Once again I joined the ILR Car Control School (www.carcontrolschool.com) as an instructor, teaching drivers some advanced skills not commonly found on our roads. The objective of the school is to take drivers from their basic level of knowledge and skill and kick them up several notches and that’s exactly what we did. Today we had a small group of six students and six instructors, including Ian Law who is the school founder and chief instructor. Ian and I used to race together and we’ve had some nice battles on the race track.

Today was an especially foggy day, which made things just that little bit more challenging for the students. Poor visibility and a damp course allowed the instructors to impress upon the students how important vision training is (looking well ahead to process information about changing road conditions) and the damp surface provided less grip making the exercises more difficult and we were able to illustrate how much of an impact wet roads have on your available grip with the road.

The day is divided between alternating classroom sessions and practical exercises and as usual I handled the slalom and emergency braking section, which I affectionately refer too as the “pitch n puke”. Not all the instructors have the stomach for it as they are tossed around violently. Eventually the students become smoother as I help them hone their skills. The emergency braking can be a little unsettling too as it’s repeated again and again but the skills learned are valuable, especially for those without ABS as they sharpen their threshold braking techniques. This time we threw a curve ball at the students by dumping a large amount of snow in the emergency braking exercise and in the ‘serve and avoid’ challenge.

After continuously rotating the students through all the exercises (slalom & braking, serve & avoid, high speed lane changes, and skid control) and alternating classroom sessions with Ian, the students finally get to put it all together at once in the afternoon with an autocross course that the other instructors and I laid out. By the end of the day, all the drivers had hugely improved their skills and understanding of what it takes to be safer drivers. For me…that’s the real reward; knowing that I’ve made a difference towards making our roads just a little safer. One driver at a time.