Most of our requests for the provision of safety training for drivers, whether at defensive or advanced driving levels, relate to city locations throughout the USA and Canada. This short article is intended to provide some guidance for our corporate clients on how to get the best return from your investment in connection with city-based courses.
The first photograph, above, touches on a key issue. From central locations in cities, it is inevitable that very heavy traffic will be encountered during our behind-the-wheel sessions, both morning and afternoon, and this is disadvantageous for all concerned, including our instructors, as very little can be taught in traffic jams.
“What we teach is entirely based on empirical research and/or global best practices.”
None-the-less, some town/city driving is clearly necessary and inevitable on our courses so in the photographs on this page we touch on just a tiny number of the many issues that can be encountered. What we uniquely create on our courses is the most in-depth experience possible for your employees, covering as many subjects and scenarios as possible during the allotted training time. It is extremely typical for our trainees, after training, to mention multiple topics about which they feel they have learned a lot — sometimes almost the exact opposite of what they had previously and wrongly been brought up to believe. So it is important to mention here that what we teach is all based on empirical research and/or global best practices (depending on the specific topic).
One issue many trainees are very uncomfortable about, prior to their course, is roundabouts. Indeed, many drivers are actually afraid of them. Sadly, this is due to the fact that the Federal Government (meaning the USDOT, FHWA and NHTSA) are seemingly determined that the only thing needed for drivers to safely and successfully navigate roundabouts is arrows painted on the pavement surface, but global best practice, developed for almost 50 years prior to the USA starting to even build what are correctly called “modern roundabouts,” uses a much safer (and reassuring) method for drivers, so this is what we teach. And it works much better, every time.
Does your corporation have a lot of avoidable damage resulting from the backing/reversing of vehicles? Many businesses do. This is something that, once again, we can provide best-practice training for, thereby dramatically reducing the risk of damage or, more seriously, pedestrian injuries during this task.
There may actually be no roundabouts, or even interstate highways, near some of your chosen training locations, but if there are we will use them at some point during the behind-the-wheel sessions.
Most people are very confident that they are generally quite good drivers, and in particular this often applies most of all to highways. However, there are contradictory points at play, here. Did you know that divided highways, despite their higher speed limits, are actually the safest roads in the world (as long as they have an adequate median guardrail system)? Yet even so, there are multiple potential dangers on divided highways to which the vast majority of drivers are extremely complacent or even blissfully unaware.
To summarise, the best range and quality of training we can provide happens when we can use a base at a suitable location on the edge of a city or large town, so that we can mix training areas to suit our clients’ wishes and the trainees’ biggest needs (which can and do vary from one person to another).
Let us help you, at no extra charge, to find the optimum base for your people’s training needs. Please Contact Us to discuss options or to request a summary of the basic themes we teach, covering over 300 safety topics.
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Footnotes:
- In relation to bad weather conditions during training sessions, it is our policy to terminate such training only if the actions of other drivers are likely to start posing a threat to the training vehicle and our trainees. Put into perspective, since 2006 and many thousands of trainees later, this has happened on only one occasion, one afternoon during a blizzard in North Dakota, with our client’s manager in question informed and in approval. Bad weather is actually good for our purpose but a very sensible line regarding safety is assured.
- Hopefully, it goes without saying that none of the photographs on this page or the entire website were taken from the driver’s seat of any vehicle.
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