Computer game makes roads safer

A learner driver learns how to change gears in 'the yard'.

AS corporate social investment programmes go, teaching people how to drive by playing a glorified computer game doesn’t sound like an important contribution to help meet South Africa's many social economic needs.

But Coega Development Corporation CEO Pepi Silinga’s mission to train safer drivers has done more to promote road safety, in especially the Eastern Cape and KZN, than all the government programmes to date.

Bear in mind that Arrive Alive states South Africa’s road mortality ratio of 28 per 100 000 citizens is the worst in the

world, and vehicle crashes are also the largest unnatural killer of children in South Africa.

Pepi Silinga, CEO at Coega
makes our roads saver.

South Africa’s official total road death toll of 14 000 annually, means on average 38 people die each day — eight in ten because of poor decisions by drivers.
Any effort to lower these grim statistics — however small — is therefore laudable, but Silinga did not go small. He challenged his staff at Coega to find a way to train safer drivers and the simulator driving programme started in 2011 has since provided a free grounding in defensive driving techniques to over 10 300 people.

 As I can testify after trying to safely overtake on simulator, this means there are 10 300 new drivers who will never be tempted to compete in the stupid driver’s favourite sport on the N2 — overtaking on a blind rise.
For each time you try to slip past the slow truck on the simulator, you get taken out in a head-on crash. This rather vivid experience leaves all students with a very clear understanding of what is possible in a car, and what is not.

Real life stuff

The programme saves money and effort in real life too. Coega’s driving programme manager Alf Settle told me people of all ages who use the free facilities at 15 centres (two of which are in KZN), pass their K53 driver’s licence tests in half the time.

Thinking myself an old hand at this driving stuff, I sat down in the Chinese simulator full of confidence, started the engine, slipped in first gear and smoothly drove off.

lf Settle

“You better start again, you have already lost 25 points of a 100,” Settle gently pointed out.
“What! How?“ I spluttered.
“You did not close the door, you are not wearing your seatbelt and you started the car in gear,“ he added, pointing to the small symbolic door and real seat belts that form part of each of the 41 simulators at the head office in Coega. Getting these basics right are all part of teaching new drivers the K53 defensive driving techniques.

Each unit also have headphones, over which a monotone female voice drily points out all my subsequent errors.
The harridan instructor will make you drive each phase over and over, until you get it right.

No money changes hands

Settle said the simulators cost about R80 000 each, which were the cheapest, but best units they could find, and his office is now researching simulators to also train truckers, tractor drivers and forklift operators.

The robust simulators currently used to train the old Code 8 drivers train up to four groups of 40 students for two-hour sessions, most of them interns at Coega.

All the units have manual transmissions, but there are also seven units fitted with automatic gearboxes and accelerator levers to enable drivers with amputated legs to drive.

Most of these learner drivers have never even held a steering wheel and in their excitement to do well, the main item they brake is the ignition.
The green students grip the keys too hard and turn the metal off in the ignition.

There is also no opportunity for corruption at the center, as both the simulator learner driver testing, as well as training, are provided gratis, at all centres 15, even to members of the community.

“No money changes hands,” Settle said.