Miriam Parkinson

I’ve been thinking about ‘loss of control’ type accidents recently and I have a theory. I believe that most people have absolutely no idea what to do if they lose control and begin to skid.
Skidding isn’t something that just happens to people who speed. Anyone can misjudge their speed going into a corner, drive over ice/oil/gravel on the road or make an ill-advised avoidance maneuver when an animal appears on the road in front of you.
All of these situations can quickly become fatal especially if the driver then panics and does the wrong thing or simply doesn’t know how to save the situation.
Firstly here’s what not to do:

1. brake.
2. make any dramatic movements with the wheel.

Both of these actions can put you well out of reach of any possibility of regaining control over the car. Unfortunately these also happen to be exactly what the average driver would do if they lost control of the car.
So, in my opinion more people need to do advanced driver courses in order to learn exactly what to do in the case of a skid because it is anti-instinctual and almost impossible to learn without practicing it in a safe situation. The only problem with this is that most people will not find the time/money do to this. So I have two aims.

1. Education: people need to be aware of this problem and to stop using speed as a scapegoat for every road fatality.
2. Legislation: I believe that an advanced driver course should be a legal requirement to advance from Ls to Ps. Motorcyclists have to do a pre-Ls course so there is no reason why this shouldn’t be possible.

Whilst I don’t know how far I can take this myself I will do what I can to collect evidence to present to the appropriate officials in the hope that I can do something to improve the situation.

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