Ride Drive???

[t40ora]

Just had a 2 hour 'lesson' with a Traffic Cop and Advanced Driving Instructor, for the princely sum of £40.

Covered lots of stuff; positioning, reading ahead, use of gears, appropriate speed etc. Next step for me is IAMs and some additional sessions with this guy to cover techniques for getting round bends and corners safely and quickly.

Now what I would like to know is, what more will I get from Ride Drive? Have been thinking of this but not sure whether they cover anything additional? Obviously, they do a whole day (or two halves) and I've only had 2 hours. But if I do another three sessions with this guy, I'll only be £160 worse off and he is as qualified as the Ride Drive guys to give me the skills.

Any suggestions out there? Not dissing Ride Drive in any way, and love the articles in Sprint. Will still do a day with them if it's worth it, but seems like I might be spending £400 (or whatever the cost is) but won't get any more from it........

[doctor_darren]

Just my own thoughts here. I did the full day with Ride Drive last year. Some might say that relating what you did to Ride Drive is a bit harsh, but really that's the sort of stuff they go through, positioning, gears, braking, use of speed, over taking even(!). The whole day allows them to really reinforce the concepts, and practice more examples, more variety but you will get that from more 'lessons'. The downside of a whole day in one go is it's very tiring, by mid afternoon I was totally knackered and I just started to forget all the stuff learnt in the morning and revert to basis driving skills. In hindsight I would have preferred two half days.

The one extra thing I got though, was the one hour on a test track - actually just a skid pan and acceleration braking straight. Oh some might say, not a real track, but I'll never forget demonstrating the limits of my T350C and how easy it is to go too far, but in complete safety. I understand the facilities Ride Drive use can be 'hired' by private individuals, the guy with me said the hour cost on the 'track' we used was £80. I would certainly recommend trying to do this as well more lessons.

ttfn

Dr Darren

Edited by doctor_darren on Thursday 14th September 15:54

[t40ora]

Thanks Darren, that's really helpful. I'll have a word with the guy I went with and ask him about track/airfield work.

Cheers, Lee