CONFLICTING GOALS OF SKID TRAINING

Efforts to make novice drivers drive more safely on slippery roads by means of special courses have mainly failed. In order to understand wh y the courses have failed, the views of instructors and students on th e goals of skid training courses were compared. The importance given t o anticipating vs manoeuvring skills was analysed. After completing a skid training course, students in four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finl and, Norway and Sweden) assessed manoeuvring skills to be equally impo rtant to anticipating skills in the courses. However, instructors asse ssed anticipating skills to be more important than manoeuvring skills. The differences between the assessments of instructors and students w ere the same in all four countries. Manoeuvring exercises are widely u sed in the courses although the main purpose of these courses is to de velop anticipating skills. The exercises may give students the impress ion that manoeuvring skills are more important than anticipating skill s. Manoeuvring exercises also increase their self-confidence and may l ead to underestimation of the risks involved,resulting in e.g. driving at higher speed. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.