The Smith System

Boy this Smith guy must be making a ton of money. I'd never heard of it until a year or so ago. Guess it used to be called common sense, before someone decided to come up with a bunch of pat little phrases to describe it.

There's a lot of money in repackaging things for current consumption. Just look at the entertainment industry.

 

My mother essentially taught me the "smith system" when I started driving at 15, but she just called it "defensive driving." Her father did drive for Willig, so it is possible he was taught the "smith system" and passed it on (but I think common sense is more likely)

 

I was with a major oil company and they brought the smith system into all of our terminals. If you can picture drivers with many many years of experience waiting to hear some instructor teach them how to drive you'd know the air was thick with apprehension. Once it was explained to us that this system was written by drivers that had many safe years behind the wheel things changed. Now every driver swears by it. Our numbers have proven it works and we use it every day. The company even went out and bought the copy rights so we could use the material to teach out families. I used it to teach my son when he first got his license at 17 and it loved it. He's 25 now and has not been in any accidents or even close calls. He finds it funny when he knows what the other driver is going to do before that driver knows.

We used our driver trainer as the system leader and every quarter he would ride with us for a day and just refresh what we might have forgotten. It was easy for us because we are local. I can see the problem with OTR drivers and there availability. If you have a chance go for it. It's the best I've seen for defensive driving.

 

It's more than just common sense.

 

I'm not quite sure how the 5 major points constitute anything more than common sense and/or good training, and these concepts are certainly not the exclusive domain of Smith. My father taught me every one of these, in not so many words. His father taught him the same way, and his father predated the advent of the Smith system.

Distilled easy to remember catch phrases for good practise, sure. But I don't see much more than that.

 

I think it teaches you to be more patient , and by exercising that patience , you are much more able to see things before they develop into something that could result in an accident. It also helps you keep your attitude right..we all know how much that means....crap for an attitude...is an accident waiting for a place to happen.

 

I was a Smith System instructor when I was with Penske Logistics. Same experience as already mentioned, a roomfull of experienced drivers don't usually accept the idea that their skills could be improved. They taught us how to get over that by explaining that a lot of drivers already do some of the items that are taught, the system with the 5 keys is a memory training to cause them to do all of them all the time. It is clear and concise, easy to remember, I recommend it to anyone.

 

I would call some of it anticipation, knowing the pitfalls before it happens, something that my husband taught me many years ago, never heard of the Smith System. I was driving my car through our town, had a green light and was maybe about even with a coke delivery trucks rear trailer tires, he was in the left turn lane, I was in the left lane, and there was a car further ahead of me in the right lane. I had slowed down because I could not see past the front of his truck to make sure that no one was going to turn, it helped some but did not help the old lady who turned out in front of me from the opposite side of the road, hit her broadside and totaled her car and my sons' car. If I had not of slowed down I would have hit her going a lot faster, and it is no telling what the damage would have been. Her excuse she thought the light was not working so she basically decided to go ahead and turn. We have a lot of little old ladies in town who to say the least always said they never got on the highway (yikes).

 

In many ways this is supported by research from fluid dynamics:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=211025038

I listened to an interview about 15 years ago with a guy that did a Phd dissertation on fluid dynamics science applied to traffic. As noted in the interview I linked above one driver can have a positive impact on reducing traffic stoppages (stop and go). This requires looking well ahead to predict when stopped traffic will start moving again and pace yourself to arrive at that place with plenty of room so you don't come to a stop or slow too much.

After listening to that interview back then it crystalized for me the concept that giving space in front of me that allows other drivers room to maneuver is the right thing to do. But as noted in that interview (which I can't seem to find now) a funny thing happens whenever I drive in heavy traffic, I often notice that drivers in lanes next to me will often leave me up to 1/4 mile of space in front and won't come over into my lane... as I go along at 10-20 mph to slowly ease up to the stoppage ahead... then drivers in lanes beside me start emulating what I'm doing and it seems like all lanes will start moving along with good spacing.

 

the smiths system...oh you mean common sense driving,so many of you lack