The Black, the White and the Grey

The Central and South Devon Riders and Drivers Group is passionate about Road Safety. To enhance that, we are happy to work with others who share that passion. One of our collaborators is Nigel Albright, a former member of the group, who now lives in Somerset and is involved with Advanced Driving there. We are publishing some of his articles here as Blogs, although some have also been produced by Wessex Advanced Drivers.

About Nigel:

Nigel made a focus of studying with Police Driving Instructors at The Metropolitan Police Driving School, Hendon and in the West Country from the early 1970’s.

He has a complete collection of Roadcrafts and has documented the key differences between them. He has also done research into the politics behind the changes introduced to the 1994 edition of Roadcraft.

Nigel is a past member of both IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) and RoADAR (Rospa Advanced Drivers and Riders, formerly RoSPA Advanced Drivers Association) and has been a Group Training Officer for both organisations. He was also a past South West Area Representative for RoADAR and was an Advanced Tutor for that organisation.

He took the BSM High Performance Course in 1974, later going on to achieve the additional Honours level. He was the first Chairman of the High Performance Club (1979) and has been a tutor on HPC Master Classes.

In the early 1980s Nigel passed the IAM advanced motorcycle test. In 1999 and 2000 he organised and ran the Combined Observer Training Programme at the Devon Drivers Centre with support from the Devon County Council Road Safety Unit.

From 1988-2001 Nigel ran the Thruxton Skid Seminar, an advanced skid control course, in conjunction with former Hendon Advanced Wing and skid pan instructor, Derek Van Petegem.

He has been member of AIRSO (The Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers) and in January 2003 was elected to membership of the Institute of Master Tutors of Driving (M. Inst. M.T.D) (www.imtd.org.uk).

In 2009 he ran a full day course for ADIs (Approved Driving Instructors) wishing to move into fleet driver training. He maintains a keen interest in the relationship between driver attitudes and behaviour and safety on the roads.

The Black, the White and the Grey

This is an item I have long felt the need to write. The inhibitor is that it is almost bound to offend some peoples’ sensibilities. That’s not my intention so, my apologies in advance where that happens but, so be it I’m afraid; I can’t get around that in telling the story. It’s basically about the range of road driving skills, the scale of differences and why they are significant. But, also why most people never move from the bottom end of the scale.

THE DIFFERENCE

As I look back on my driving experiences, which in this context really started in 1973, some ten years after passing my driving test, I reflect with a sense of pride how immensely fortunate I have been to meet, and often to know, people through what is really the complete range of road driving abilities in the UK. It was purely by chance that first experience was a group visit for a day to the Metropolitan Police Driving School at Hendon. This included a skid-pan demonstration and a high speed demonstration drive under commentary from Advanced Wing Instructors. These were people at the absolute top end of the scale whose sole concern was to know and to teach how do it safely in all circumstances and at the total range of speeds which could be done on the roads. There was no other agenda. There were none better anywhere in the world and the likes of which will fade into the mists of history unless we are very careful.

To understand what it took to be an instructor at that level one needs to know that there were three driving levels to go through before even getting to the instructor level. Those were the Standard, Intermediate and Advanced courses, each of three weeks residential at driving school with about a year on normal operational and patrol experience in between each. An instructor’s course was 9 weeks - 3 weeks repeater advanced course but, with a pass rate of at least 90% instead of 86% for a Class 1 or,75% for a Class 2, then 3 weeks instructor course and finally a 3 week course with first students under supervision.

Now, just imagine being an advanced course instructor for more than 20 years, doing drives with three students at up to 120mph on open roads and covering around 300 miles per day and bringing all back safely over all that time. That is why they were the best and their safety standard reflected that. When I last visited Hendon in 1982 the accident rate in the force area was 1:60,000. At driving school it was 1:230,000 miles – including Standard and Intermediate courses, which was an incredible standard. You can understand why police instructors from all over the world came to Hendon to study their way of doing things.

At the diametrical opposite end of the scale is the standard driving test which, by comparison, is an entry level; it’s the lowest acceptable level of competence for driving on the UK roads. Those qualified to teach people to pass are called ADIs or, Government Approved Driving Instructors. Qualifying as an ADI involves three parts. The first is theory and including the Hazard Perception Test, the second is a driving test and the third is on an ability to teach. The really interesting thing is that ADIs are periodically re-tested on their ability to teach, but never again on the quality of their driving. So what does Part 2 involve? As I understand it that is more or less a tighter version of the standard driving test, and that’s it, literally.

Between these two extremes sit all the other driving courses and advanced driving courses in the UK.

The other aspect to be aware of is the debrief in the case of advanced courses and the marking system in the case of the standard driving test. Broadly, the former will involve both positive and negative comments; the latter is not designed to give positive feedback or encouragement; merely to decide whether an individual has racked up sufficient major and/or minor faults to fail, otherwise they pass the basic entry level standard for driving on UK roads.

The whole DVSA/ADI ethos is orientated purely to what’s required for that basic standard driving test and nothing more. That is reflected in the whole scale of their work and whatever they influence. For that main reason in my book any course or test which is DVSA/ADI orientated would not be in the frame as far as an advanced test or training goes. Proper advanced driving courses originate through the police traffic divisions back to the police driving schools and not from the DVSA/ADI route although, with the demise of the former the latter now seems to be becoming more prevalent.

THE SCALE

Many will know that I grade drivers according to their vulnerability to crashes. It’s ultimately about safety, but to quantify this it’s about vulnerability. I use a scale of 1 to 100 where a low rating means high vulnerability. An advanced wing police driving instructor, such as I knew, would be in the upper nineties – there is no 100% rule, and therefore no 100% safety for anyone. By comparison, the standard driving test would be around twenty. Given that most drivers, if spot tested today, would almost certainly fail the standard test and most are unwittingly like the next crash waiting to happen, that would place them below the 20 mark. The top of the normal civilian advanced driving courses (RoSPA Gold and IAM Masters), would be in the 50s range. You can see that there is still a massive gap between those and the standard of advanced course police driving instructors I knew. I accept that these are my subjective opinions but, apart from my own experiences, when talking amongst my peer group there seems to be a broad agreement, so these views are probably not too far off the mark.

THE GREY

Jane Stewart-Smith was a remarkable lady. Born with one lung and one arm, that did not stop her achieving amazing things. But the other thing about her was her wonderful attitude. As one example she would drive sedately though built up areas at night time so that the vehicle noise would be a minimal intrusion to residents. But Jane also had a gentle way of bringing you down to earth, if necessary. On one occasion we had an exchange of views on some topic or another on driving, as we often did. Generally, we were in agreement but on this occasion, perhaps because she felt I was being a bit pedantic she said, ‘ You know, Nigel, the interesting thing about driving is that there is black at one end, white at the other, and an awful lot of grey in the middle, and that most of our decisions are made in the grey zone’. Like myself Jane had also done the British School of Motoring’s High Performance Course so we were normally talking from the same page. In those days being an IAM member allowed immediate access to the Course, and the Course itself was four intensive stages over three full days of driving. Jane had spent the additional two years or so working at it, with extra HPC drives, to progress through Honours and Silver to achieve the coveted Gold level. I had merely achieved the meagre Honours level. But, Jane’s comment about the grey zone indicated a possible range of options to a situation rather than just this or that, so a fluidity of thinking. Indeed, the further up the scale of knowledge and ability you go the wider the grey scale becomes and the greater the options develop for the safe handling of situations on the road.

THE BLACK AND THE WHITE

The introduction of the idea about the grey scale is interesting because at the entry level that does not really occur; at that end things are largely black and white. They have to be because you are dealing in basics and the UK national standard driving test for starting to drive on the roads which has to be seen to be scrupulously fair across so many thousands of people and many different cultures, so there is little or no room for flexibility. If you work with that on a day to day basis it is inevitable that it will become firmly imprinted on your psyche. My work with ADIs has shown just how difficult it is for most of them to move out of that black and white zone and be thinking in a more fluid way which is important in proper advanced work. That is a primary reason why I have never gone down the ADI route.

No, I don’t have a downer on ADIs. I retain good relations with a number of them but, outside those involved in advanced driving groups, which is the vast majority, I just wish more of them would take more pride, or even just pride, in the fact they are the only cadre of professional driving instructors in the country and also that they generally did not get defensive when anyone suggests there is more to life than Part 2. It’s very much a head in the sand job, almost as though anything over and above Part 2 is an attack on its status. No, the world does not finish at Part 2; in real terms that’s just about on the starting grid. Contrary to that, ADIs in general should be recognising where they are in the scale of things and be recommending their pupils to subsequently move to higher levels of competence; lowering their vulnerability to crashes and therefore increasing their safety level. This should be supported and re-enforced by the DVSA, but for proper advanced driving courses. Unfortunately, for most ADIs that will not happen also because in many cases there might not be any money in it for them and for the DVSA everything seems to relate back to their mindset relative to the standard driving test, so we are back where we started. It is therefore somewhat incongruous, and very worrying, that the DVSA has set themselves up as arbitrators of advanced tests whilst they retain the mindset of the basic entry level test. Therefore, having the epithet ‘DVSA Accredited’ is certainly not one I would want attached to any advanced course I might organise.

HILLS AND VALLEYS

Now, you may think that I have laboured unduly on the difference between the two extreme ends of driving abilities. Forgive me, but I stand by that in order to illustrate the real range of difference and the scale of things. This can be clarified with the hills and valleys concept.

If you are down in the valley all you can do is look out either horizontally or, upwards. Your horizontal view might be open, so you can see further up or down the valley or, it might be impeded by houses or trees but, one way or another, that is your range of viewing and the understanding of your situation.

Now, from the top of the hill you can look down and see all that the person in the valley can see, but also very much more. Additionally, you get a much better idea of the various elements in the valley and how they relate to one another, which the person in the valley will not even be able to grasp. The one in the valley will obviously have no idea of the view from the top unless they actually go there and there in is the rub, because it takes effort and some huffing and puffing to get up the hill. I can tell you what the view is like from the top but, (ignoring iPhones and all that) you will have no real idea unless you go there yourself. In driving terms, most people are not prepared to make the effort and, they might say, ‘why should they?’ Good point, and a pivotal one

WHY?

The answer lies in what might be best described as an unhealthy state of delusion.

Ask most drivers whether they are safe and the answer will almost inevitably be that since they haven’t had a crash, they are safe. Hmm. However, as you are learning now, safety in my book is a scale of vulnerability which is quite different. So, most sit in their comfort zone at the bottom of the valley and have absolutely no motive to do anything more than that. Very unfortunately that also involves many people in the road safety industry. But, by inference, being in the bottom of the valley also means a potentially higher level of vulnerability. Now it only takes the wrong fraction of a second for generally at least two parties to be involved in a crash. That doesn’t ignore the single vehicle crash; that is still going to be a moment of wrong judgement one way or another. But, that fraction of a second is normally all it needs; and a fraction of a second at precisely the wrong time for those two parties. That can result in fatality or serious injury and often being mentally scarred for life; not only for those directly involved but also for family and friends. That could happen today, tomorrow, in a few years’ time, or even never. Too many will pass very close to such a fraction of a second at some time or another and do not realise it, and that’s the really worrying bit. But the main thing is that the vulnerability is there, and few will want to recognise and deal with it in advance so that if, in a sense, the wrong fraction of a second should ever occur, they are not going to be part of it. Remember, that around 98% of crashes involve human error and that 98% of those will almost certainly say, ‘It wasn’t my fault’. That is exactly why moving up the scale and reducing vulnerability is so vitally important.

So, yes, do climb the hill; climb the mountain. Work up a sweat, start huffing and puffing. And, if you are part way up the hill, go further. Your family and friends, as your passengers, may never know what you have done to help keep them as safe as possible and, quietly, satisfyingly, it will have been well worth it.

© Nigel Albright 2019