foot wide car around the problem, let’s say there was 5 feet of clear pavement for him to work with. That means Jack would have had to turn the wheel at least 255.5 feet from the crash in order to safely execute the maneuver in question.

That’s assuming he was capable of operating the vehicle at peak efficiency under significant stress, which is the sort of stuff Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher are made of. While that’s not likely the case, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was capable of operating his vehicle at about 85 percent of peak efficiency, in which case he would have had to turn the wheel no less than 277.5 feet from the crash.

Because we’re a little short on hard data, we’ll make a generous assumption in favor of jack’s marvel of German engineering. We’ll estimate that it required 230 feet to bleed off enough energy to drop from 123 mph to 70 mph. So, to hear the story as Jack tells it, and to solve the problem in the manner he described, he would have needed nearly 779 feet—or close to 46 car lengths—of distance to make his decisions and take the actions he did without overreaching the existing driver/vehicle capability envelope.

With that much room between himself and the problem, had he simply slammed on the brakes when he first noticed the crash he would have come to a stop more than 300 feet from the crash site and have avoided all the other theatrics.

Based on that fact, I dare say that on that fateful day in question, Jack did not find himself in a life or death situation. Nor was it one that required advanced driver training, the technological wizardry of ESC, or any amount of luck to resolve.

All things considered, this story told by Jack, from the dramatic fashion in which it unfolded to the conclusions he draws from it is not the masturbatory fantasy of some “driver training” or “active safety” advocate. This fantasy is his and his alone.

Having said all that, there is some indication that advanced driver training played a role in this scenario, even if it did originate in the author’s fertile mind. After all, weren’t we told that he immediately recognized that “at his current speed the right lane was unreachable”? Now that’s a skill you just can’t get from a basic drivers ed course.

Joe Autera
Joe Autera

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  • Pch101 Pch101 on Mar 05, 2009
    In other words, what exactly does “focusing on dealing with the humans who create the errors” mean, if not some form of behavioral modification? As I stated in the other post, passive safety and better road design reap benefits. We can see it in the data, and it's hard to argue with success. Part of the process of addressing human error is creating a framework that compensates for humans who are inclined to screw up, such as brakes that pump themselves and stability systems that keep SUV's from rolling over. As noted here, driver's education can improve technical skills, but can't fix attitudes. That's just reality, and there's no point in glossing over the facts. I would advocate graduate licensing programs that target novice drivers, using restricted provisional licenses and large learners placards to discourage bad behaviors among the riskiest group. Along with DUI drivers, they are the low hanging fruit in the safety debate. I would also move the enforcement focus from absolute speed violations (violating the posted limit) in order to encourage lane discipline and to discourage behaviors that tend to cause accidents, such as relative speed violations (speed unsafe for conditions, whether too low and too high), tailgating and failure to use turn signals. Although I doubt that the benefits of this would be substantial, it would work within the context of the overriding goal, namely to eliminate as much unpredictability as possible. Which anyone can do by riding the bus. This is the only logical conclusion to that line of thinking. To a black-and-white thinker incapable of understanding nuance, that might be true. For the rest of us, it isn't.
  • U mad scientist U mad scientist on Mar 09, 2009
    . As noted here, driver’s education can improve technical skills, but can’t fix attitudes. So, you're going to dodge the point again that there's little difference between the two. At at least you admit behavior modification can work, as it is known to work in the whole of behavioral science in general. To a black-and-white thinker incapable of understanding nuance, that might be true. For the rest of us, it isn’t. Oh that's just rich coming from someone who proclaims training doesn't work at all, with the implication that it cannot work. The original point is that there is are logical conclusions to reducing accidents in the absolute sense, if that is the only goal instead of overall driver improvement. This ironically came from my unsuccessful attempt to make the argument more nuanced by talking about how these studies are inherently flawed because they have poor controls. Speaking of nuance and flaws and studies, are you finally going to admit that all of the studies you ref are lacking? I took a glance at your aussie metastudy above, which seems to be the better one, and saw this little bit you forgot to tell everyone about: A seminal research study in this area examined 16 controlled studies into the effects of defensive driving courses, mainly operating in the USA (Lund & Williams, 1985). While many of the studies had design flaws, the methodologically strong evaluations showed reductions in violations, but no consistent effect on crashes. So even with lowly sub social science standards, I guess they have to admit these guys have trouble figuring out what they're doing. Also, since they're already admitting behavioral modification occurred, maybe those in the field can investigate how that came about. Overall it's too bad tho. It basically concludes everything is more or less consistent with our understand of human behavior (which shows the author has at least read a science book?), and all the other stuff I've said since the beginning so I would recommend folk who are interested in the topic to read it. There is also quite the funny bit at the end recommending not to base behavioral policy on "common sense" as if it's the first lecture of a psyc class.
  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
  • Lorenzo At my age, excitement is dangerous. one thing to note: the older models being displayed are more stylish than their current versions, and the old Subaru Forester looks more utilitarian than the current version. I thought the annual model change was dead.
  • Lorenzo Well, it was never an off-roader, much less a military vehicle, so let the people with too much money play make believe.
  • EBFlex The best gift would have been a huge bonfire of all the fak mustangs in inventory and shutting down the factory that makes them.Heck, nobody would even have to risk life and limb starting the fire, just park em close together and wait for the super environmentally friendly EV fire to commence.
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