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Wednesday, And now, here's a break from the ongoing reportage of WHITE KNIGHT, QUEEN ALICE -- we turn now to other Real Time(TM) events in the never-ending adventure that is the life of Melanie M. Fletcher.
Driver's Ed was never like this. I ran the first part of the Swedish Driver's License Gauntlet tonight -- the slippery test. In order to get a license here, you have to pass three tests -- your slippery test (where they see if you can drive in bad road conditions), your written test, and your full driving test. Now, as my regular readers will know, I've been trying to get a license since June of this year, and every time it seems I'm getting close to making an appointment, they throw another obstacle in my way. The slippery test was the latest -- "Oh, you have to take the slippery test before you take the theory test," the Vägverket bleated, "and you have to bring your own translator who has a Swedish driver's license." 
Ooookay. So I ask my friend Scott from work, since he's married to a Swedish woman, is fluent in the language, and got his Swedish license in the days when you went to the Post Office, handed over your US license and was presented with a local one in return. No muss, no fuss -- those were the days (to paraphrase Mr. Garrison: "You go to hell, EU regulations! You go to hell and you die!"). In any case, brave man that he is, Scott said he'd help me. So we left this afternoon and headed north into the wooded wilderness (which pretty much describes any part of Sweden outside of Stockholm) and found Gillingebanan, the testing place. DA da DUMMMMM. Sounds like something from a rite of passage, doesn't it? "And yea, you shall be sent forth to the Testing Place, and there you shall do battle with the mighty Mugwark, even unto the rending of his genitalia with your teeth. Then, shall we call you a man." Well, this was kind of similar (except for the rending of genitalia with teeth -- I'm saving that for the Vägverket). Gillingebanan is this big driving test site at, not surprisingly, Gillinge. It's divided into two sections -- one section (I think) is used for the driving test, so that's laid out like a regular road with stop lights and such. The other half looks like a speedway -- big empty space with a control tower and strategically placed barrels, distance markers and a run-up road (it's the big, black wet patch in the picture). This is what's used for the slippery test. Ah, but first, you ask, what is this bloody slippery test? Okay -- the test is designed to give you "real-life risk experience" (I'm translating from the test leaflet here). You learn what it's like to roll a car, rear-end a car, go into a skid and how to control it as best you can, swerve on ice, and why you can't rely on ABS brakes if you're doing much over 45 KPH. The "test" name is a misnomer, really -- yes, you have to perform each example properly, but it's more of a 4-hour seminar on good driving habits in bad conditions than an academic test. First, we had to sit and listen to a brief lecture on what was going to happen that evening (which was kinda pointless for me, as I didn't understand much of the instructor's Swedish and it was hard for Scott to keep up with him). The instructor started out as your classic "tough guy" -- scowling, no-nonsense, "you better listen to me if you wanna live, PUNK." He loosened up a bit when he realized 1) none of us were teenage boys who had delusions of Mario Andrettihood, and 2) all of us were taking him perfectly seriously.
Next was the Whiplash Ride -- first we saw what happens to a dummy head when it whiplashes in a seat without a proper headrest (the neck vertebrae are violently pulled apart in the motion -- ow), then we were loaded into a chair and rolled down a ramp to see what it was like to rear-end someone at 20 KPH (ow ow). That force increases exponentially with the speed, the instructor explained -- what was just a big "OOF!" at 20 KPH would catapult you out of your seat at 80 or 100 KPH and slam you against (and probably out of) the windshield if you weren't wearing your seatbelt. Even if you were wearing your belt, you'd still be left with mondo bruises. The instructor also mentioned some horror stories about people wearing their belts improperly and cracking ribs, damaging livers and rupturing other internal organs as a result. In case I haven't made it very clear so far, these people are very serious about giving you the next best experience to actually being in an accident. I really, REALLY wish something like this could be made a mandatory part of getting a license in the States -- it might throw the fear of God into some teenaged neo-Speed Racers. Then again, maybe not -- you're blithely convinced of your immortality when you're young, even in the face of evidence like this. Next, on to the track. Two people were assigned to a car, and I drew Jonny, a capable but nervous young man who was scheduled to sit his theory test on Monday, so he had to get tonight right or else. We sat up front (as the designated drivers) and Scott sat in back (as the designated panicking passenger) while the instructor sat in this little control booth The actual road test covered seven parts -- the first three were in summer conditions (or as summery as it could get on a snow-covered field at night) and involved braking with locked wheels, with partially locked wheels, and with ABS brakes. Counter to everything I'd been taught in Driver's Ed, stopping with locked wheels covered the shortest distance. I also managed to spin the car completely around in the locked wheel skid, but apparently that was okay because the field was covered with snow and ice. Braking with partially locked brakes covered the longest distance, braking with ABS brakes fell somewhere in the middle. Hmm. 
The next two parts were avoiding an obstacle in winter conditions with regular and ABS brakes (by the way, the car in the picture is the one I actually used -- good ol' Number Twelve). This included a 40 kph run-up onto a completely wet and slick field (which went against every reflex in my head -- my brain kept screaming at me to slow down because of the conditions) at which point we had to accelerate up to a set of cones, swerve left around four flexible plastic poles that served as an obstacle, then try to pull back onto the path and stop. Cool. On this one, Jonny and I both had to do it a few times -- the trick is to accelerate, then hit the clutch but NOT the brake (which was a problem during my turn because I had Jonny yelling "Brake! Brake" and Scott yelling "Clutch! Clutch!" at me while I was screaming "One at a time! One at a time!" at them). That cuts power to the wheels but still lets you steer and avoid the obstacle. With ABS brakes, you can brake as hard as you like and still steer. Then we had to repeat the test at 45, 50 and 55 KPH. As your speed increases, so does your skid distance. The instructor said this was to demonstrate that ABS brakes aren't intended to reduce skidding, they're meant to give you control over the wheel while you skid. You can't rely on them blindly to stop you from smashing into an oncoming vehicle if you're doing 100 KPH plus. Lesson learned, I thought. Onward to the final two sections -- approach the field at 40 KPH with regular and ABS brakes, swerve around the obstacle, and come to a full stop before you reach the end markers. This was trickier -- you could brake any way you liked in the test, as long as you didn't hit the obstacle and didn't skid past the end markers. This time, we didn't have to accelerate, which made swerving around the obstacle easier, but stopping before you hit the markers was a bitch. I had to repeat one sequence with the regular brakes, but got it right with the ABS brakes all the way up to 55 kph. Jonny had to go a few extra times because he kept edging out beyond the markers, but eventually he got the hang of it to the instructor's satisfaction (unlike some of the other drivers -- I missed a lot of the banter, but I did catch the part where the instructor was nagging a student on approach that his great-grandmother could drive faster than that). Afterwards, we parked the cars, trooped back in to the warehouse to look at crashed cars and videotapes of accidents, including the damage air bags can cause to babies sitting in the front seat (I was appalled -- the air bag snapped the baby dummy's head off. Not pushed to one side, or to the chest -- we're talking blown off like someone put a .44 to the kid's head and pulled the trigger. People, I'm begging you -- if you have children, PLEASE use child safety seats and put them in the back. You DON'T want this happening to your kid). The final display was specific to an area with large land mammals -- a full-sized diorama of a meeting between car and elk. Apparently it really happened to the car AND the elk -- the (now stuffed) animal was sprawled across the hood with two completely snapped legs, and the car -- well, let's just say the meeting had been explosive. Then we trooped back to the classroom for a quick review, and the instructor passed out our test certificates to be handed in to the Vägverket when we take our theory tests. As we were leaving I wished Jonny luck on his upcoming test and wondered if I'd ever get through to the Vägverket to schedule my own. All in all, the slippery test took four hours, and was probably one of the most sobering and useful driving experiences I'd ever had. Serious shit, here. Gotta admit, though -- all that skidding was kinda fun. Whee. . . |
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Next step -- tests of body and balance. We walked over to a warehouse for our first hands-on lesson -- the Whirling Car of Death. This was a small car mounted on a gimbal so that it can spin 360° vertically, mimicking what happens during a roll. We piled into the car in teams (Scott even volunteered to come in with my team -- he's so cool) and fastened our seatbelts. Then the instructor slowly spun the car around in a single G roll, pausing when we were completely upside down to demonstrate what it felt like if we were trapped in a flipped car. It was. . .unpleasant, to say the least. Painful as hell, if I'm being honest -- the seat belt was cutting into me and I had to brace my arms against the ceiling in order to keep my body weight off my neck. Then he flipped it again. . .and left it upside down, and we had to unbuckle and climb out of the car that way. Ooof. I now have a nicely scraped knee from that little experience, as well as a whole new respect for stuntdrivers. I also never, ever want to roll my car if I can at all avoid it, because I would probably snap my silly neck in the maneuver.
and explained what we had to do over a one-way radio. I just have to say here that Scott Brown is indeed a god for willingly sitting in the back seat of a car while we skidded, swerved and spun the damn thing on the ice. Nerves of titanium, that man.
