Back to driving school

Earlier this month, Calcasieu Parish Deputy Randall L. Benoit, 41, was killed in a head-on collision when an unidentified driver crossed the center line and smashed head-on into the deputy's vehicle. Just days later, Officer Kelly Mayfield was traveling west in his police cruiser while answering a non-emergency call about 2:30 p.m. when his car was struck head-on by a vehicle. Mayfield, a veteran officer for the Franklin (Kentucky) Police Department, was treated for serious injuries.

Unfortunately, these stories are all too common. When agency budgets are sliced, driver instruction training and is often among the first things to go. This is less than ideal. According to the National Law Enforcement Memorial (NLEOM) Officer Down Memorial page, the number of U.S. law enforcement fatalities spiked by 37 percent in 2010, an increase that followed on the heels of a two-year decline in national law enforcer deaths. Now the numbers of officer-involved auto accidents remains quite high, ranking just slightly below that of gunshot fatalities.

Simulating precarious conditions

“For 12 years in a row more law enforcement officers were killed in motor vehicle traffic accidents than [nearly] any other cause,” says Bruce Brown, chief of the Driver and Marine Division (DMD) at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). “Last year it was 65 by gunfire and 59 by motor vehicle crashes. Those studies are what have driven the changes to our training.”

Driving Instructor training hotspots like FLETC in Glynco, Georgia and POST (Police Officer Standards and Training) sites work every day to decipher and reverse statistics like these. The FLETC facility in Glynco, Georgia headquarters maintains four driver training ranges, each consisting of an emergency response driving range, a non-emergency driving range and a skid pan. In addition, the facility has 52 vehicle simulators and 24 marine simulators. FLETC conduct s driving training using approximately 355 vehicles of all sizes and shapes. State and local agencies from across the country replicate these training programs within their own agency.

Instructors at FLETC find that the best and most effective training at the facilities combines simulators with range time. Driving simulators for police, fire and EMS have been on the market for a while now, and are widely used to teach better road skills. The technology continues to hold sway for a few reasons: simulators are cheaper than using regular cars, and they can be customizable to suit the user experience and to mimic real-life distractions. No longer are road scenarios one-size-fits-all. In the FLETC criminal investigator training simulation, for example, drivers in a “plain” clothes car must engage in surveillance activities while at the same time make decisions to avoid a crash. Brown points out another use of simulator technology that has proven successful includes taking as much data as possible from actual accidents which resulted in an officer fatality, then recreating the accident and having other students train through the same scenario.

“We constantly have to have our instructors trained in how to use simulations,” says Brown. “By using [simulation software] in that manner, we have seen a very effective change and a lot of people are rethinking [how they drive],” say Brown, who adds instructors who take these techniques home must be constantly willing to change the way they conduct training. Brown cited a study done by the Police Officers Standards in Training in California that shows a proper blend of simulators training followed by actual time on the range can reduce collisions by up to 10 percent.

How can you make better decisions?

Utah POST instructor Sergeant Doug Larsen co-designed, maintained and operates the Emergency Vehicle Operations Course for the State of Utah, and provides direction to create effective, safe driving curriculum and operational simulator scenarios. Larsen is another advocate of using simulators for more efficient and effective on-the-road training and refresher courses, and incorporates web-based training for maximum results. He uses the combination to teach intersection clearing and, like Brown, to mimic real-life scenarios with graduated difficulty depending on the driver’s skill level. In September, 2011 Larsen was elected to the board of ALERT International, an organization dedicated to research and development, as well as the sharing of information, ideas and innovations in the area of emergency vehicle response operation.

“I think people are starting to look at these trends where a lot of officers have been injured and killed in a vehicle and they’re starting to see that we do need to tackle this issue. And we need to change the way we train, too,” says Larsen.

“We’ve really concentrated on the fundamentals. For the cadets we’ve made the end task a lot harder. We try to incorporate problems into the scenario that are actual situations where officers get into crashes. And we just keep enhancing the test, making it harder and harder. With the training we’re providing, they’re responding.”

Larsen’s found retention rates are higher with web-based training than instructor-led training. He feels success is more about making the right decision than training in procedures, and adults can participate in web-based instruction on their own time. “We never really forget how to drive; it’s just kind of like riding a bike. You can not drive a car for a couple of years and just like a bike, get on it and ride it. But what we need is, every six months to a year to make sure we get those officers to train on their decision-making, what they’re doing in the vehicle, how to recognize hazards … that’s what’s important.”

Across the country, Larsen feels driver training always takes a backseat to other training, a trend that worries him. “Firearms is usually mandatory, but there are not a lot of agencies that make driver training mandatory,” says Larsen. “So that’s a problem. Because we’re losing a lot of officers to driving incidents and some of those issues are training issues. As far as what the officers are doing, they’re driving too fast and not using all of their safety equipment, which is causing us a lot of injuries and deaths.”

The techCatch-22

In addition to finding the most effective training methodology for cadets and officers, emergency vehicle operation leaders keep tabs on what, exactly is getting officers killed in motor vehicle crashes. FLETC recently partnered with the National Highway Safety Administration and various universities to specifically look at how equipment is installed in vehicles. “The typical rack in the center of the car on the hump with radios and computers is harming officers in itself,” says Brown.

Reconfiguring the cockpit just might save lives. According to a recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near crashes involve some sort of driver distraction. Visual (eyes off the road), cognitive (mind off the road) and manual (hands off the steering wheels) were the three main types of distractions considered in the study. Doesn’t this just sound like another day on patrol?

The introduction in December of a proposed ban on all mobile devices for cars – even hands-free devices – may have been a little hastily construed (and can you imagine the already over-worked men and women who would have to enforce such a law?), but it does lead one to wonder what would change if in-car technology at least went hands-free for citizen drivers, as well as law enforcement.

The University of New Hampshire’s “Project 54” began back in 1999 as an initiative aimed at helping first responders cut down distractions by putting all cruiser systems that are traditionally separate into a single interface activated by voice or the push of a button on a screen. The technology is now widespread, and a number of agencies have taken it for a ride. Director Andrew Kun estimates more than 1,000 vehicles and 180 communities and agencies statewide use them, including the New Hampshire State Police. Over time UNH has partnered with other firms that can integrate the system commercially.

One company offering another potential hands-free solution is Mobile PC Manager out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mobile PC offers a distracted driving application called ScreenSafe, which allows fleet managers to create custom groups of vehicles each with unique organization settings. If needed, the Fleet Manger can specify configurations that only apply to specific cars. ScreenSafe would not affect computer function at normal speeds, but would remove screen distractions while in “hot pursuit” situations where vehicle speeds may exceed 90 mph.

Larson says in-car technology makes officers a lot more efficient, but it also offers more distractions. “If they can’t manage those properly, then it just causes us more issues. But some of these hands-free cars that are coming out allow officers to keep their eyes up, and not focus so much within the cab of their vehicle. The more we can do to keep the officer’s eyes out and looking down the road, the better.”

Re-writing policy to better protect drivers

Some might say it’s no wonder this number of police-involved traffic fatalities is climbing. While many incidents are truly unavoidable, public safety professionals must battle daily with an increasing number of distractions. One look inside any cruiser reveals a hot mess of laptops, wires, communication devices, and technology literally shoved into every nook and cranny. But the problem doesn’t end there. NLEOMF and other sources indicate that simple carelessness can also contribute to the uptick of traffic fatalities. Statistics show not all cops are fastening their seat belts, while others are simply driving too fast. Now may be a good time to review your agencies’ driving practices in addition to clocking in more time at “school”. As technology changes, so does our behavior. Does your agency have texting policies in place? How about enforced seatbelt laws?

“It’s mind-boggling that large numbers of police officers are being killed for not wearing their seatbelt,” says Brown. And there’s a number of different guesses at why they aren’t. We had a police chief recently talk to us about the number of accidents his agency was having and the number of injuries, and we sent two people to look at their driver training program. We thought their driver training program was excellent, so our guys did a little bit of riding and looking at policy and what we found was there was no policy about wearing the seatbelt, and there was no policy about texting. And what was happening with these folks is they were driving down the road texting on their cell phones and drifting off into the other lane and having collisions, and obviously with no seatbelt the officers were being injured.”

There isn’t a singular cause for these tragic accidents, and unfortunately a simple solution remains to be seen. Brown says this culture of change has radically altered training for a lot of agencies. Where those departments were once focused on “getting there fast,” they are now more concerned with “getting there safely”.