Car club HPDEs saved my butt

04May06

I have a 2005 BMW M3 and I always look forward to attending club driving schools at the race track. These aren’t racing schools, but are meant to learn and practice good techniques for high speed performance driving in a controlled environment. While it is a legal way to go really fast, it’s a lot more than that in the sense you learn much about car control, braking, cornering, steering, being smooth in car handling, and how to drive the best line.

We call these schools HPDE for High Performance Driving Event. They are typically run by car clubs such as the BMW Car Club of America (BMW CCA), the Porsche Club of America (PCA), and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). Each student is paired with an experienced instructor, and classroom time is combined with track time (with an emphasis on track time). I’ve twice had instructors who are race car drivers.

Attending these is the most fun you can have with clothes on. It’s claimed the biggest benefit is that it makes you a better and safer driver on public roads. In fact, I’ve done a couple days at these schools in pouring rain, and I’m much better at driving in bad weather than I used to be. That’s right, at HPDEs we still drive rain or shine (unless it’s really, really nasty). Well, I learned first hand yesterday how much of a benefit attending these can be.

I was eastbound on Delmar Ave. (University City, MO) around 6 PM yesterday, doing about 40 (35 MPH zone). I was in the right lane and a car in front of me veered right, into the parking lane. No big deal. But immediately following that, a slow moving car in the left lane jumped right in front of me into my right lane, as if he wanted to also veer right to the parking lane.

This was seriously close. I was not expecting a bonehead move like that. Immediately I hit the brake…hard…anti-lock kicked in, and then I had to carefully negotiate the car towards the right between bonehead’s car and the one that veered right earlier. IOW, I was threading the needle while threshold braking from 40 MPH. No doubt traction control was assisting.

The experience I have gained in car control at HPDEs really helped me out here. One, I was ready to threshold brake, and I did everything in a quick, but smooth move. I avoided a potentially major damaging accident for myself. This could have easily totalled my car. Without doing HPDEs I don’t think I would have braked hard enough, and I know I wouldn’t have been as smooth and confident in my response.

“Saving it for the track” saved me off the track!!! Thanks to all who taught, encouraged, and shared the HPDE experience with me.

In retrospect — as I was passing — I got the impression that bonehead had a scrape with the other guy, and was trying to get over to the right with him. Bonehead was an accident looking for more places to happen.

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