So, this happened Saturday

I worked a Street Survival Saturday. Over all it was a great day. The kids learned a lot, and I always enjoy watching them progress and get better as the day goes on.

Then this happened.

Edit: Per the request of the "Powers that Be" the images have been removed. I don't necessarily agree with the request, but I can understand their reasoning.

No one was injured other than the tree, thank the Lord. I'm still not sure how it happened or how to make sure it doesn't happen in the future.

We laid out a large oval, 300' long, 90' wide to teach slide recovery. We wet down one end of the oval so they can experience under and over steer and we teach how to recover from and avoid it. The wet end is laid out in the largest open area we have. Probably 200+ feet from the course to anything solid.

The dry end is just for turning around to go back to the wet end. No training is done on this end. It's about 70' away from the closet island. The car left the course on the dry end and accelerated all the way to the tree. The tree she hit is about 90' from where the car left the course.

The only thing I can figure is the young lady driving, panicked and pressed the gas thinking it was the brake.

I hate that it happened. We've done 8 of these over the years and this is the first incident we've had.

The girl was majorly pissed at herself and her instructor was crushed.

That really sucks.

All the terrible aspects are easy to see; Apart from the good fortune that nobody was injured, here's hoping that this underscores the danger of inexperience and the increased likelihood of panic.

Though it does leave the question of what on earth happened since it was the "cold" end of the loop...

target fixation must have played a part.

It was clearly unintended acceleration.

To prevent this from happening next time, the instructor could slip the car into neutral and pull the handbrake.

Unfortunately the handbrake is a foot brake, drivers left, on the floor in that car. Neutral might have worked though. I'm not going to Monday morning QB him though. I'm not sure I would have thought about that in time.

Holy hell, I've instructed at SSS for 6 years and never seen anything like that.

In reply to Javelin:

Like I said. We've done 8 of them and never even come close to an incident like this. I don't know if I've ever heard of something like this happening.

In reply to Toyman01:

It's the first SSS accident I've ever heard of.

Allow me to be completely uninvolved and yet still have an opinion: Are there not enough GoPros around to stick one in each car? Or with each instructor?

I was thinking the same thing on video. Would probably limit liability in case the girl's parents try to sue.

In reply to Johnboyjjb:

That's a pretty good idea. I'll pass it on to the powers that be.

It sounds like both the student and the instructor had target fixation and panic.

Instruct the instructors class prior to event. Spend significant time on instructor intervention in the car and what to do IF....happens.

For all you potential instructors out there....push trans to Neutral and cut power. You may need to hold "Start/Stop" buttons for 3-seconds or more.

Wow, glad it was no worse than that.

A few years ago I was an instructor at a BMW test drive event in that same lot, one of the students nearly destroyed a Z4 in about the same place. She was so far off the marked course that the only thing I can think of is that when it happened the instructor was sorta dumbfounded and just didn't catch it in time. Toyman, you know the instructor; we call him 'the Machine'.

In reply to admc58:

The only problem with cutting power is the loss of power steering and you only get one good jab of the brakes before you loose power on them too. Shifting to neutral would have probably helped, but not necessarily prevented the incident.

i have no idea what this thread is about.. pictures are always useful- especially if the thread was started with pictures being used to show what happened..

If they survived you did your job. Hopefully several people got the stupid scared out of them.

novaderrik wrote: i have no idea what this thread is about.. pictures are always useful- especially if the thread was started with pictures being used to show what happened..

I agree, but there is no sense causing hate and discontent locally. Especially since one of the "Powers that Be" is my wife.

Basically a young lady left the course and accelerated into a tree. She was on the "cold" end of a training oval. I'm not sure how or why it happened and would like to be able to avoid this in the future.

That tree should have moved. I blame mother nature.