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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AlViking" data-source="post: 9818646" data-attributes="member: 6906980">I took a race driving course that really taught me a lot, far more than driving a truck ever would.  I suppose there might be something I could learn about the limitations of the semi that might lead me to treat them with a little more respect while driving, like limited lines of sight and needing significantly more distance to stop.  But I can also learn those by reading articles.  So I agree it's unlikely to hurt but I don't see why people assume it would help.[SPOILER="My experience with a race driving school"]Some of it was pretty simple way of visualizing what your car can do - imagine a rope tied to your steering wheel to your brake petal, the harder you turn the less you can use your brakes and vice versa.  One of our first lessons was related to that and how you relate to an emergency such as a semi jack-knifing in front of you while driving highway speeds.  Your natural reaction might be to turn the wheel as far as you can and slam on the brakes since it works on TV.  But your tires can only do 100% of any one thing - turning or stopping.  So you're far better off slamming on the breaks and then lifting off the brakes as you starting to turn.  If you do start to skid, turn into the skid as fast as possible and if you can't regain control you're kind of SOL so the best you can do is slam on the brakes and hope for the best.  Other things were like how to read a track line and get around corners as fast as possible because the course was both defensive driving an race driving.  Hint: going sideways around a corner is typically quite slow, it only works better under very specific circumstances like rally driving on gravel.  TV shows dramatic driving, not effective driving.In any case, it did make me a better driver because it was focused on the dynamics of the vehicle I was actually operating.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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