At the Wheel / A History of Driving and Driving Safety Film

[Music] The history of driving began, naturally enough, with the invention of the car in about 1890. The first driving was done for sport and adventure. If you were really serious about getting somewhere, which our man Paul Newman doesn't seem to be here, you went by railroad or steamship. 80 years ago, driving required different skills than it does today. There was little traffic to cope with, but you worried instead about dodging ruts and potholes and trying not to turn over. Cars may not have been capable of much more than 20 mph, but that was plenty for a machine with steering as rudimentary as this tiller bar. Paved roads brought the potential for higher speeds. It soon became apparent that there was something in man's nature that made him want to use cars for more than just transportation. Cars were exciting and they were a challenge to the skills of the people who drove them. Perhaps the greatest challenge in the history of driving took place in November 1979 when movie stuntman Stan Barrett drove this rocket powered car and broke the sound barrier. [Music] You know, Newman, you really do look ridiculous. >> Yeah. Well, Stanley, you asked me if I wanted to drive a hot setup, but they didn't say 1909. >> Okay, Stanley, what was it like to drive that thing? Well, I'll tell you one thing. There's nothing you can compare to. >> Ordinarily, you think of skilled driving as a mixture of good concentration and a a good feeling for the car. But when I was getting ready to drive the rocket car, I realized that it might require skills that no one could anticipate. What would happen when I reached the speed of sound? I had no idea. One thing I did know was that I would have to cope with the car's incredible acceleration, 0 to 140 mph in 1 second. While I was waiting through the last moments of the countdown before the blastoff, I had to tense my whole body. And when the car fired, it was all I could do to keep my hands from being yanked off the wheel. As the rocket car gathered speed, Stan Barrett felt a vibration that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Invisible to spectators, the compression of sound waves between the bottom of the car and the ground was lifting the rear wheels slightly into the air. At 739 mph, the entire car was balancing on the front wheel. At that moment, nerve alone wouldn't have been enough. What Stan Barrett needed was skill. The skill to keep his car in control. Few of us will ever face a challenge like the one Stan overcame when he broke the sound barrier. But whenever anyone drives any car, he should hope that like Stan Barrett, his skills are equal to the task. Hi, I'm Sam Posey. I've been a racing driver for 15 years. And in that time, you know, I've discovered that it's not just fast driving that interests me. It's skillful driving both on the racetrack and on the highway. You know, funny thing is that two of the most skillful drivers I ever drove with weren't racing drivers at all. One was my mother, the other a New York cab driver. There's a lot of talk these days about safe driving and defensive driving. But you know, to me, the best driver of all is going to be someone who puts skill first and has pride in his own ability. At the Wheel is a film about skillful driving. Five friends of mine who are expert drivers, specialists in everything from desert driving to Indianapolis to Hollywood stunts, are going to show us some of the things that they feel go into becoming a skillful driver. But first, it's worth a look at the evolution of the automobile. After all, without the car, there wouldn't be any driving, good or bad. The first cars, they look so old-fashioned now. It's incredible to think they came on the American scene less than a hundred years ago. Cars won immediate acceptance with the American public. And people were soon driving them, or at least trying to drive them everywhere. Cars were useful as well as good for holidays. And maybe best of all, they had back seats. The assembly line. Henry Ford invented it. and revolutionized the automotive industry. Suddenly, it was possible to build cars cheaply and in large quantities. But cars were still a long way from what we're used to today. They had bad brakes and steering that was so heavy that driving was thought to be mostly for men. Girls, well, they were supposed to watch in admiration from the passenger seat. Then came World War II. With young men fighting overseas, women discovered that they could be good drivers after all. And by 1950, driving had become a universal American phenomenon. [Music] However, we soon discovered that in our love for driving, there was also a menace. By 1968, more than 55,000 people were being killed on US roads each year. More Americans had died on our highways than in all of the wars since 1776. Worst of all, the fatality rate was highest among young people. Most accidents were being caused by driving too fast and many others by drivers who had been drinking or using drugs. For a while, these statistics seemed abstract to most people. Death or injury due to a car accident was something that happened to someone else, not to them. As the implication of these statistics begin to be appreciated and Americans begin to realize that driving is an inherently dangerous activity, we began an evolutionary process towards making our cars and the way we drive them safer. >> Manufacturers began by studying exactly what takes place in a crash. With careful instrumentation and the use of dummies, simulated crashes such as you see here pointed to a pattern. People were being hurt not because the car collapsed on them, but because they hurdled forward inside the car, striking the steering wheel, the dashboard, and the windshield. The logical solution was to invent some way to keep people firmly in their seats. Seat belts were a partial solution. The trouble was that the accident victim's upper torso still whipped forward on impact, but seat belts and shoulder harnesses, that did the job. Step-by-step analysis of head-on collisions revealed that people who were wearing belts and harnesses could literally walk away from crashes which otherwise would have been fatal. Of course, the greatest safety device in the world is not to have an accident in the first place. Increasingly, people are realizing that their own skill at the wheel can prevent accidents. And the result has been the remarkable growth of schools which teach expert driving. The most famous of these schools is run by former racing driver Bob Bonderan. >> Hi, I'm Bob Bonderant. You know, one of the greatest rewards about having my own driving school is being able to teach other people how to learn to drive better and also to make driving much more enjoyable. And it's a lot of fun when you do that. The other thing that's interesting to me is that most people don't really realize how much they can possibly learn. And when I do, it's so much more fun. >> Bob teaches a mixture of the basics of driving and its fine points. He starts with what he calls his ground school, where he can outline and diagram what the students are about to do out on the track. The next step is the driving of a simple oval, where the basics of gear shifting and braking can be practiced over and over. Bob says he's surprised by how many people, many of whom have owned sports cars for years, still can't downshift smoothly. The Oval also introduces students to the idea of what's called the line, which is the fastest and smoothest way through a corner. Bondant points out that a lot of drivers are never in a skid until they're in an accident. But here at our skid pad, which is nothing more than a heavily oiled patch of roadway, people can get used to the feeling of sliding a car in complete safety. Then after a while, they learn to control the skid. And that's when they're on their way to being a really capable driver. Having learned or just polished up the basic skills, it's time for the final phase, putting it all together on this twisty, hilly racetrack. As Bob leads his students around the track, they learn the racing technique of using the whole width of the road. He says that one of the biggest rewards of his teaching is the satisfaction of seeing people discover for themselves that driving on the highway as well as on the track is a skill in which they can take pride and pleasure. You know, the bottom line is whether you're a stunt driver like Stan or a road racer like Paul or just driving down the highway, but the better driver you are, the more fun you have. >> And some of the most enjoyable and challenging driving is done off the road. >> All right, good. Yeah, let's give it a whirl. >> Hi, I'm Roger Mirs. This is the off-road truck that I use in all the off-road races like the Baja Thousand, the World Championship, Riverside Off-Road Races. And uh it's basically the same kind of truck that you'd use on the street except for the special safety features we have like the roll cage, shoulder harnesses, seat belts, and these safety nets. Racing in this terrain, the restraint system helps me control the truck, but driving at the speeds we have to to win. Occasionally, an accident can happen. The safety features in this truck protect me from serious injury. >> Desert driving like this takes some unusual skills not required in other forms of driving. Watch how Roger manages to control the truck even though half the time it's barely on the ground. He must vary his speed from leap to leap so that his landings will be smooth and precise. To cope with the extra dimension produced by these leaps, Roger has to rely on instinct. He must keep his mind clear to deal with the unexpected hazards of the desert. Boulders, ravines, aoyos. In desert driving, it's hard to tell which is tougher, the physical punishment or the necessity for unwavering mental concentration. Concentration is also the key to another form of expert driving, road racing. Now, unlike the desert driving we've just been seeing Roger Mirs do, which let's face it, features the unexpected every few seconds almost, in road racing, the key is to take certain specific skills and hone them to perfection. For Paul Newman, who drives this car here, the art of concentration came early. He learned it as an actor long before he became a racing driver. Well, I was lucky, I guess, cuz in acting I had to learn how to concentrate and concentrate really hard. You can't let anything distract you. And it turned out that this was invaluable in racing. Um, a lap around a track like this requires a dozens of split-second decisions. And if your mind starts to wander, well, maybe you miss a shift or you take a wrong run into a corner. Small mistake could cost you as little as a tenth of a second. A big mistake, you could wind up off the road. Obviously, you've got to have driving skill, but that in itself isn't very much good if your mind isn't hooked up. How good a driver you are really starts with your frame of mind. And of course, it's not uh just your own driving you have to think about. When you're racing at close quarters with other guys, you got to think, what's he going to do next? And what am I going to do about it? Racing drivers are surprisingly courteous, much more so than I think than most highway drivers. But they're not going to give you anything. You got to plan exactly what you're going to do. In the summer of 1979, Newman needed all of his concentration, reflexes, and judgment to escape an incident which could easily have turned into a major accident. >> The scene was the track at Limerock, Connecticut. Newman, second from left, was coming down the straight when this chain reaction resulted in two cars flying off the road. Newman was able to emerge unscathed, and when the race was stopped, he described the near miss to his crew. Just minutes later, competition resumed and Paul showed he was able to put the incident out of his mind and drive a brilliant last lap to win this photo finish. Hi, I'm Johnny Rutherford. You know, the only way Paul could escape that situation that we just saw was through total concentration. In my 21 years of racing, I find that concentration is one of the key ingredients to success. I like to come into a track a little early like this and get an opportunity to maybe start that process, get the concentration going. It also helps me know what I've got to do to set up the race car. When you're traveling at speeds of over 200 m an hour, you're extremely conscious of all aspects of the car's mechanical health. Are the shock absorbers set right? You might be surprised to hear that a bad shock can so impair the cornering of a car that it becomes dangerous to drive. No one would ever drive a car in which he knew the brakes weren't going to work. But how many people know how much brake lining is really left in their car or if there's enough brake fluid? Tire pressure. That's another big deal. Even forgetting that an underinflated tire is dangerous. It also spoils the handling of your car. Spoils the fun really of having your car be 100% responsive to what you're asking it to do. I can usually tell if a tire is just 2 or three lbs under inflated. It's that sensitive. Tire inflation plays a big role in fuel economy. Underinflation by as little as 5 lb could cost you an extra mile per gallon. In racing, nobody thinks you're being too particular if you insist on having the cockpit and the driving position tailored to your specific needs. Sometimes the mechanics will work for hours just to make sure their driver is 100% comfortable in the car. For example, the seat is specially built, actually molded to my back. And the seat belts and shoulder harnesses are sized to fit perfectly. You know, I used to think seat belts were just in case of an accident, but the more I use them, the more I realize that they help give you a better feel for the car and what you're doing with it. You know, only a few of us will ever get to drive cars such as we've just been looking at, but all of us will drive cars like mine here out on the highway. And just as it's important for my racing friends to make full use of their skills, it's important for any of us who drive on the roads to use our skills to the utmost. I'll tell you this, skillful driving is its own reward. may or may not save your life, but it will for sure make your driving more fun.