Driving Fast

Tony Scotti

There is no doubt there are scenarios where one has to drive fast. The difficulty driving fast depends on three issues, the skill of the driver, the vehicle they are driving and the environment they are driving through.

As an example:
Driving a Formula Car at 100 MPH, that has a Center of Gravity (CG) a few inches off the ground is different than driving an armored SUV with high CG a 100 MPH.

Driving any car when the sun is shining and life is good vs. driving on an ice covered road; or driving in a three car convoy on a road dotted with one foot pot holes; or in a pursuit through an urban environment, is also different.

The bottom line is that driving fast is a complicated issue. Let's be clear that driving fast in a straight line is not difficult, (unless you are sitting in a metal tube with a 6000 HP engine behind you, planning on going 300 MPH in a quarter mile). Driving fast becomes difficult when you need to operate the controls of the vehicle. In a non racing scenario it makes no difference how fast you're traveling down a straight away, the skill comes in when you need to do something with the car, like driver around a corner or make an avoidance maneuver, at that point it becomes not an exercise in high speed straight line driving, but an exercises in high speed braking and/or turning. All this requires training and practice.

SOME BASIC THOUGHTS ON DRIVING FAST
As speed increases, drivers' eye tends to focus on objects just a short distance in front of the car's hood. Common sense says that the faster you drive the further ahead of the car your attention should be focused. In a high risk environment you need the eyes of everyone in the vehicle coupled with a method of communicating what they see to the driver, this also requires training and practice.

The faster you drive, the more often you should consult your speedometer. You cannot rely on your own judgment; the faster you drive, the more your perception of speed becomes distorted. This is how people in court over accidents cannot remember how fast they were going when the accident began. Hence you get these exaggerated claims of how fast they were driving.

Don't drive faster than you can see. If you are driving at 60 MPH you are moving approximately 90 Feet a Second, most researchers say that you need 2.5 seconds to react to what you see, that means at 60 mph you would need 225 feet to react to what is happening. It is my opinion that training considerably cuts down those 2.5 seconds.

This is the most important issue and training point - When you increase speed, you are suddenly driving a very different car from the one you were in control of a few moments ago. If you double your speed from 40 mph to 80 mph, the forces acting on the vehicle when you operate the controls of the vehicle, has been increased four times. Turning the steering wheel at 80 mph will put four times as much stress on the car as the same maneuver at 40 mph. It will also take you four times longer to stop the vehicle. A car's controls are extremely sensitive to speed, the faster you go, the more sensitive the vehicles braking and steering become. Small changes in speed (as little as 2 MPH) will change the vehicle characteristics. Any one who has been to one of our programs knows this sensation, we drill it home. Controlling a vehicle while driving into a corner or through an emergency maneuver is a skill that needs to be learned, practiced, and measured.

To give an example of how sensitive vehicles are to speed; our slalom exercise is designed to create a 110 foot radius, which means that in our Crown Vics a competent driver can drive through the slalom at 30 MPH with little or no problems; at 32 life will start to become exciting; at 35, doable but very exciting; at 37.5 the car will be sliding, but again doable; at 40 you will not make it. A change of about 2 MPH will be the difference between successes and failure. How this translates to the real world is that you can be driving 100 MPH in a straight line (easy to teach, it's the pedal on the right - press on it) but if you need to make an emergency maneuver or drive around a corner you will have to slow the car down from 100 MPH to a speed that the driver - vehicle - environment can handle, and that is not easy to teach or master.

If you have any questions email me at tonyscotti@securitydriver.com.