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If you were to get a very wide piece of paper, and draw a line across it that was long enough to represent the period of time that mankind has been on the planet, that line would stretch for miles. Accepting that for what it represents, if you tried to highlight the section of the line that represented the amount of time mankind has been driving motorised vehicles you couldn’t get a pen nib thin enough to do it.
As animals, we human beings have evolved to become very adaptable, and over the last century and a bit, that adaptation has enabled us to drive motor vehicles. But when you look at how we got here you will see the transition took a few generations to complete.
Driving With Limited Horsepower
Beginning with the horse, the horse and cart, then the fast battle chariot and the express stage coach, our speed over the ground was always limited by the one common denominator; the horse. What is apparent is that we had time enough to adapt to the changes back then, as progress in the development of technology was at a pace everyone could keep up with, and even when the first motorcar appeared, the maximum capable speed of the machine was hardly breathtaking.
Talking of drawing lines representing evolution, if we use another sheet of paper, and instead of a time line, we draw upon it a graph to show the evolution of the motorcar in terms of technological advancement onward from the late 1800’s, what shape would the line form? Just ponder a moment if you will, whilst viewing that drastically accelerating upward curve on the graph, that here in the UK the first road driving test for driver’s of motor vehicles was introduced in 1935, and was only brought about through the horrendous number of road accidents that had occurred. Up until then, if you wanted to drive a motor vehicle, all you had to do was get in the driver’s seat and do it. So, is it any wonder there was such a rate of incident, with everyone seemingly left to make it up as they went along? It wasn’t until the driving test came upon the scene was there any notion about completing driving lessons.
When The Driving Test Was Instroduced
In 1934, the year before testing, 7,343 people were killed on British roads, but that number dropped by over a thousand after the requirement to take a driving test was introduced. But talking again of evolution, and in terms of comparison, as automotive technology has progressed, since the time of the first driving test, we need to ask, has our driver training kept pace with the rise in vehicle performance?
In 1935 it was almost possible to count the number of cars being made that were capable exceeding 100mph on the fingers of one hand. Nowadays, it is possible to count upon the same number by use of the available digits the number of cars being made that can’t, so what has happened to our level of training over the same period?
ABS, EPS And Other Gizmo’s
The trouble is, whilst the human animal is quite adaptable, it is also arrogant and conceited, as we seem to think that whilst technology advances, and cars get ever more powerful and faster, we can evolve with them quite naturally. That could be a good reason why there is a necessity to fit ABS, EPS and all the other gizmo’s and gadgets that are there to stop us making an early voyage into the next world. To be quite clinical about this, those so–called safety aids are actually there to compensate for our own inadequacies as drivers, because if we were as highly skilled as our machines were fast, we wouldn’t actually need them.
Human beings are also creatures of habit. As habit forms it becomes comfortable, like a favourite pair of slippers. Yes, we feel comfortable with habit. After all, habit is so much part of our lives, but habit still feels comfortable even if what we are doing is actually potentially harmful, because as long as what we do doesn’t cause us any pain, we keep with the habit; and it is true that even the worst driver’s can feel comfortable doing what they do, because that is their habit. Habit is often confused with experience, as long–serving drivers will claim, but more often than not, the experience they speak of is little more than a deep–seated habit with which they have become ever more steadily comfortable.
The Driver Can be Outclassed by The Car
Very occasionally, when a high performance car is acquired to replace a lesser vehicle, a driver will admit they have become outclassed by the car, but it doesn’t happen often. People will be quite happy to jump from a production hatch into a thoroughbred machine and be equally content in carrying their DSA driving test skills across with them, believing perhaps that the high performance machine will provide high performance skills, and not that high performance skills are demanded by the high performance machine.
The point that is often completely missed is that human beings cannot raise their performance without the input of information to develop their performance, and that input of information, unfortunately enough, actually means getting some training. No one can wake up one morning and decide they are, from that moment on, going to be a more highly trained driver, because without the knowledge to work with, where are those additional and higher grade techniques going to come from?
Some People Are Natural Car Drivers
 It is true that some people are natural drivers, and it is equally true that some have the ability to become very effective drivers, but we are talking potential here, and potential to the full can only be realised if training is used so as to extract that potential.
So many drivers are locked in a world within which their current level of development has them pinned, and because every one of us will only know what we know, we sure as hell don’t know what we don’t know. However, when we take the plunge and investigate the prospect of being able to realise what we currently don’t know, we can then discover there is actually a whole different world out there on the road.
So, as the nation holds its breath in anticipation of the arrival of ever faster and more powerful cars, such as the Nissan GT-R for example, would it not be great to discover that the world is actually a sphere, and so leave all the others behind who are still working on the basis it is flat? The truth is, there are such discoveries to be made through advanced driver training, and they are actually just as profound.
Julian Smith
Ride Drive Limited
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