Should I complete a defensive driving course?

Ask Bathurst-winning race driver, carsales reviewer and advanced driving instructor Luke Youlden whether drivers should undertake a course in car control and the answer is unequivocal. "Absolutely."

Youlden, who admits to having a bee in his bonnet on the subject of driver training, is scathing in his response to any suggestion that defensive driving courses encourage younger, inexperienced drivers to take more risks on the road. He uses a pilot training analogy to knock holes in the argument.

"You don't NOT train pilots because they're going to be too confident," he says.

"It's bizarre... The cops say 'You're going to be over-confident if we train you', but that's just ridiculous. I just don't understand that mentality.

"It actually probably works the other way in my experience, because how many race drivers do you see crashing cars on the road and dying? How many race drivers do you see getting locked up for driving under the influence and doing stupid things? It's footy players and the sort of guys who have no car training, isn't it?"

If anything, Youlden suggests, some of the students attending his courses could do with a little more confidence, the sort of confidence that comes with knowledge and practical experience.

"If you're not confident to cross your arms and turn the steering wheel – which most people aren't – then you're going to pretty efficiently – with all the systems in the car – get to what you don't want to hit."

Defensive driving courses, as the name suggests, are aimed primarily at keeping drivers safe on the roads. These courses usually cover theory as well as practical learning. The students for these courses are without exception motivated to learn more about gaining the most from vehicle dynamics.

Yet Youlden makes the point that many of the drivers fronting up for the courses he runs – Porsche at the moment, but other brands too in 2021 – are often lacking the essential skills to avoid a crash, even those drivers who have some years of experience.

Driver training to obtain a licence is a prime example of studying to pass a test. Returning to his preferred analogy of pilot training, Youlden says that driver training is the polar opposite.

"You can't get a [pilot’s] licence without doing an engine cut-off, an emergency landing... that sort of stuff," Youlden observes.

"All we have to do to get our licence is a parallel park and a three-point turn. How many people actually die performing those two manoeuvres?"

It’s not just younger drivers who can benefit from a defensive driving course, Youlden says. Older drivers who perhaps picked up bad habits from watching their parents drive over an 18-year period before obtaining their own licence could do with having some of those bad-habit barnacles knocked off.

And many drivers also remain in a technological time warp, rarely if ever adapting to newer, better vehicle systems entering the market.

"There's always something you can learn," says Youlden, "and they'd probably get the most benefit out of it because they've been usually driving the wrong way for 30 years, and technology changes.

"When they first got their licence, for example, '10 to 2' was a little bit more relevant, because the wheel was so big and there was a million turns lock to lock..."

Universally equipped with power steering, modern cars make redundant that old rule for positioning the hands on the steering wheel. Yet many of us still hold the wheel that way.

Perhaps we’ve been lucky enough to have some of our own personal barnacles removed by an above-average driving instructor. It’s more likely, however, that the driving instructor who helped us to obtain our licence when we were 18 was teaching us how to obtain a pass – while inflicting upon us other bad habits that need to be quietly euthanised.

"We're taught all the wrong things from the word go anyway, from our driving instructors – like 10 to 2 on the wheel and push/pull and all this rubbish," says Youlden.

"So [a defensive driving course] puts all that straight for a start, and it gives us awareness."

Many older drivers have learned little about vehicle dynamics other than the minimal knowledge they need for daily driving – not what they need to know in an emergency. According to Youlden: "90 per cent of people still think you can roll a car over if you cross your arms."

Most drivers – even those who have been on the roads for years – don’t understand braking distances. They think arithmetically rather than geometrically, simply doubling the braking distance for double the speed, when they should be quadrupling the braking distance.

Nor do drivers look far enough ahead.

"That's why you have nose-to-tail crashes on the freeway when all people need to do is keep your vision up and look to the emergency lane and swerve to the right or swerve to the left."

Driver-assist and active safety systems are increasingly common in the modern car. They can include electronic stability control, lane-keep assist and autonomous emergency braking, to name but a few.

Youlden has mixed feelings about these systems.

"Even with stability control... it only knows where to go from where you've got the wheel [turned]. You can quite easily spin a car with stability control; I see it every day at driver training because people just keep the wheel straight.

"You have to look and steer where you want the car to go, which is a fundamental thing that we're not taught.

"Cars aren't smart enough yet to realise they want to miss a tree…"

Systems such as AEB won’t save you from a nasty prang if someone makes a right turn in front of you. Maybe the glare from the setting sun is in their eyes or they misjudged your speed and then couldn’t get traction on a wet road.

For whatever the reason, AEB probably won’t react fast enough to save you from colliding with the other car. It certainly won’t take over the steering and swerve around the other vehicle. But a switched-on driver might...

Youlden commends electronic stability control but notes that it’s only as effective as the input it receives from the driver.

"With stability control, the basic rules are: you look and steer where you want the car to go, so the more aggressive you are with the car the more the car recognises there's an issue and it will do everything it can to help you.

"If you're negotiating a 180-degree corner, and you're only turning a quarter of a turn, the stability control won't engage, because it doesn't recognise there's an issue.

"But if you just go full left lock... it goes 'oh f...k! I really want to go left here', so it will fire the brakes to go left and it helps you [complete] the turn."

For the foreseeable future, then, driving skills remain an important element of road safety, and enhancing those skills has to help lower the road toll, even if next year Toyota brings out a Corolla that is better at avoiding crashes than 90 per cent of the driving population.

It’s the remaining 10 per cent you want sharing the road with you... and those drivers are likely to have learned their art from a defensive driving course.

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