Dazzler, I did a defensive driving course years ago (it was a freebe when I bought a new car) and more recently had chance to sit in on a couple of sessions with a different provider. They are about attitude, observation and anticipation. It's not about party tricks but you do need to know a little theory about how a vehicle behaves. e.g. if all four wheels have locked up you will travel in a straight line. You can't steer.
There is a difference between experience and skills. You can't teach the former but you can practice the latter on a closed road or racetrack.
Sorry, should have said the majority not all. My bad.Actually I took the easy option.
The truth is that if the training is not done on a public street for a lot of hours then its BS. If theres a cone in sight or an instructor with a whistle its nothing more than party tricks that make people think they have learnt things that make them a better driver. I went on about this once before but will try and make it brief.
The cops are a good example of driver training. Whether you like them or hate them they come from a pretty good representative pool of society. Some have a real interest in driving and driving well, some are so so and some just dont care.
From 95 to 01 I was a driver trainer with the cops and ran it from 98 to 01. We ran every course from basic car to 4wd to heavy truck. Did the police bikes and pursuit cars and general duties, surveillence drivers and counter terrorist drivers.
The 4wd ones were really successful and the skills learnt stayed with the drivers.
Our basic course was 3days. About 50/50 theory skills. Braking, cone work, skidding etc.
The basic plus course was another 2 days on road/track.
After that was the general policing course which was the basic plus with another week covering higher speeds/urgent duty driving and police chases.
The surveillence course was for those doing surveillence work which is a similar course to the general course but focusing on using unmarked cars. The big focus, and what the students loved was the skidding. Rear wheel and front wheel. Understeer and oversteer on the skid pan or using the trolley vehicles where you could dial in what the car did, oversteer or underteer.
At the end of the course they had to meet the competencies of the course to pass. Everyone thought it was the ducks guts. But, in about 98 we introduced retesting every second year or immediately after an accident. The failure rate was almost 100%.
If you use skidding as an example whether the car understeered or oversteered they braked. Every time. You would need to go back to basics and reteach it all again. Now as you know if you brake through a corner that you have entered too fast and you brake then you will induce a rear wheel skid and off you go into the trees. If you go too fast into the corner then the only option is to straighten the wheels, brake and then turn into the corner again.
What did the drivers do? Jump on the brakes and wind the wheel away as hard as they could into the corner making it worse. And they did this time and time again.
They did however maintain some of the observation anticipation skills that were taught but in some cases even these needed to be retaught. Simple things like 'why arent you covering the brake as we approach that intersection' and the like. Peripheral vision is almost non existent.
Most of the trainers were stunned at the outcome. Keep in mind these are people who had had at least 10 days of training and many are out there responding at high speed. If you compare this with the testing outcomes of the highly advanced drivers and its chalk and cheese.
It has recently changed but back then to become a pursuit driver (or highway patrol) you first needed to pass the pursuit bike course which was 5 weeks and had a 60 - 70% fail rate. After two years on the bikes, without accident, they could do the car course. This was another 3 weeks. It was only once they reached this level that everything learnt was still there. We even had drivers come back after 15yrs with CIB or the like and they still retained what was taught.
I think it actually comes down to the theory about how many times you need to do something over and over to make it instinctive. This cant be achieved in 1 day, a weekend or even 10 days in the majority of people. The important thing imo is observation and anticipation which can only be achieved by hours and hours of one on one on the road.
My $1.58c anyway.
