It was a sad day last Saturday, i got the news one of my friends had died in a car crash, only 21 and honestly a little ray of sunshine. No one yet knows the full details of what exactly happened but from the details is pretty obvious, driving without due care and attention. Little 106 with 4 passengers going round a notorious bad corner, driver (my friend) declared dead at the scene.

Comes at a worry time, my little niece is about to pass her test and she is the kind of person who does not understand the physics and attitude of a car when pushed too far. When i passed my test i was a studying motor vehicle and understood how a car would be behave in any given situation and had an understanding of how deadly it can be.

I want to make her see that she is not invincible behind the wheel, any good tips? Im going to take her out in my car, on the road that my friend lost his life and give her a proper insight in a safe environment of how things can go wrong (not drive like an idiot but make her see it in a different perspective) As i know alot people know, you dont actually learn to drive untill you have passed your test.

Has anyone else done this sort of thing? I want to scare her to the point of driving safe no matter what but dont scare her too much that she will become nervous.

Sorry to go on but i dont want her to make the same fateful mistake my friend did

Sorry to hear that, Ema :(

How about arrange a skid-pan session for her?

Thats a good idea, from what iv heard from her driving instructor (same person who taught me) she is needs abit of confidence building. Ill have a look into and hope they dont cost too much

When i was learning to drive a college friend told me to first become confident on back lanes/country roads (which are plentiful around here) then normal roads will be easy, best advice i was ever given

When I passed my test at 17, almost immediately I was put on driving duties at work. With work running a big car rental agency for a large car rental company, I was slung in at the deep end. Took about a year, but i was eventually allowed out totally unsupervised collecting some quite high end cars (at the time) from other depots in the evenings, if we didn't have anything to swap I'd take my mates so that they could drive something back.

Recipe for disater you might think, but by behaving responsibly we didn't have any mishaps.

I'm fed up of telling my brother not to ride his scooter like a ****. It's a learning curve, some people have their head screwed on from the start others it takes a scare to make them realise how dangerous driving car be.

Sorry to hear of the accident. I take it since your asking your expecting your niece to be a bit of a nutter behind the wheel? Skid pan could be a good shout, or maybe a track day to show its more enjoyable to put your foot down off the road?

firstly, my condolences on your friend.

skid pan days are good, I did one when doing the ambulance driving, and blue light emergancy response drivivng courses....

and advice on teaching her more , feel free to PM me, and I will do my best to help.

another thing to consider is the car she drives. a 106 (saxo) is notoriously bad in a crash

here ncap 2 saxo

notice the complete destruction of the pasenger cell..

and an ncap 5 car (grande punto)

notice the passenger cell stays completely intact...

I went to an RTC recently on a fast A-road, that involved a toyota pick up hitting a BMW 5 series (reletavily new ncap 5) both travelling opposite directions, both doing 60mph (120mph into stationry object crash)

they hit front corner to corner, I went to the BMW driver (still in his car) fearing the worst as I walked past little peices of his front offside alloy wheel (it shattered) and suspension... there was nothing left of the drivers side corner of his car, no wheel, no suspension, nothing at all... on inspection, i could see the hardened steel plate around where his feet were in the reinforced safety cell..... his injuries were a bump on his shin! (some cars like the fiat 500 have airbags here, so he woul;dnt have even got that!) we let him go... in a saxo he would have died...

the country roads you are talking about... ESP is a ver good thing to have on the car...

check this out... specifically from 3 minutes (and another example at 2 minutes) where the car goes off a tarmac road onto wet leaves, and you see ESP equipped and non ESP equipped cars and what happens to them!

these cars need not be expensive, and ESP equipped NCAP 5 mercedes A-class can be had for less than £1000

of course, not getting there in the first place would be good, I can teach all sorts of advanced drivivng, (including psychological stuff like building confidence) if I can help , let me know :yes:

I understand your fears, I go to RTC's all the time (I was helping to intubate a 12 yo girl on the roadside yesterday! :( ) hopefully she will be ok, and that was just a bike accident!

check out your local fire service, alot of them do courses where they show shocking videos of road accidents, and give talks, to try and instill the idea that "you might die, if you get it wrong" these things help...

again, sorry about your friend.

D.

I would say take her out in your car around the lanes and try to explain how a car steers and brakes, ie wheels unloading and loading etc.

Does she have her own car yet? try and teach her how that reacts to changes, maybe find a large open space to try and demonstraight understeer and oversteer.

Maybe do it over a few weeks, so not to overload.

And sorry for your loss.

Sorry to hear about your friend.

For your niece, I can understand what people are saying about a skid pan course and yes it can give an appreciation for how a car handles but I would caution that what you may achieve with it is to encourage her to drive harder and faster on the assumption she 'knows' how the car handles and will behave and that she will be able to deal with a skid.

What I think you are after is trying to teach her responsibility behind the wheel and an understanding of the potential consequences of driving. A good way to start may bo to talk about the incident involving your friend, perhaps knowing about this and the affect it has had on you may go someway to getting her to drive sensibly and realise a car is not an invincible road shell.

That video was a good watch tbh! My niece will not be driving anything without ESP/ ABS and a higher NCAP rating, ill make sure of this!

Its not that she is a girl racer in the the making but i know how easily she is influenced by her peers, this is when crashes are most likely to happen but not only that she does not have the basic understanding of how a car works, how different road conditions and drastically affect control. No where near an understanding of how a car handles, i.e over/under steer. I want her to build her confidence slowly. Round here its pretty much all country roads and i dont want her to think 'oh i can do 60mph round here, my friends do it all the time' and get it wrong, i want her to think for her own safety and set her own limits, not try and beat other peoples.

When i was learning to drive i went to them safety meeting your on about Shark and they were a massive eye opener, they should be made mandatory for all learners.

Theres so many things i want to explain and show her, i.e different tyres, how budgets handle compared to premiums, to plan ahead and look further then the end of your bonnet. Other road users, planning and anticipation. All the things i learnt when i passed but i had the basic understanding of what happens when you push your luck (thanks to my college course) how the car's handling characteristics change when the car is full/empty ect ect

Its a sad loss for my friend but on the same hand he souldt of been driving like an idiot, im not for once second going to say he deserved what he got, no one deserves that fate but i want this to a lesson to her.

tyres are of course important...... also insist on regular pressure checks... when I lived in sheffield a car (4 18 yo girls) crashed and killed them all, she wasn't sppeding, didnt have any drink or drugs in her, was doing nothing wrong, car was fine EXCEPT all 4 tyres were underinflated...........

Yeah things like that, like her mother and father and most people around her (except me) see driving as getting from A-B and B back to A. Thinking a tyre is just a tyre, regardless of make, cost, compound ect end of the day thats the only thing keeping you stuck to the road and they are largely, in my opinion, over looked.

My dad was a mechanic by trade and i distinctively remember him explaining the importance of handling, how to go round a corner correctly, it was instilled into me from a young age. So in a way i was lucky, i knew the facts wether i liked it or not. My niece has not been been brought up in the environment i had, so im having to do it all, which i dont mind at all but it comes abit late!

you know what though Emma, alot will depend on what she is like as a person.... Ash (my g/f) has only been driving just over a year, so hasn't alot of experiance, but she IS careful, so the right attidude helps..... if you think you are indestructable, something bad will happen....

addressing how she sees drivivng and safety will be good...

I was teaching a young lad who would always drive too fast and try too hard to do things he wasn't capable of...

I explained to him, the girls will get in you car more often if they feel safe with you, NOT if you try to show off to them

you see your interest in cars drivivng, mechanics ect has driven your attitude.....

get her into it

An excellent, but all to often overlooked, way of learning to actually "drive" rather than just operate a vehicle, is to join your local motor club and get involved in motorsport. It needn't be expensive and it gives you the chance to have fun and excitement in cars without such a huge risk to oneself or others.

I regularly compete in a motorsport discipline called Autosolo, which is basically driving a set route around cones as quickly as possible. The courses are set so you will be using only 1st and 2nd gear so the main emphasis is on car control rather than all out speed. In the 4 years I have been doing it, I've learnt more about how a car handles than from anything you can do on the road.

This video is of me and a friend Autosoloing in the car park at Silverstone

http://s273.photobuc...ontage_0003.mp4

An excellent, but all to often overlooked, way of learning to actually "drive" rather than just operate a vehicle, is to join your local motor club and get involved in motorsport. It needn't be expensive and it gives you the chance to have fun and excitement in cars without such a huge risk to oneself or others.

I regularly compete in a motorsport discipline called Autosolo, which is basically driving a set route around cones as quickly as possible. The courses are set so you will be using only 1st and 2nd gear so the main emphasis is on car control rather than all out speed. In the 4 years I have been doing it, I've learnt more about how a car handles than from anything you can do on the road.

This video is of me and a friend Autosoloing in the car park at Silverstone

http://s273.photobuc...ontage_0003.mp4

I've often thought about your motorsport Hayden.... I've seriously considered it!

As a person she is confident and sure of herself but like i said, she is easily influenced by friends. If she was in the car by herself i would predict she would be safe, it with friends that i worry about, she will be the first to drive out of her group of friends. When she is with peers she is very daring and sometimes daft i.e drinking, staying out late, basically does what she pleases, i dont want this attitude to carried through to her driving.

I will take her out in my car soon, show her what i can and explain what i can but i dont know what depth i need to go to untill i see her driving, if she drives with the lead foot i will come down on her like a ton of bricks, drives like miss daisy i will with reinforce what i have said.

One thing i will say to her is, im out in the car alot If i catch you driving like an idoit, i will hunt you down, take your keys off you and make you take the bus home, aswell as playing war!

its sad emma, but just due to the age.... (I assume she's 17) I drove stupidy when I was 17 and had a few crashes..... I was too immature.

thats why their insurance is so high, its statistics that they are going to be the ones to crash...

is she going to do her pass plus? I'll come over to whitby if she wants to do it in a vRS !

Yeah she is 17. Must admit we are all daft at that age, i myself was but i dont her to.

Not sure if she doing pass plus but ill ask her to see if she will.

Yeah she is 17. Must admit we are all daft at that age, i myself was but i dont her to.

Not sure if she doing pass plus but ill ask her to see if she will.

Good idea+ skid training. First one ups standard of driving. Second one will teach her the causes and how to avoid,by showing her what happens in one .In the meantime on those country lanes, she should start slowly, ignore any idiots behind, sitting on her tail, she can always let them past -it's no shame to do so.Mind you if she's got a green P on the rear , I'd wonder who the better driver is? IAN advice (as I'm led to believe ),is to slow down ,and let them pasr ,to have their acident away from you,and not involving you

Then there's

Principals like COAST - Concentration, Consideration, Courtesy, Observation, Anticipation, Awareness, Attitude, Space (your safety space all about you) and Two second rule, Time for journey & Time to react

Personally, I'd pick an airfield day over a skid-pan day - on the skid pan everything is happening very slowly and you have time to think and correct. On an airfield day (especially in the winter) you can explore the limits of the car in "real world" conditions and at real world speeds to realise just how much time and space is needed to recover from a loss of control situation. However, I'm not sure doing either of those is a good first step.

Ultimately, the first hurdle she needs to overcome if she is to learn anything is her attitude to driving and her feeling of invincibility, especially if she's in a "safe" car that gets her out of scrapes without her realising what happened. One approach I find often works, especially in competitive young'uns, is to challenge them to do an advanced course with one of their relatives ... or you if you're feeling brave - IAM and RoADAR both offer very cheap courses (which a large number of insurers recognise) and she'll learn a lot of useful skills which will likely change her approach to driving.

Chris

Cheers for all your advice guys, im going to have a word with her and also have another talk with her instructor to get a better look at what i can do.

Sorry to hear about your friend Ema_jane,i read about the accident,that road is a tricky one for the unexperienced driver,quite a fast road to in places,my niece is around the same age as yourself & i do worry about her when she is out in her car & as a passenger in her friends cars,you can only do so much to help & care for their saftey,i as most people did silly things when i was younger behind the wheel,hopefully you learn from your mistakes,you sound like you have a mature head on young shoulders which is rare to see nowadays!

The problem is, the last thing heard from the driver of such crashes is something along the lines of "watch this lads" :(

Trying to lighten the mood slightly

EJ said "When i passed my test i was a studying motor vehicle "

With your looks, you'd have to be something like an E-type Jaguar or a Ferrari 250GTO.

Seriously, I used to work with someone (I'll call him Frank, because that was his name) who's son thought that he (the son) was Scotland's answer to Ayrton Senna. Frank cured him of this by taking him for an absolute maximum attack drive.

On the credit side, women drivers are more likely to crash due to inattention rather than showing off.

Also, due to lack of bandwidth I can't do this for you but try a YouTube search for Scottish Government road safety adverts. There's a bunch of these out now majoring on paying attention and reading the road rather than "speed kills".