Commentary Driving takes many forms (dependent on the context of the driving task being undertaken) but it is essentially about putting your actions into words and saying out loud the thoughts that are going through your head.
Most commonly, you'll have seen the Police using a form of commentary driving on many occasions when you've been watching those fly on the wall documentaries where the cameras follow a couple of Police Officers for a few days. During a pursuit, you'll be familiar with the following type of commentary:
"Following the suspect straight ahead into Maddison Street. Speed is 45mph in a 30 zone. Suspect is on the wrong side of the road. Turning left into Osbourne Road now"
That level of commentary is doing several things that assist the Police in the course of their work. It's a record of what's going on and as such it's gathering evidence, but it's also communicating the presence of risk and the driver will be focusing hard on managing that risk.
That's one of the reasons why commentary driving works you see - it forces you to concentrate and in order to do it at high speed like the Police do takes a lot of practice. Most people find that they need to slow the car down quite a bit in order to get the commentary in line with actual events but even then, you'll notice that the Police are prioritising their commentary in those examples - they simply don't have the time to mention absolutely everything.
So with that in mind, let's look at another type of commentary driving - the type your Driving Instructor used when you were driving for the first time:
"Push the clutch down. Move the gear stick towards me and then forward into 1st gear. Set the gas. Raise the clutch to the bite point and keep your foot still when the front of the car rises a bit"
Whilst that might appear to be "instruction" to you, it is only by practicing commentary driving at that level of detail for spent many hours that allowed the Instructor to develop competence in that skill. With a learner driver at the wheel of course listening and trying to complete the actions so that they can drive the car, it is essential that that level of detail is there (otherwise something important might not be done... looking both ways at a junction for example) and the car MUST travel very slowly in order to allow that level of detail to be used. The Police couldn't do that (and neither should they because there is no benefit for them in mentioning what they're feet are doing when they're involved in a pursuit).
So context is important and so are the aims of the driver when we're discussing commentary driving. For most of us, I imagine that our context is simply driving to and from places of interest (work, home, shops etc) and our aim is to do that with as little hassle as possible - none of us either want to crash or get involved with the Police in terms of paying speeding fines etc do we!
So what we need to do in our own commentary driving is to firstly describe the information available to us, followed by a quick assessment of the risk it presents and a brief summary of how we're going to deal with that risk.
AIM
ALERT - Make a conscious note of the hazard
INFORM - Tell yourself consciously what problem it presents
MANAGE - What are you going to do to manage this risk down to minimal levels?
Doing this will improve your driving by focusing you on the task of reading the road rather than driving allowing you to simply drive from memory. The road is a constantly changing environment and whilst you might know every lump, twist and bump in local roads what you don't know is that there's a broken down vehicle parked dangerously on the bend today, or that as you go over the crest of the hill today you're going to see a vehicle on your side of the road overtaking a horse in a bad place - we call them variable hazards and it's those are often the things that cause the crashes.
Starting on Monday and over the course of the next week, I am going to release daily blogs with the aim of increasing the number of commentary driving drivers and improving people's level of safety on the roads. Each blog will take a few minutes to read, and give you a task to carry out on the next drive you take. Every day, we'll ask you to add more and more to your commentary driving until you reach a level next weekend where you're starting to see real changes in your driving style (hopefully).
As each blog is released, I'll publicise links through the following outlets and I'll be available through the social media pages to chat over what whatever questions, queries or findings people have:
Nick Heath Driver Training is located in Rode Heath on the Staffordshire / Cheshire border and provides driving training services to those looking to either improve their driving or learn from scratch. In addition to media work, we conduct Taxi Driver Assessments for local authorities and offer Advanced Driver Training and Testing, Motorway Training and Fuel Efficient Driver Training alongside refresher courses and learner driving lessons. We are ORDIT registered to provide Driving Instructor Training and are listed on the DVSA's register of Fleet Trainers so we can help you with your business needs.
More details are available on our website www.nickheathdrivertraining.org.uk
