Hitting the asphalt at the Tire Rack Street Survival school

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It’s an incident seared into Neill Taniguchi’s memory. After getting his driver’s licence in Ontario in 1983 and heading out of town for his first solo highway trip, Taniguchi narrowly avoided a raccoon as it ran across the road.

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“With luck,” the Airdrie resident says, “I didn’t do the classic oversteer, understeer and roll – but it scared me a lot.”

Taniguchi says he’d like to have been better prepared for just that kind of driving situation and thinks young and/or inexperienced drivers should be taught how to safely control a vehicle in all situations.

“I find it hard to believe that the hardest part of passing a driver’s test is having someone parallel park,” Taniguchi says. “There’re are so many skills that don’t get taught in driver education, and they should be almost mandatory.”

That’s why Taniguchi, who is a member of the BMW Club of Southern Alberta, suggested the group begin hosting the Tire Rack Street Survival school.

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“I was a sales manager at Calgary BMW for a number of years,” Taniguchi says. “The club let BMW employees have memberships in the group, but I didn’t really get actively involved until I’d left BMW in 2013. I was aware of the Tire Rack (Street Survival) program and started talking about it at club meetings.”

Eventually, the BMWCSA decided that presenting the school was a good opportunity and held their first event in 2018. That was a success, and they held a second event in 2019. COVID prevented the group from running schools in 2020 and 2021, but they’re happy to be back in action for 2022.

On June 4 this year, the Street Survival school will take place at the Calgary Police Training Grounds. It costs $125 per student to attend, and lunch and refreshments are included. A draw will net one attendee a set of Continental tires for their vehicle. Search eventbrite.com for BMWCSA Street Survival to register for the event. The program is geared toward drivers with 10 years of experience or less, such as new Canadians or older learners. Preference is given, however, to those between the ages of 16 and 21. Taniguchi says this is not a performance driving school. It is instead a program designed to make everyday drivers better by helping them understand the dynamics of the vehicle they’re piloting.

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Says Street Survival program head coach Gary Coleman, “We feel it’s important that (our) students use the vehicle they drive day to day, because they can take away what they learn about how the vehicle responds in the driving exercises.”

Students do not need to own a BMW, nor do they need to be members of the BMWCSA. The ‘daily driver,’ so long as it’s safe and street worthy, is the ideal vehicle for participation. Registrants spend a day learning in the classroom and in the car through hands-on skid pad exercises. When half of the group is in class, the other half will be in their vehicles – students will alternate every 40 minutes, ensuring no one gets bored.

Students will be paired with an experienced driving instructor. One of the first things covered is the importance of maintaining correct tire air pressure, followed by proper seat and mirror positioning. Next up is emergency braking. Students will be taught how to stop in the shortest distance possible while experiencing how ABS systems work — the shuddering of the brake pedal with ABS in a panic stop situation can be disconcerting.

“This really opens eyes to what a car is capable of doing in a controlled, and fun, environment,” Taniguchi says. “It’s better to learn and understand that here.”

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One of the most important aspects of driving is vision, and students learn to look farther ahead than just the edge of the hood. To teach this skill, a slalom exercise is employed. Program coach Coleman says, “A student has to look all the way down the line, and not at the individual cones.” Instruction that Taniguchi wishes he’d had before narrowly missing the raccoon is emergency avoidance steering techniques. As Coleman notes, a driver can either stop or drive around whatever issue is at hand, but that’s a decision that needs to made almost instantaneously, “and you need to know how your car will handle those inputs.”

Time will also be spent learning about oversteer and understeer conditions while driving on a dampened asphalt surface.

Coleman adds, “It instills a confidence that becomes almost a natural reaction, and the training should give them a sense of recall. When faced with an emergency it won’t be foreign and they won’t panic.

“If you’re panicked, you can’t make a good decision.”

Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or [email protected]