Can DE make you a better driver on public roads?  In my opinion, and this is strictly from my own daily driving experiences, spending a lot of my time for work going from job site to job site across the northeast, the answer is “yes”.   DE won’t necessarily make you the next Patrick Long but it does help make you more situationally aware of your surroundings.

When you are at the track in a beginner rungroup, with an instructor in your car with you, the instructors are (or should be) continually reinforcing smooth braking/turning and looking up.  Other terminology for looking up might be referred to as eyes up, see ahead, don’t look at the bumper of the car in front of you, scan the horizon, etc.  What the instructor is trying to convey to you is to look beyond the front hood of your car to get a panoramic view.   When you exit the downhill at LRP, your eyes should have already focused on the bridge at Turn 1.   It gives you the ‘big picture’ rather than focusing on something right in front of you.

So how can smoothness help you on public roads?  The next time you’re on I-95 in moving traffic, watch the guy who is bobbing and weaving left to right through traffic.  Look at the body roll of their car and how the suspension unloads from right to left.  They don’t even know that they are only inches from spinning out into someone or something.  How many times have you seen a car up against a guard rail, upside down on an off-ramp and asked yourself “how’d they manage to do that?”  Most times they were probably distracted from looking at their phone or texting, not looking up and then they yanked the wheel at the last second to make the off-ramp, causing the laws of physics to take over.

Well, how does it help you if you don’t do those stupid maneuvers on public roads and definitely don’t text while driving?  Being smooth is just one more tool for keeping you and your passengers safe while driving on the street.  When you need to switch from one lane to another in a last-second move to avoid the car that just pulled out of the intersection on a red light, or to avoid the deer who thought standing in the road was a good idea, being smooth is the skill that you want to have mastered and be able to apply.  Being smooth has personally helped me with making split-second decisions/avoidance maneuvers while driving my full-size pickup truck loaded with 1,000 lbs of tools.  When the time comes to make a quick fast-hands transition, I’ve found that what I’ve learned on the track with smoothness has saved me from many surprise bad situations.   Every time you move from right to left, be it on track or on the road, imagine you have a full glass of water on the dash and you don’t want any of it to spill over.  Don’t induce the washing machine effect to the glass of water – keep it nice and calm, like a lake in the early morning hours before any boats get out and stir it up.

Vision works hand in hand with being smooth but the benefits of looking ahead are endless, especially when driving on public streets.  When you look ahead and I mean REALLY look ahead, be it coming down the hill at LRP and looking out to the bridge or looking past the car in front of you when getting off an exit that is a half-mile ahead, it gives you time to think about an exit plan if someone decides to move in front of you while going 50 mph as you were trying to pass their car at 60 mph.  Looking ahead lets you learn how to anticipate what the driver ahead is going to do or is doing before it’s too late.  With the number of distracted drivers out there we have to be defensive heads-up safe drivers, always looking ahead and always being smooth with our inputs of throttle and acceleration.  What our instructors are teaching you on track, from looking up, paying attention to the drivers around you, and being smooth will help you become a safer driver. 

For those of you that have done multiple DE events, it is now probably second nature to look ahead and smoothly transition from one lane to another.  Be safe, don’t be distracted while you drive and spread the word to others on how DE has helped you with being a safer, better driver on public roads. 

Please don’t take my word that DE can help you become a better driver on the street.  Find out for yourself and sign up for an event on Clubregistration.net.

See you at the track.  Be safe and have fun.