So how was the Car Control Clinic at NHIS on Saturday? Anyone here attend?
08-28-2006, 12:23 PM
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From the e-mails I've seen bounced around, sounded like a hit with the students, and...
some opportunities to run future clinics for younger groups, those "novice" drivers with not many years under their seatbelt.
08-29-2006, 09:03 AM
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NAAC Car Control Clinic RECAP; It was a great success!
The North Atlantic Audi Club hosted 15 students on the 'J' parking lot at NHIS (about two football fields in size), and held a day long Car Control Clinic with the emphasis on safety, understanding the dynamics of car control as well as how to react to various emergency situations.
The day started with registration and helmet selection, and then a half-hour classrom session that explained the principles and terminology of car control. Topics included proper seating position for maximum control of the car, proper alignment and use of mirrors, weight transfer, various types of skids and how to correct them, as well as care and feeding of tires, trucker's blind spots, general attitude and courtesy while out on the road.
Then it was off to the exercises where each student had an instructor in the right seat to coach them through the over 250 cones set up in various sections of the lot to include:
- A mirror-only backup exercise to practice integrating what the driver sees in the mirrors.
- Slalom course with six gates for students to learn about smooth steering input and understand how pushing the car to its limits will cause it to understeer (and that dramatic inputs can possibly cause the car to spin). This was repeated in the afternoon with a 2-foot offset to *really* show the amount of effort and coordination it takes to move a 3000 pound car back and forth at just under 30mph.
- An emergency lane change (to avoid objects that suddenly appear in your path while at speed). I observed on the drive up to NHIS a sheet of plywood that flew off a truck on the other side of the median, thankfully this was at 6:30am and traffic was light, but you can imagine how this exercise would be useful if you were the driver behind the truck.
- A lane-toss where at 30mph you see a set of three traffic lights that indicate which of three 15-foot wide lanes you need to place the car in (only 50 feet of room to make the lane change), and then 100 feet to stop the car. This was the most devious because the operator of the lights watches and if the student cheats to one side or the other, sends them to the other side to make it more work. This exercise requires coordination of steering and braking and teaches the students that you can steer the car and brake at the same time (with ABS). The session was run enough times for the students to learn that they have to be smooth with the inputs to prevent the car from skidding.
- A threshold braking exercise where the goal is to stop the car in a straight line at a particular spot w/o engaging ABS. The first pass was with maximum braking effort to engage ABS, and then successive passes encouraged the student to use slightly less braking pressure to apply maximum braking w/o engaging the ABS(which produces the shortest stopping distance).
- A *double* lane toss where the center lane was closed off so students had no choice but to move the car either left or right a lane(again as indicated by the traffic lights), but then move the car back into the center lane and stop the car. This combines what the student learned from the slalom and emergency braking exercises into one and forced the student to apply the CPR (Correct, Pause, Recover) principles to deal with the car (i.e. once the car is moving toward one side, that the student has to pause for a moment to allow the car to settle before they can transition back to the center lane).
- A figure eight skid pad that was wet in the transition areas. The instructor with the student would surpise them by yanking on the emergency brake to forcibly induce oversteer which the students would then have to correct for. Each side of the figure eight was a different sized circle so the students learned that different radius corners had different maximum speeds that can be attained. Also the changes from dry to wet and back again showed the change in traction that the students needed to take into account.
Many of the students were tentative at the beginning, but by the end of the day they were more comfortable with pushing the car near its limits and had blast with ear-to-ear grins that went around a few times.
I've already gotten an email from one of the younger students asking if we could put on a clinic for 10-20 of his friends next spring because he believes they would learn a lot from it. I think that's great!
The North Atlantic Chapter had a great time teaching the students some of what we know, and believe that the students left as better drivers with a deeper understanding of how to better control their car.
Who knows, that education may save their life when they are out on the road...
Peter Barada
interim President, Nortah Atlantic Chapter, ACNA
The day started with registration and helmet selection, and then a half-hour classrom session that explained the principles and terminology of car control. Topics included proper seating position for maximum control of the car, proper alignment and use of mirrors, weight transfer, various types of skids and how to correct them, as well as care and feeding of tires, trucker's blind spots, general attitude and courtesy while out on the road.
Then it was off to the exercises where each student had an instructor in the right seat to coach them through the over 250 cones set up in various sections of the lot to include:
- A mirror-only backup exercise to practice integrating what the driver sees in the mirrors.
- Slalom course with six gates for students to learn about smooth steering input and understand how pushing the car to its limits will cause it to understeer (and that dramatic inputs can possibly cause the car to spin). This was repeated in the afternoon with a 2-foot offset to *really* show the amount of effort and coordination it takes to move a 3000 pound car back and forth at just under 30mph.
- An emergency lane change (to avoid objects that suddenly appear in your path while at speed). I observed on the drive up to NHIS a sheet of plywood that flew off a truck on the other side of the median, thankfully this was at 6:30am and traffic was light, but you can imagine how this exercise would be useful if you were the driver behind the truck.
- A lane-toss where at 30mph you see a set of three traffic lights that indicate which of three 15-foot wide lanes you need to place the car in (only 50 feet of room to make the lane change), and then 100 feet to stop the car. This was the most devious because the operator of the lights watches and if the student cheats to one side or the other, sends them to the other side to make it more work. This exercise requires coordination of steering and braking and teaches the students that you can steer the car and brake at the same time (with ABS). The session was run enough times for the students to learn that they have to be smooth with the inputs to prevent the car from skidding.
- A threshold braking exercise where the goal is to stop the car in a straight line at a particular spot w/o engaging ABS. The first pass was with maximum braking effort to engage ABS, and then successive passes encouraged the student to use slightly less braking pressure to apply maximum braking w/o engaging the ABS(which produces the shortest stopping distance).
- A *double* lane toss where the center lane was closed off so students had no choice but to move the car either left or right a lane(again as indicated by the traffic lights), but then move the car back into the center lane and stop the car. This combines what the student learned from the slalom and emergency braking exercises into one and forced the student to apply the CPR (Correct, Pause, Recover) principles to deal with the car (i.e. once the car is moving toward one side, that the student has to pause for a moment to allow the car to settle before they can transition back to the center lane).
- A figure eight skid pad that was wet in the transition areas. The instructor with the student would surpise them by yanking on the emergency brake to forcibly induce oversteer which the students would then have to correct for. Each side of the figure eight was a different sized circle so the students learned that different radius corners had different maximum speeds that can be attained. Also the changes from dry to wet and back again showed the change in traction that the students needed to take into account.
Many of the students were tentative at the beginning, but by the end of the day they were more comfortable with pushing the car near its limits and had blast with ear-to-ear grins that went around a few times.
I've already gotten an email from one of the younger students asking if we could put on a clinic for 10-20 of his friends next spring because he believes they would learn a lot from it. I think that's great!
The North Atlantic Chapter had a great time teaching the students some of what we know, and believe that the students left as better drivers with a deeper understanding of how to better control their car.
Who knows, that education may save their life when they are out on the road...
Peter Barada
interim President, Nortah Atlantic Chapter, ACNA
08-29-2006, 02:08 PM
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Thanks for sharing. Sounds like it was a great day and very beneficial. Wish I could have
attended but I had Daddy duty over the weekend and the last think my three year old would have wanted to do is hang with me and not do what he wanted to do all day. Maybe next time.
08-29-2006, 04:59 PM
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It was a great day...
One of the parents indicated that it was much better for his daughter to mow down cones and learn something in the process that will help prevent her from mowing down pedestrians in the future...
We're hoping to do at least one (if not more) clinics next year, if we can find either enough interest to cover expenses (we took a loss on this event), or to find another venue where the cost structure is less prohibitive. We're open to suggestions on an adequate amount of pavement that has availability (Fort Devens is pretty booked with autocrosses and such).
Even though we lost money on the event, I still think it was worth while for the students to gain experience that will save them in the real world...
We're hoping to do at least one (if not more) clinics next year, if we can find either enough interest to cover expenses (we took a loss on this event), or to find another venue where the cost structure is less prohibitive. We're open to suggestions on an adequate amount of pavement that has availability (Fort Devens is pretty booked with autocrosses and such).
Even though we lost money on the event, I still think it was worth while for the students to gain experience that will save them in the real world...
08-30-2006, 01:14 PM
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Re: Thanks for sharing. Sounds like it was a great day and very beneficial. Wish I could have
Marshall and I had an absolute blast. I know for a fact that many of my friends and family would not only benefit from the clinic but *more importantly* would be interested in participating. Heck, my stepmother said it sounded like fun (I was driving her car 8^). I think you'd have plenty of interest now that the word's out. Skip Barber costs how much?
Thanks again to everyone that made the day as exciting and educational as it was. Without the instructors and volunteers we'd have nothing.
-Justin
Thanks again to everyone that made the day as exciting and educational as it was. Without the instructors and volunteers we'd have nothing.
-Justin
08-30-2006, 02:22 PM
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Glad you had a great time and learned something in the process...
Care to write up your experience of the event and post it here? I'm sure that people would be very interested (myself included) of what it was like from your perspective. The NAC would love the feedback of how we can do better in the future.
TIA.
Peter Barada
interim President, North Atlantic Chapter, ACNA
TIA.
Peter Barada
interim President, North Atlantic Chapter, ACNA
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08-31-2006, 10:08 PM
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Photos from testing the setup the night before...
<center><img src="http://www.baradas.org/stuff/photos/2006-08-25-clinic-setup/img028.jpeg.medium.jpeg"></center><p>Note that that's my B5 A4 with STaSIS street sport suspension, corner balanced, and H-sport bars, lowered, and look at how much its leaning in the corners. That's normal for the amount of cornering force involved, even at these speeds of sub-30mph.
What's really cool about this photo is that the point of focus (it was slow-speed shutter near sunset as we were beat from setting up 250+ cones) is his fingers on the wheel, showing his steering is rock-solid even though everything outside is in blur/chaos.
Imagine how a "stock" car would look at 30mph doing these exercises, it isn't pretty. You'd see the front end ploughing so bad that about a third of the front tire would be rolled *under* the rim as it tried to manuever its way round these exercises.
You can understand why these photos show even more reason why this type of clinic is educational to drivers of *all* experience levels, driving all levels of "prepped" cars, from stock to "tweaked".
Peter Barada
interim President, North Atlantic Chapter, ACNA<ul><li><a href="http://www.baradas.org/stuff/photos/2006-08-25-clinic-setup/index.html">Testing of Clinic setup the night before</a></li></ul>
What's really cool about this photo is that the point of focus (it was slow-speed shutter near sunset as we were beat from setting up 250+ cones) is his fingers on the wheel, showing his steering is rock-solid even though everything outside is in blur/chaos.
Imagine how a "stock" car would look at 30mph doing these exercises, it isn't pretty. You'd see the front end ploughing so bad that about a third of the front tire would be rolled *under* the rim as it tried to manuever its way round these exercises.
You can understand why these photos show even more reason why this type of clinic is educational to drivers of *all* experience levels, driving all levels of "prepped" cars, from stock to "tweaked".
Peter Barada
interim President, North Atlantic Chapter, ACNA<ul><li><a href="http://www.baradas.org/stuff/photos/2006-08-25-clinic-setup/index.html">Testing of Clinic setup the night before</a></li></ul>
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