Advanced / Police Driver Training

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IcedKiwi said:

Max_Torque said:

Don't tell anyone, but it isn't very expensive to hire Millbrook for a few hours unless you want one of the more specialist facilities (crash, driveby, wading etc) For just the Mile straight, Bowl, Hill route, and inner/outer handling tracks your looking at around £50/hr

But you do also need to acquire track permit or have a driving coach who is allowed to take non-permit holders on

Track permit is only £50 or so. Track charges are usually minimum 4 hours.

Biggest challenge for most people would be adequate insurance.

[huytonman]

Reg Local said:

£900

I need to put my prices up...

Not until April 2018 at the earliest Reg!

Keith

[huytonman]

dhutch said:

I am interested in this thread, I tried both IAM and RoSPA but sadly had bad experiences with both and looking just now it appears IAM's website is not working, and RoSPA's is not suitable for mobile devices and my region groups site has let it's domain registration lapse. Off to a good start.

IAM paired me with someone who said before I had even gotninthe car that I was his first person and then failed to be able to fit his additional rear view mirror without my assistance, the less went downhill from there. With RoSPA I found a cliqueness and the expectation to turn up every Saturday and wait around in the hope someone could take you out for a drive, with no indication of how long you would wait.

Hopefully they where poor examples but it put me right of at the age of 20 odd. Ten years on, living in a different area, I might try again in due course.

Daniel

I dont want to pull this thread off topic but as Daniel has brought up some poor experiences with IAM and ROSPA I want to make sure that people dont assume what occurred to him is normal. Im a member of the Thames Valley Rospa group and we are a down to earth bunch of driving enthusiasts (no clique here) and unlike what occurred with you Daniel all associate members i.e. those who have not passed the advanced test are assigned a single tutor for the duration of their training; we take the same person from the initial assessment drive through to the test. There are pro's and con's of our approach but generally we think the consistency or style and relationship by sticking with one tutor outweighs the possible negatives. Rospa doesn't prescribe a set way of doing things so different groups approach training in various ways..obviously some less successfully than others.
Keith

[dhutch]

huytonman said:

I dont want to pull this thread off topic but as Daniel has brought up some poor experiences with IAM and ROSPA I want to make sure that people dont assume what occurred to him is normal.... ...... Rospa doesn't prescribe a set way of doing things so different groups approach training in various ways..obviously some less successfully than others.

Keith,

Thanks, perhaps I should have been more clear, but I would like to re-iterate that this was my personal experience of a single area at a single time, what must now 8 years ago. I am sure other areas are better, and would not be surprised if the area I referred to has also improved or that I was unlucky in some way. If I had had more time I would have persevered further, but sadly at the time it was enough to prevent me going again.

Come the new year I might well approach my current local club either here in North Staffordshire or up in Liverpool, and or Reg Local, and re-start a bit of advance driver training. Learning new skills in something you enjoy is always great, I haven't done a lot of track driving but on the odd times I have the supervised laps where the more rewarding, ditto when autotesting it is as interesting talking the run through with fellow competitors as actually doing it.

Daniel

[rainmakerraw]

dhutch said:

Keith,

Thanks, perhaps I should have been more clear, but I would like to re-iterate that this was my personal experience of a single area at a single time, what must now 8 years ago. I am sure other areas are better, and would not be surprised if the area I referred to has also improved or that I was unlucky in some way. If I had had more time I would have persevered further, but sadly at the time it was enough to prevent me going again.

Come the new year I might well approach my current local club either here in North Staffordshire or up in Liverpool, and or Reg Local, and re-start a bit of advance driver training. Learning new skills in something you enjoy is always great, I haven't done a lot of track driving but on the odd times I have the supervised laps where the more rewarding, ditto when autotesting it is as interesting talking the run through with fellow competitors as actually doing it.

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

I have had a few outings with Reg and got my RoSPA Gold at the Liverpool group alongside. I can not only highly recommend Reg, but since I'm now a tutor at the Liverpool group I suppose I ought to recommend us as well. As Keith says your experience is thankfully not typical. I can honestly say our group is very well run, and very supportive of associates with a high Gold pass rate. It's the only reason I was enthused enough to stay on and help with the coaching.

Either way, you have a fun journey ahead of you and the road never runs out. Definitely give Reg a tinkle, you'll learn an awful lot. I'll look forward to possibly meeting you in the future.

Cheers.

Lee

[dhutch]

rainmakerraw said:

Hi Daniel,

I have had a few outings with Reg and got my RoSPA Gold at the Liverpool group alongside. I can not only highly recommend Reg, but since I'm now a tutor at the Liverpool group I suppose I ought to recommend us as well. As Keith says your experience is thankfully not typical. I can honestly say our group is very well run, and very supportive of associates with a high Gold pass rate. It's the only reason I was enthused enough to stay on and help with the coaching.

Either way, you have a fun journey ahead of you and the road never runs out. Definitely give Reg a tinkle, you'll learn an awful lot. I'll look forward to possibly meeting you in the future.

Cheers.

Lee

That sounds grand to me, thanks, and indeed.

Daniel

[FlyingFin]

Chris200 said:

Not done any advanced driver training but have done many a track day in the past and always considered myself as half decent/reasonable in terms of car control and assessing the situation and reading the road.

Always had performance cars starting with my Rover 220 GSi Turbo, through Seat Leon Cupra R, couple of Evo 8's, VXR8, C63 and currently an E63. So some very different vehicles in every way.

My Standard car course examiner came out with a blinder to much the same statement as above, made by a female student who drove a Rover 827 as her own car..

Dear old Colin H replied,


'' I can go out and buy a piano, but that doesn't mean I can play it!''


Sums it up nicely I think!

[aeropilot]

Ki3r said:

Three weeks for a standard response course, around 100hrs. Then another four weeks for the advanced.

Tomorrow I start week two of my course. I've been driving for ten years and believed I was average/above average...I've learnt I'm not. When we had a demo drive from the instructor it was unbelievable.

My experience of a Hendon Instructors 'demo' drive was 40 years ago now, but the impression it left on me has stayed with me ever since.

[Dizeee]

You also now have TPAC - which is the next one up from Advanced. Only offered to selected people ( traffic ) due to how resource heavy it is ( filling cars up - 5 normally ).

If you get through that ( not everyone does ) and are lucky enough, you may even get the chance to be offered a Tac Advisor course....

[M Barrett]

Just a quick one, I don’t wish to upset people but the Met Police Advanced course is now a very diluted affair. I did my Police Advanced Course in 1980 Driving a Rover P6 over a period of six weeks based at Hendon. The first four being being trained to a high level then back on division divisional driving the wireless car or as they now call it the area car I believe, then back to Hendon for phase 2. At the end you would undergo a rigorous final drive at the end of which you would be awarded a Class 1 or Class 2, class 1 if you achieved over 86% in your final drive. In those days a class 1 or fail. All central squads ie Flying squads and the like would insist on Class 1’s, a very sore point for Class 2’s who used to get quite bitter about this. Ask an old school Police driver what class of driver they are and if they are a 1 they will say class 1. If they are a 2 they will say Advance!! Unfortunately now days through no fault of the officers themselves there is little or no point of having such a car. A chase in pursuit of a motorcycle who has no or removes his helmet has to be aborted or any chase that a civilian at information room decides is getting a bit lairy gets called off! Very sorry state of affairs all round but I suppose that’s the world we live in. You only have to watch recent news to see that the new guidelines regarding Police and stolen cars is not working too well!


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[aeropilot]

M Barrett said:

Just a quick one, I don’t wish to upset people but the Met Police Advanced course is now a very diluted affair. I did my Police Advanced Course in 1980 Driving a Rover P6 over a period of six weeks based at Hendon. The first four being being trained to a high level then back on division divisional driving the wireless car or as they now call it the area car I believe, then back to Hendon for phase 2. At the end you would undergo a rigorous final drive at the end of which you would be awarded a Class 1 or Class 2, class 1 if you achieved over 86% in your final drive. In those days a class 1 or fail. All central squads ie Flying squads and the like would insist on Class 1’s, a very sore point for Class 2’s who used to get quite bitter about this. Ask an old school Police driver what class of driver they are and if they are a 1 they will say class 1. If they are a 2 they will say Advance!!

Must have been on one of the last P6 equipped courses?

Stops for lunch breaks at Bushy Sports Club I expect, I remember often seeing a pair of unmarked P6's parked up in the car park that Dad said were on Advanced courses.

As a teenager back in the mid 70's I had a few trips out in the back of Xray-2 with a Class 2 driver, and also in the back of Xray-3 with a Class 1 who actually won the pennant on his course at Hendon......funnily enough, by coincidence some 10-12 years later I ended up working with his daughter!

[M Barrett]

Oh yes those were the days exactly, showing my age! Of course what I didn’t say was that we had nothing like the traffic to deal with then and none of the political correctness. I remember if for any reason you left your left hand on the gear stick for a second too long the instructor would slide out his steel ruler from his clip board and whack it. Your hand would be smarting for the rest of the day. You very quickly learnt though!

[aeropilot]

M Barrett said:

Oh yes those were the days exactly, showing my age! Of course what I didn’t say was that we had nothing like the traffic to deal with then and none of the political correctness.

My old man was nearing the end of his eventual 30 years service with the Met around that time (he joined in Feb 1956) and was moaning about that then, the poor old sod would be spinning in his grave if he could see what it was like nowadays....

[M Barrett]

Well he certainly experience driving at its best though, probably the old Wolseys and Jags, don't think he would have liked the modern fleet of Area cars, Skoda Octavia's, Mondeos and diesel BMW's if you're lucky! No power steering then to help you thread your way through heavy city traffic on an emercall! or brakes for that matter!

[vonhosen]

I say this as someone who has been involved in Police driving through the 80's, 90's, 00's, 10's.
People always seem to think it was of a premium when they did their course & it's not what it once was since they did it. There's a sense of rose tinted glasses about it all.

It changes over time through necessity, because as things change the training is no longer considered fit for purpose without change to mirror those changes. Just as officer safety training changes over time.

When I did it in the 80's you had more time (less pressure) to perfect your basic system & far fewer competencies (a standard course after all was simply driving to the system at pretty much speed limit speeds & no pursuit training). Advanced courses had no training on blue lights, no TPAC, on quieter roads, using vehicles with less performance than current vehicles. In the 80's there was also longer coffee breaks & more time spent on vehicle cleaning/maintenance.

In the 10's, less time to perfect your basic system (more pressure) & more competencies (response course requires driving in excess of speed limits, use of blue lights, HOSTYDS, PSUs & a pursuit element). Advanced courses less time, more competencies, including a lot of blue light training & more realistic pursuit training than the games played in the 80s.

The benefit of when I started with it are that you had more time to perfect your basic system.
The benefit of it by the time I finished were that the training included a wider more relevant skill set.

Edited by vonhosen on Tuesday 5th December 17:22

[M Barrett]

A classic example of PC rubbish. You obviously did no Hendon Advanced training in the late 70’s or early to mid 80’s. The Standard course involved a three week course, yes learning the basics then in national speed limits driving at whatever speed was safe but often at far higher speeds than the National speed limit. The van was a two day affair driving a Transit which involved mainly reversing and the PSU as you call it but then it was the ‘carrier course’ SPG was another two day course which was completely irrelevant because all SPG squads would only employ Advance drivers. The Advance involved four weeks of advanced training travelling from Hendon well into the heart of Suffolk etc at speeds well beyond the legal limit, even in those days touching 125 MPH. The second part was two weeks of pursuit driving which consisted entirely of chasing an instructor around the countryside at similar speeds who would continually try to catch you out. Sounds dangerous but you had to stay with him without venturing into the realms of dangerous driving. If you became dangerous you were sent back to division as a dangerous failure. The absolute top driver was the fastest but safest, a very fine line hence the saying a Class 1 always gets to a call first but a Class 2 always gets there!
After several years of driving area cars and squad cars I instructed at Hendon on the Advanced car course until the commute to Hendon wore me down. I am now retired and am in the fortunate position to have a successful Company and have driven far higher performance cars, a Porsche 911 Turbo, a 911GT3, a Mercedes SL65 to name a few and I can quite assure you that the Advance course of old was in a totally different league the anything since. I would suggest by your post that you had had no experience of Met Police Advance driving!

[vonhosen]

M Barrett said:

A classic example of PC rubbish. You obviously did no Hendon Advanced training in the late 70’s or early to mid 80’s. The Standard course involved a three week course, yes learning the basics then in national speed limits driving at whatever speed was safe but often at far higher speeds than the National speed limit. The van was a two day affair driving a Transit which involved mainly reversing and the PSU as you call it but then it was the ‘carrier course’ SPG was another two day course which was completely irrelevant because all SPG squads would only employ Advance drivers. The Advance involved four weeks of advanced training travelling from Hendon well into the heart of Suffolk etc at speeds well beyond the legal limit, even in those days touching 125 MPH. The second part was two weeks of pursuit driving which consisted entirely of chasing an instructor around the countryside at similar speeds who would continually try to catch you out. Sounds dangerous but you had to stay with him without venturing into the realms of dangerous driving. If you became dangerous you were sent back to division as a dangerous failure. The absolute top driver was the fastest but safest, a very fine line hence the saying a Class 1 always gets to a call first but a Class 2 always gets there!
After several years of driving area cars and squad cars I instructed at Hendon on the Advanced car course until the commute to Hendon wore me down. I am now retired and am in the fortunate position to have a successful Company and have driven far higher performance cars, a Porsche 911 Turbo, a 911GT3, a Mercedes SL65 to name a few and I can quite assure you that the Advance course of old was in a totally different league the anything since. I would suggest by your post that you had had no experience of Met Police Advance driving!

As I clearly said ( above &) experience of 80's, 90's, 00's & 10's, Ruler treatment & all.

All you've done is confirm that the standard & advanced courses in the 80's didn't contain all the elements that the response & advanced courses do in the 10's. (Which is what I said). Vans, PSU etc being separate course back then. In the 80's we had more time for fewer competencies than those being trained in this decade have.

Edited by vonhosen on Tuesday 5th December 20:07

[M Barrett]

No comment!

[Bigends]

vonhosen said:

M Barrett said:

A classic example of PC rubbish. You obviously did no Hendon Advanced training in the late 70’s or early to mid 80’s. The Standard course involved a three week course, yes learning the basics then in national speed limits driving at whatever speed was safe but often at far higher speeds than the National speed limit. The van was a two day affair driving a Transit which involved mainly reversing and the PSU as you call it but then it was the ‘carrier course’ SPG was another two day course which was completely irrelevant because all SPG squads would only employ Advance drivers. The Advance involved four weeks of advanced training travelling from Hendon well into the heart of Suffolk etc at speeds well beyond the legal limit, even in those days touching 125 MPH. The second part was two weeks of pursuit driving which consisted entirely of chasing an instructor around the countryside at similar speeds who would continually try to catch you out. Sounds dangerous but you had to stay with him without venturing into the realms of dangerous driving. If you became dangerous you were sent back to division as a dangerous failure. The absolute top driver was the fastest but safest, a very fine line hence the saying a Class 1 always gets to a call first but a Class 2 always gets there!
After several years of driving area cars and squad cars I instructed at Hendon on the Advanced car course until the commute to Hendon wore me down. I am now retired and am in the fortunate position to have a successful Company and have driven far higher performance cars, a Porsche 911 Turbo, a 911GT3, a Mercedes SL65 to name a few and I can quite assure you that the Advance course of old was in a totally different league the anything since. I would suggest by your post that you had had no experience of Met Police Advance driving!

As I clearly said ( above &) experience of 80's, 90's, 00's & 10's, Ruler treatment & all.

All you've done is confirm that the standard & advanced courses in the 80's didn't contain all the elements that the response & advanced courses do in the 10's. (Which is what I said). Vans, PSU etc being separate course back then. In the 80's we had more time for fewer competencies than those being trained in this decade have.

Edited by vonhosen on Tuesday 5th December 20:07

What's on the current response and advanced courses that wasnt on the 'old' course competency wise.

[vonhosen]

Bigends said:

What's on the current standard and advanced courses that wasnt on the 'old' course competency wise.

What I said earlier.

Response (replaced standard course)- Blue light training, HOSTYDS, Van, PSU, initial phase pursuit.
Advanced - Blue light training & tactical pursuit training has changed.
Also TPAC which wasn't in the 70s/80s

The courses are shorter & they are performed in greater traffic density with quicker cars.