Not just for learners: Street Smart teaches parents road safety too

Tuesday, 17 August 2021

Street Smart is advocating drivers to take part in a learners course to reduce our New Zealand road toll.

Recently Skoda teamed up with Street Smart to keep its valuable learner driver course going, which was good news all round, because it is an excellent course that teaches valuable hands-on skills to not only young learner drivers, but also their parents or caregivers, who also attend the course.

Targeted at young drivers ideally (but not exclusively) at the end of their period on a learner's licence, Street Smart teaches basic skills during a practical one-day event which provides the young drivers and their parents or caregivers the opportunity to learn under supervised conditions, with a focus on developing good decision-making and skills vital for safe driving.

And while we can describe what the course is, and hear from people like Street Smart programme director Hayden Dickson and the motor racing legend who was one of the people behind the creation of Street Smart, Greg Murphy, the absolute best way to check something like this out is to actually do it. So we did.

Street Smart courses take place at safe, closed environments, in this case Hampton Downs Motorsport Park.

But who was “we” in this case? Well, I didn’t have a young learner driver to hand, but I had the next best thing – motoring journalist Nile Bijoux – while I would take the role of Nile’s “parent or caregiver” for the task, while the decision was also made to use our long-term MG ZS EV for the task.

* Community driver mentor programme being brought to Rangiora

Stuff reporter, Nile Bijoux (right) behind the wheel of our MG ZS EV long-term test car as Street Smart station coach Clifford Sta Maria (left) tells him what he was doing wrong.

* Holden NZ launches young-driver training programme

Upon our arrival at Hampton Downs early enough to cram a number of coffees into me before a day of ridiculing Nile’s driving in front of total strangers (not, I believe, the actual aim of the course), I cast a disdainful eye over Nile’s parking job and said “shame it’s not a course on parking”.

The little blue electric MG performances admirably well in the braking demonstrations.

Young Nile looked up at me with his eyes wide and full of concern and admitted that he wasn’t looking forward to the day. “Is that because you’re a crap driver?” I ask gently, with parental concern.

“No. It's because you’re a crap caregiver” he responded. Can’t argue with the truth, so on with the course.

NILE: The Street Smart course comprises ten stations, each designed to teach drivers different safe driving techniques. They work by having the learner driver in the pilot’s seat with the instructor next to them and the parent/caregiver in the rear seat.

This is so adults can also learn things, or see where their own driving could improve, as plenty of older/more experienced drivers carry bad habits and make mistakes.

Participants of the course are encouraged to bring the car they are learning to drive in, so they will end up even more familiar with it.

DAMIEN: Bad habits. So many bad habits… I might have sat in the back seat being vastly superior in all things on the surface but, man, did I quickly realise how lazy some of my driving habits had become over the years since I initially learned to drive.

Nothing terrible or actually outright dangerous, mind, just slightly lazy and overconfident. Which is bad enough, and it became quickly apparent to me that the Street Smart course would be just as useful for the adult in the back as it would for the learner in the driver's seat. Even if I would never admit that out loud. Especially to Nile.

NILE: We started with the peripheral vision exercise, which has drivers doing a slow slalom while fixing their vision on a cone in the distance.

It’s tricky enough to get the steering inputs right but after the final turn, the instructor asked if I’d noticed anything else on the test, like a person holding a sign. I hadn’t, showing how not focusing on one point is important for detecting potential hazards. Motorcyclists will know this too, they might have been taught it as ‘target fixation’, which can easily lead to crashes.

Kiwi racing legend Greg Murphy was one of the people behind the Street Smart concept and is still heavily involved in it today.

I also managed to break the very first rule of safe driving, which is to keep both hands on the wheel at a quarter-to-three position, by using one hand to swivel the wheel. Nice one.

DAMIEN: Yeah, that whole being lazy and letting go of the wheel with one hand and using the other to manoeuvre at low speeds is one I am guilty of and, I daresay, the majority of experienced adults out there are guilty of as well… Not that I let on to that as I taunted Nile mercilessly from the back seat about it though.

I knew what was coming in this test, as I had seen it before, and I was genuinely interested to see if Nile would spot the sign, being a bit more experienced behind the wheel than your average learner. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t however – not because I have low regard for Nile’s driving skills (although I most certainly do), more that Hayden Dickason had already told me the vast majority of parent and caregivers are also caught out by it. It’s those lazy habits again…

NILE: The next test was a full emergency stop. It’s pretty alarming to slam on the brakes, even in a controlled environment like Street Smart, so it’s good for young drivers to get a feel for how a car reacts under full braking.

The Street Smart course comprises ten different stations and takes place over an entire day.

The goal here was to accelerate to a certain speed, hit the anchors and see how far the car travelled. Then do it again but faster, and compare the distances. A difference of 10kmh in speed could be enough to save (or result in) a crash.

DAMIEN: This one was slightly tripped up for us due to the MG ZS EV’s deeply impressive braking capabilities – you might not expect impeccable behaviour, razor sharp stops, remarkably good electronic intervention and seriously good directional stability from a small budget-priced Chinese SUV, particularly with the extra weight the batteries add to the EV, but that is what we got. Repeatedly, time and time again too.

Because of this the little MG stopped short of where the instructor expected the first time through, dramatically lessening the intended impact of the lesson, but also driving home just how essential modern safety electronics are.

Nile can’t take all the credit for this one. I was prouder of Don, the small blue electric MG, to be honest.

Rodney Gillard, general manager of Skoda New Zealand, the sponsor of Street Smart, did the course with his learner driver daughter.

NILE: Moving on, one of the more relevant exercises for young people was distracted driving.

This has the driver moving around the course while the instructor plays an audio track, asking you to beep whenever you hear the word ‘rabbits’, as well as watch for road signs planted on the edge of the track.

They ramp up the difficulty by talking to you at the same time and asking you to read off a card. Conclusion: it’s bloody hard to do everything at the same time while also keeping your eyes on the road, which is entirely the point.

DAMIEN: This one was hard, even from the back seat. Particularly so because I also felt I had to help the instructor by mocking Nile’s abilities behind the wheel at the same time. He probably didn’t get a lot of parents doing that. Or maybe he does?

But it was a very illuminating and slightly terrifying illustration of how easy it is to be distracted behind the wheel, and how disastrous that distraction can be, even if it is only momentary. This is one I learned a surprising amount from, even between taunts.

NILE: The safe following distance station showed how easy it can be to have a big accident if you’re tailgating by asking drivers to follow a car in an adjacent lane, as if you were on their bumper. They hit the brakes and, regardless of how fast your reactions are, you’ll find yourself around half a car length inside their vehicle.

Redoing the test at the proper two-second distance shows how much safer it is to stay back a little.

DAMIEN: I decided I had endured Nile’s driving for long enough by this stage, so let Christel, our brave videographer deal with it for a while.

The most interesting part of this was watching the faces of the young drivers when they realised just how far into the car ‘in front’ they had gone. The realisation that their following distance could make the difference between ‘just’ a crash and a tragedy was instant and obvious.

There were even more than a few similar expressions from the older, more experienced drivers in the back seats as the same realisation sunk in…

NILE: Every test we took part of was an eye-opening experience and there were always learnings to be had, even considering the fact we drive for a living. For young people learning to drive or older drivers wanting to brush up on the basics, Street Smart is a great option.

As well as seeing the clear benefits for drivers, it was almost more interesting watching the reactions of the parents. Most were highly receptive to what was being taught and a few even jumped behind the wheel to run the exercises themselves. It’s a welcome contrast to the stigma of older drivers thinking they know best and the way they were taught to drive is the only way.

DAMIEN: I almost never agree with Nile on anything, but he is very right here – you get as much from Street Smart in the back seat as you do from the driver’s seat.

Hopefully there isn’t a parent or caregiver who actually learns anything from this, but I would be willing to put money on the fact that almost all of them will have at least one “Oh s..t!” moment where they are reminded of something that they do wrong every day, even though they were taught to not do it when they learned to drive.