Training takes toll

Driver training is the key to cutting the road toll, according to BMW.

It says many lives would be saved and the huge cost of road trauma slashed dramatically if all drivers were forced to undertake specialised training beyond the basic requirements for a licence.

“We have invested a lot of money and resources over 30 years because we know it saves lives,” BMW board member responsible for safety Dr Klaus Draeger says.

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“We can't say that people who have been with us are not involved in accidents because they still are.

“But they are involved a lot less than others. The problem if you are working from a purely academic perspective is how do you count accidents that do not happen?”

“Governments should make it compulsory to go through driver training schools and not just one,” he says. “How can governments claim people can drive safely when none of them knows how to stop a car in an emergency?”

“People are released on to the road without learning what happens when it goes wrong. They don't know how to do an emergency stop and this is the biggest problem.”

Nobody knows how to stop a car, he says. They come to BMW and are asked to do an emergency stop and they are frightened to damage the car, or it's going to crash, or the noise is bad . . .

“We train them and train them that they can stop and that saving one metre or two metres can be very beneficial,” Draeger says.

BMW has plenty of facts and figures to back its support for a training system that has been spread throughout the world, including Australia.

“We have a responsibility to provide safe cars and we feel we have a responsibility to teach people to drive them safely and properly,” he says.

“Studies reveal that, on average, every person is involved in nine accidents during his or her life. That's an accident every five years and he or she actually causes an accident every nine years.

“And the reason for 95 per cent of accidents is human error. Assuming that each participant in a driving safety course was involved in only one accident less during the course of their lives, that would be a wonderful achievement.”

He questions the approach by VicRoads, which favours experience and strict speed limits while arguing against driver training.

“We train them to become aware of the risk of speed and the stopping distances involved,” Draeger says. “They will know where there is a problem and where there are potential problems in advance and they know to keep their nose out of it.

“Most accidents happen in urban traffic. We raise the awareness of speed and the importance of speed. They work out quickly that they can avoid an accident at 35km/h quite easily but they know they will have an accident at 50km/h in the same situations.”

But BMW admits it cannot achieve miracle results.

“The problem is both the mindset and the skill of the driver and changing that takes a long time. The earlier we start the better it is and the better we can get them to drive,” Draeger says.