Police Skid Pans

[Len Woodman]

I've just been looking at places in the UK on Google Maps - nostalgia - looking at places I (used to) know:

Has the skid pan at the Metropolitan Police Motor Driving School closed - looks like lots of things parked on it?

Many years ago Kent police closed their's due to "new-thinking" under Peter Amey. Has the Met, and others done the same thing?

New South Wales Police at the School of Traffic and Mobile Policing still use a skid pan.

[vonhosen]

Met closed their's about 5 years ago.

[rainmakerraw]

I was discussing this with an ex-Traffic friend a couple of days ago. He was telling me his local force have stopped skid training because they believe modern technology can correct an 'oopise' better than human intervention, and their blue light training is no longer allowed to contravene the speed limits or road traffic regs (i.e. they can't use the very exemptions they're supposed to use day in, day out on active duty). Madness.

[vonhosen]

rainmakerraw said:

I was discussing this with an ex-Traffic friend a couple of days ago. He was telling me his local force have stopped skid training because they believe modern technology can correct an 'oopise' better than human intervention, and their blue light training is no longer allowed to contravene the speed limits or road traffic regs (i.e. they can't use the very exemptions they're supposed to use day in, day out on active duty). Madness.

To be accurate they were closed for several reasons.

1) A lot were very old & were oil/water that then ran into the water course polluting it. They would never get permission to get built today. They needed renewing & the capital outlay to replace with 21st Century Police budgets was not viable when the other considerations (such as value of the training in a modern world) were taken into consideration.

2) Drivers only received a relatively small amount of time on them & whilst that may have been fun in a relatively sanitised safe environment with the slow speeds involved & 'a fun experience', it provided only a little knowledge & that can be a dangerous thing. Some Scandinavian countries who have rather harsher winter conditions for more of the year decided some time ago that skid pans should be part of learning to drive & made it a compulsory part of the syllabus in an effort to reduce collisions. Their experience however is that collisions increased as a result of the move. People having experienced it in a sterile environment believed they had a skill set beyond what their very limited experience had given them. As a result they took far greater risks than they would have previously in the live environement, where speeds were higher & risks not so controlled. They then found that a couple of hours experiencing a car getting out of shape where you were expecting it to at low speed without much to hit, doesn't prepare you for a car getting out of shape at higher speeds where there are lots to hit when you aren't immediately expecting it to happen

3) The training the drivers traditionally received for that couple of hours on the skidpad (a car without ABS, ESC etc) went completely against what they could & should expect to do with modern systems in place when the car starts to get out of shape The systems in the cars they were driving in the real world (with ABS. ESC etc) expected & were designed for a different reaction from the driver.

4) As a result of all the above the skid pans went & all those trained were to receive technical input on what they can expect from the safety systems & the correct response from themselves to get the most out of them. Some of those trained (to higher levels & on some specialist courses) would also get practical experience of the systems & what they can do.

5) Can't speak for who you spoke to & that force with training, but every force I'm aware of can & do use the legal exemptions afforded to Police when training on public roads.