BUFFALO, N.Y., Jan. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- If you think driver safety courses might be boring, think again!  Back before World War II, the British Government realized that police officers driving fast in pursuits or on their way to bad incidents were killing and injuring far too many innocent people and, as a result, the world's most-proven road-driver training methodology was born.

Known as the "System of Car Control," it is still the only driving regime taught to the British police, and their traffic patrol officers now enjoy the reputation of being the best road drivers in the world.

This approach was made available for civilian drivers in 1955 and was brought to the USA in 1999 where it has been adapted for North American drivers, exclusively by Advanced Drivers of America [ADA].

ADA's president Eddie Wren – himself a former UK traffic patrol police officer – said, "The need for police officers to drive at high speeds on public roads requires a serious amount of concentration, planning and responsibility so that officers can prevent their vehicles from getting into danger or, just as importantly, from causing danger to other people.  And now, the safety aspects of these techniques are available for all drivers, not just police officers.

"Good driving isn't all about specific skills; it is about attitude and anticipation. Research has repeatedly shown that seemingly logical techniques like skid pad training or learning to swerve at the last minute to avoid an obstruction do NOT create safer drivers, they create more crashes afterwards compared to people who have not done that training.  This is because these techniques commonly make drivers even more over-confident than they were before.  They create a subconscious attitude, for example, that 'It doesn't matter even if I do get into a skid because I know how to deal with it!'  But on today's busy and sometimes narrow roads there is often neither the time nor the space to correct a skid or to swerve to avoid one thing without the risk of hitting something else, precisely because of that swerve.  What would you say to the police?  'I'm sorry I killed the kid on the bicycle, officer; I didn't see him in time. But at least I had already missed that other car!'? Lethal incidents such as this happen every single day.

"How about keeping not only yourself safe but also the imaginary kid on the bike? Or the woman with a stroller? Or the family in a sedan?  That is what truly good road driving is about."

ADA will be running two-day Defensive Driving courses and a single three-day "Bronze" Advanced Driving course in Thousand Oaks, CA, during the last few days of February and the first week of March. Each course is limited to a maximum of three trainees and is open to anyone who has already passed their driving test. Details here.

"If safe driving is similar to protecting your health," said Wren, "and we compare a crash to getting a serious illness, the answer is obvious: Prevention is always better than cure.  That is what we teach – reliable anticipation; the prevention of serious situations affecting you; the minimization of risk to you and to other people, and the minimization of stress in your driving, too. It is challenging, but it's fascinating and it's fun."

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SOURCE Advanced Drivers of America