Brewery teaches driving skills

By: Drivers.com staff

Date: Friday, 18. February 2011

Tires squeal, and a car nearly hits a pedestrian before slamming into a barrier. Fortunately, the "pedestrian" is not real, and the barrier is made of orange cones. And one of the busiest downtown streets in the Canadian city of Toronto was closed to traffic. Pylons were set up for a driver training program on collision avoidance techniques. The high-profile training effort, presented in conjunction with the city's auto show, was jointly sponsored by a brewery, an auto manufacturer, and a tire company. Both the effectiveness of collision avoidance programs and the wisdom of accepting sponsorship from the alcohol beverage industry are being debated by the driver education community.

The program described above is called the "Labatt Road Scholarship Program" and, since 1988, it has toured Canada and given some 15,000 drivers a short, two-part introduction to some basic collision avoidance techniques.

During the Toronto event, transit drivers, police drivers, ambulance drivers and cab drivers tried their hand at braking exercises, slaloms around pylons, and an avoidance exercise in which they had to watch for the movement of "pedestrians" (instructors) before deciding which way to swerve around a row of pylons blocking their path. And spectators got to listen to the loudspeaker critiques of chief instructor Gary Magwood about reactions, braking skills, and visual tracking.

The message the program is intended to impart, says Labatt National Director of Public Affairs Terry Zuk, is "don't drink and drive," and the program tries to achieve this, he says, by demonstrating collision avoidance techniques to drivers and letting them experience the skills required to react to the unexpected. "Then they will realize how difficult it would be to react properly and apply these skills if they were impaired by alcohol."

The program provides an interesting intersection of two important issues that driver educators are currently wrestling with:

Controversy about the value of teaching advanced skills such as collision avoidance and skid control techniques. Some studies have shown an increase in crashes amongst those who have taken such courses.
The issue of accepting sponsorship for driver training/education activities from the alcohol beverage industry is also controversial. This subject was a keynote topic at the annual conference of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association (ADTSEA) last August and will be the subject of a vote by ADTSEA members this spring.

At the conference, Monita W. Fontaine, Director of State Government Relations with the U.S. Distilled Spirits Council, told attendees that "alcohol abuse is too important a problem to discourage anyone interested in fighting it from doing so." She cited a long list of initiatives dating online back to 1937. These ranged from supporting the development of the first breath-testing devices in the 1940s to the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) in 1957 and the Licensed Beverage Information Council (LBIC) in 1979. More than 400 research projects have been funded at more than 200 institutions, Fontaine pointed out. The alcohol beverage industry has been active in supporting organizations such as Students Against Drunk Driving and BACCHUS, an organization that promotes alcohol education amongst university students.

Addressing the other side of the debate. ADTSEA board member Jay A. Smith of Arizona saw the alcohol beverage industry as simply trying to build credibility with the young potential drinker and with law makers at both state and congressional levels.

In constantly keeping their names before young people as they are growing up and "glorifying and associating drinking with all good fun activities in life," the brewery industry is desperately trying to gain credibility and positive status with Congress, he said.

Smith urged the beverage industry to concentrate on lobbying for quality driver education, including alcohol education, to be made available to all youth in all states. The industry should aim its advertising and promotion towards the middle-aged and not glorify the association of alcohol with fun, he argued.

"Any association with the alcohol beverage industry, the leading contributor to the very tragedies we are trying to prevent, would only improve their status and credibility and will compromise our effectiveness and credibility," Smith said.

Terry Zuk emphasizes that Labatt Breweries is very sensitive to the issues surrounding its sponsorship of a driver training program. "We have to make sure the focus is kept on the effects of alcohol on the driving task," he points out."

The Road Scholarship curriculum was developed by chief instructor and former Canadian racing champion Gary Magwood. It consists of a one-hour classroom theory session followed by a three-hour session behind the wheel. Magwood will be using the same format for programs operated by his own company, CounterSteer, which is in the process of launching a commercial campaign in major Canadian cities across the country. He feels that the programs are effective and that all ages can benefit from them.

"It's been a revelation to see how well even very nervous drivers perform," he says, "and it's been a very pleasant surprise to see how well the older drivers perform. They can achieve the goals of the programs just as well as the younger drivers."

He constantly refines his programs as a result of feedback from his students and he's scornful of the philosophy that collision avoidance skills shouldn't be taught because drivers trained in these skills tend to use their extra skills to drive faster and harder, or because the skills are lost over time due to lack of practice.

It doesn't make sense, Magwood believes, to leave drivers without the basic tools to defend themselves when emergencies occur in traffic. "At the very least," he says, "they should know the proper way to hold the wheel and how to position themselves in the seat for maximum control." And would anyone decide not to train chemists or engineers just because they might lose some of their knowledge and skills over time, he asks.

As well, he sees his course as providing much more than collision avoidance skills. Throughout the course he drums in the message about keeping the eyes up, looking where you want to go, and anticipating the next move. In one exercise, students are asked to do a slalom through a line of pylons while watching hand-signal directions from an instructor at the far end of the line. This forces them to use peripheral vision to monitor the pylon positions while keeping their eyes up ahead to the "target."

Not only does this technique work in collision avoidance and recovering from skids, Magwood says, it keeps drivers focused farther ahead in traffic and allows them to anticipate problems.