Shaun de Jager

May 8th, 2012
By: Shaun de Jager
CEO
RADriverTraining.ca

It’s not much of a leap of logic to realize that with the arrival of Spring, motorcycle crashes are on the rise. This happens every year around this time — more bikes on the road equals more bikes involved in crashes. Although what’s bothersome about this is that most of the motorcycle crashes at this time of year involve other vehicles at intersections — at least it seems so based on initial reports and prior to conclusive crash scene reconstruction. What’s also bothersome is that in most cases where a motorcycle is involved in a crash with another vehicle at an intersection, the fault of the collision usually falls on the driver and not the rider — which is statistically substantiated.

The most common thing the driver says….”I didn’t see them”.

This isn’t an excuse and the reality is that the driver didn’t look properly. This also goes for when cyclists and pedestrians are struck by cars. Okay, it’s not always the drivers fault. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists have been known to dart out in front of a vehicle without looking but in most cases its the lack of driver awareness that results in a crash.

Believe it or not, crash rates are at their highest during the Summer and usually occur on sunny days when driving conditions are ideal. So if road and weather conditions aren’t a factor…what’s causing drivers to crash?

You can probably narrow it down to two main factors…driver behaviour and lack of situational awareness.

^ Nearly hit by turning car

As a road user, regardless of your chosen mode of travel, it’s up to you to do everything you can to stay safe on the road. Some people tend to forget that driving on our roads is the one thing we do on a regular basis that has the potential to get us killed and it really only takes one person to not pay attention to create the conditions for a crash to occur. You could also say that it really only takes one person to pay a lot of attention and therefor be able to recognize the potential for dangerous situations and avoid them entirely, therefore no collisions occur. Look twice and pay attention. Look THREE times and be extra sure that nobody is coming before making that turn, or lane change, or before going through an intersection.

Recently at least five separate motorcyclists were involved in crashes with vehicles in the Greater Toronto Area over the first weekend in May. Furthermore, there have been about 18 motorcycle crashes for the month of April that occurred in and around the GTA as far as this writer is aware of (although I’m sure there are more).

Contrary to the beliefs of many, not all motorcyclists are ‘big bad bikers’ or ‘crotch rocket hooligans’ anymore than all cyclists are ‘crazy couriers’ slinging a satchel. Nor are all pedestrians mindless drones that blindly walk in front of cars and not all car drivers are ‘careless, clueless jerks’ who are out to kill everyone on the road. Regardless of our opinion of other road users, you’re probably just as much a part of the problem (or at least occasionally have been at times) but you can also be part of the solution.

We all need to pay a lot more attention on our roads, regardless of if you are a driver, cyclist, pedestrian, or motorcyclist. Your life and your future is in your hands but they are also in the hands of others…people whom you’ve never even met. Conversely…their life is in your hands too.

Before taking to our roadways, clear your mind of everything (positive or negative because both can distract you), avoid as many in-car distractions as possible and focus solely on the road.

Remember…road safety starts with you.

^ Driver runs red light

Less than a month away!

EXOTIC CAR RIDE CHARITY EVENT FOR
THE JAMES FUND

Enjoy an enthusiastic ride around an actual AutoSlalom course in your favourite super car!

FERRARI, VIPER, PORSCHE, LOTUS, LAMBORGHINI, CORVETTE, AUDI & MORE!
for a donation to The James Fund

WHEN: SATURDAY, JUNE 2nd, 2012 – noon to 5 pm

WHERE: POWERADE CENTRE, 7575 KENNEDY RD. S. BRAMPTON, ONT

Please come out and support The James Fund to find a cure for neuroblastoma.

About The James Fund – http://www.jamesfund.ca

The James Fund for Neuroblastoma Research is a specific fund nestled within SickKids Foundation. Our status as what is called a “restricted fund” means that every dollar raised by the Fund proceeds directly to support research and investigation into new therapies and ultimately a cure for Neuroblastoma.
Neuroblastoma is the major malignant tumour of children outside of the brain. It is inevitably fatal in children over one year of age and it accounts for almost as many cancer deaths in children as does leukemia. In Canada alone, one child dies every week from Neuroblastoma.

100% of the proceeds go directly to the James Fund as all costs and expenses have been donated by our sponsors, drivers & volunteers.

A portion of donations will cover the administrative expenses of The James Fund for Neuroblastoma Research at SickKids and are subject to the Terms and Conditions set out at www.sickkidsfoundation.com/designatedgiving
Please contact us at www.carcontrolschool.com for more information or if you would like to volunteer your time or super car!
Thank you.

Greetings everyone. My friend and I picked up her new (well it’s new to her) 2009 URAL Patrol 2WD on Apr. 2nd from Peterborough Salvage. We drove up in her car and with me being a more skilled rider, I was to pilot the Ural home to Toronto. This was also going to be my only chance to ride the bike for a while since I was scheduled for a major knee surgery the very next day. After messing around in the parking lot for a few minutes (while the paperwork was being completed) I hit the asphalt and took all the quiet back roads back to the city.

It was an absolute blast riding the Ural and although it was my first time riding a bike like this, I took to it quite naturally (admittedly though it was quite exhausting). Even now after my surgery, I smile every time I recall the experience.

Once we got home, my friend decided to take it for a ride herself. I was shocked however when she returned home just ten minutes later. Her first ride on the Ural was very unsettling for her. She had driven her car behind me for the two hours it took me to drive the Ural home and I made it look effortless. She didn’t realize just how much effort it took to ride it. Needless to say, she was very disappointed in herself.

With my surgery booked for the next day, there is no way I will be able to ride it again for a few weeks, nor will I be able to go out with her to help her learn how to ride it on her own. All I could do was encourage her to take the bike out on her own. I found a great pdf online that explained in simple terms how to ride a Ural, so I made her read it and last weekend, when the weather was nice, I talked her into taking the bike out and she did. She took it to a parking lot and spent some time practicing and once she was more comfortable, she spent a couple hours out on the road. Breakthrough!

With all she had read and the words of advice that I provided, she was able to overcome her fears and increase her confidence and skill and it took a couple days for the grin on her face to reduce a little. Yup…now she’s hooked.

She’s out riding as much as she can and I’m so very jealous as I sit here with my leg propped up for the next few weeks while I recover. Although as soon as I can…I’ll be back in the saddle! This summer will be filled with many camping trips with the Ural as well as attending a few local charity events. I hope to see some of you out there.

It’s already been quite a busy and active year and 2012 is only three months old. In the first couple months alone I took an instructor training course and was certified and licensed by the Ministry of Transportation as a Driving Instructor. I’ve been coaching and instructing for nearly eight years but only under closed course conditions or on race tracks. I also spent seemingly endless days on end at the Canadian Motorsports Expo and the Canadian International Autoshow representing the ILR Car Control School as one of their instructors.

If that wasn’t enough, I’ve also spent a fair amount of time up in Minden teaching drivers how to perform emergency maneuvers on ice and snow that you could barely walk on. Unfortunately, the Winter School had a short season, thanks to abnormally warm weather resulting in little snow and winter driving wasn’t really on the fore thoughts of most drivers.

With my new-found credentials and licensing, I’m now able to take my skills, knowledge and experience as an instructor to the average person so I started doing exactly that and launched RA Driver Training, which ties in nicely with the RoadAwareness.org campaign that I started a few years ago.

I didn’t realize that so many middle aged and senior drivers required assistance with their driving skills but after doing a lot of research, I found that millions of drivers will need assistance from specialized instructors like me in the very near future. It’s interesting that so far, all of my private students have been older drivers who need some brushing up on their driving skills, confidence building or assistance dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (as a result of being in serious crashes). I’ve also assisted drivers who have some physical limitations and taught them how to work around them so that it doesn’t affect their driving ability.

As the year goes on, there are many things that I would like to do and continue doing. First and foremost, continuing to build my reputation as a specialized private driving instructor as well as instructing for the ILR Car Control School and various private track days at local race tracks, some of which will be hosted by local car clubs or companies. Some of the others include getting back out on a motorcycle again, spending more time camping and assisting with various charity events like Ride for Sight, the BAD Ride, WROAR, and the Ride for Dad to name a few.

This is sure to be a very interesting, busy and rewarding year and I hope to see you out there.

It’s estimated that six people die on Canadian roads every day but in recent years we’ve seen up to 4000 deaths annually. Add to that the number of fatalities from the United States (over 43,000 fatalities a year) and it becomes clear that we have numbers that could be considered genocide. Now compare this fatality rate to say the airline industry. If they had a similar death rate in North America, it would equate to about four commercial airplanes crashing each week. Would you fly with that type of death rate? If I gave your family free tickets to Disney World, would you take it without a second thought?

Vehicle and road safety have evolved by leaps and bounds in the past few decades but crashes on North American roads have spiked drastically. Sure part of that can be explained because there are simply more cars on the road but cars don’t crash themselves; drivers do and little has been done to address them as the sole factor of collisions.

Crash scenes are played out over 100 times a day across North America and each time it’s up to the police to figure out what happened and why. Police officers know as a rule people make terrible witnesses and usually have little idea what actually happened despite their “I saw the whole thing!” claims. Generally speaking, bystanders notice the affects of a crash but only what led up to it…not ‘the cause’. As such there is always a lot of finger pointing resulting with police and insurance companies having to piece together various clues, evidence and statements to get an idea what happened.

Crash scene investigation and forensics have come a long way but in many cases, there are still unanswered questions and police must fall upon experience and speculation to come up with a reasonable explanation of what happened. This is especially true when there are no bystanders who witnessed the collision and the drivers involved both succumb to their injuries or simply can’t remember what happened due to short-term memory loss.

This is where digital video footage comes into play. Many times, crash scene investigators have relied upon traffic cameras to provide important clues as to how the crash occurred. What’s still missing though is what leads up to the crash. What really caused it? Did the driver fall asleep? Was the driver talking on a cell phone? Did they spill coffee on their lap causing a sudden distraction that caused them to veer out of their lane or into oncoming traffic?

Had the vehicles involved in the crash been equipped with in-car camera systems, investigators would have a better understanding of what actually happened in the crash and what lead up to it.

The technology already exists and is widely used in professional motorsports. Onboard camera systems feed into an enclosed computer system with various sensors tied into the vehicle that provide a video recording with over-lays of speed, RPM’s, G-forces, as well as steering, throttle and brake inputs. All this data is recorded onto a digital flash drive, which can later be downloaded for analysis.

This type of technology should be regulated into all new vehicles and include a camera pointing forward out the windshield to record the environment outside the car and a camera inside on the windshield pointing backward to record what happens inside the vehicle (which would also capture impacts from behind). Both lenses could be mounted on the rear view mirror so that they don’t affect the driver’s vision.

Now before any civil rights advocates or ‘Big Brother’ haters flood my inbox with arguments of ‘invasion of privacy’ you need to realize that anytime you are in public, you can already be recorded at any time (and you are) and by being in a public place, there is no reasonable argument for privacy. Even if in your own home, if I can see you from the street through your open curtains, you can legally be recorded. The same is true while in your vehicle. By law, there must be clear sight into your vehicle (although some level of tinting is allowed) and as such you can still be recorded.

Now I can understand that you may not want hours and hours of recordings of you inside your vehicle should you be captured singing to yourself or picking/scratching some part of your body that may be embarrassing on camera. But hundreds of hours of footage aren’t practical anyway and quite frankly…nobody is interested. What is interesting would be the five minutes leading up to a collision, the collision itself and the 15 minutes or so afterward. Let’s consider why…

-          The previous five minutes before a crash can provide valuable information as to the circumstances that lead up to a crash. Was there some sort of distraction? Was the driver behaving dangerously? Did they fall asleep? Was a traffic law disobeyed, ignored or un-noticed?

-          The crash itself would provide extremely important information to emergency room trauma staff in understanding what injuries have been suffered beyond initial ER assessments. If this information can be shown to doctors, it may assist them in saving your life by speeding diagnosis of injury thereby possibly reducing the severity of consequent disabilities and speeding recovery time. The footage can also be sent to vehicle manufacturers as scientific data of what forces are really experienced in real-world crashes so that they can further develop the passive safety systems in cars to help you survive a crash in future models.

-          After-crash footage could be valuable in training emergency first responders (paramedics and firefighters) in how to improve their life saving techniques.

Now some people may also fear that their insurance rates will be impacted because they regularly drive above the speed limit or cautiously roll through the occasional stop sign (neither of which you should be doing anyway) but keep in mind that storing endless hours of footage is simply not practical…just the five minutes leading up to the crash and about 15 minutes following it. Therefore, if you are involved in a collision, only the footage surrounding that specific occurrence could be used as evidence since the system would be programmed to record on a loop until a collision occurs.

Another great reason to install them would be to ensure a greater level of personal accountability while driving. If you know you’re being recorded, you will be less likely to talk on your cell phone or violate traffic laws, knowing full well that if you have a collision, that video evidence will be used against you. That’s right…drivers break the laws because they figure the odds are good they won’t get caught and if they get into a crash, it would be hard to prove. Although, knowing the camera is rolling, you will put your phone down knowing full well that the courts will throw the book at you if you get into a crash. Even if you’re not ‘at fault’ for the crash, you may still be charged for violating the law, even if it isn’t considered a contributing factor.

Oh ya…the camera systems would be tamper-proof and it would be a criminal offense to try and tamper with them.