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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
Serving Seguin and Guadalupe County since 1888
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Virtual experience offers real benefits
Published April 15, 2009
SEGUIN — “S-O, 140.”
Sheriff’s Sgt. Jerry Rios, whose radio call sign is “140,” acknowledged the dispatcher. It’s been a little while since Rios worked as a patrol deputy, but he was doing it Tuesday afternoon.
“140, we have a report of a stolen BMW driven by one Allan Balderas,” answered “dispatcher” Don Courtney.
Allan Balderas, as those familiar with Arnold Zwicke’s sheriff’s office know, is a patrol deputy who joined Guadalupe County on the same day as Rios did — albeit five minutes earlier.
“What’s his location?” Rios asked Courtney, a simulator training specialist with the Texas Association of Counties.
“Look in your rearview mirror,” Courtney said, as Balderas blasted past Rios like he was nailed to the curb in his police interceptor Crown Victoria.
“See you later!” Balderas exclaimed, and the chase was on — a chase much like that in one of the “Grand Theft Auto” video games.
The difference was, in this game, the picture was from the point of view of the police officer and not the car thief — and no matter what happened, including if Rios or Balderas wrecked out — the good guys win, not that Balderas was playing by the rules, anyway.
And that’s because Courtney, who trains those who drive county vehicles for TAC, which is the insurance carrier for all 254 Texas counties, is in town for three weeks with a $400,000 simulator that TAC uses to train drivers in defensive techniques — whether they’re driving a dump truck, a semi-rig or a patrol car, vehicles that are typically driven by county employees.
A similar, stationary simulator would cost a county about $100,000 to construct, Courtney said. But few counties could afford the expense, which is why TAC sends the simulator to 30 or so counties each year.
This week, they’re training sheriff’s deputies at one end of the trailer in a five-screen simulation of a patrol car. Next week, it will be Road Superintendent Larry Timmermann’s county road crews who will be practicing driving dump trucks and other heavy equipment in an even more elaborate simulator that mimics the cab of a large truck or big rig mounted in the front of the trailer.
The training program is important because county employees log millions of miles each year in their vehicles — and it’s no secret that sometimes they get into accidents.
Over a three-year period, TAC estimates that the simulator course, which includes two hours of class time and at least one hour behind the wheel, saved Texas counties $1.3 million in insurance claims. The course itself costs about $120 per person, but is offered to counties at no local cost as a way of making fleets safer.
“We grade them as ‘safe’ or ‘at-risk’ drivers — not pass or fail — in a number of areas,” Courtney said. “We have them do a ‘Code 3’ exercise, and we grade them in defensive driving and intersection analysis.”
No one in Guadalupe County this time appears headed toward an “at-risk” rating, Courtney said. But he had one at a county he recently visited — and informed its sheriff.
“The sheriff said it was interesting that we’d singled out that man, because he’d already been disciplined for his driving,” Courtney said.
The classroom aspect of the course covers all the defensive driving theory. The simulator is intense. Many people who experience it are left feeling queasy, and a few even get ill.
The goal is to get drivers thinking about safety — and to try to make them safer.
“It can be a little difficult,” Courtney said. “But when he’s out in the real patrol car going around a shopping center, he’ll be more careful — he knows to always stay out, wide. Hopefully, with the near-misses and the things they’ve learned in here, they’ll go out and be accident-free for a while.”
Rios and Balderas both said they found the simulation highly realistic, even though the car seat doesn’t move and the world instead moves around it in a 225-degree arc created by five big screens.
“It’s good training for the guys, and as a supervisor, it gives me perspective,” Rios said. “It brings things back to us from our training that sometimes, as police officers, we forget. So it’s good for us and it’s good for the department.”
Zwicke said the training is necessary for sheriff’s deputies who drive tens of thousands of miles each year.
“Motor vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of injuries in law enforcement, other than assaults,” Zwicke said. “We’re taking steps to make sure our officers are well-trained. TAC offers a really good school at no cost to the county, and we recommend it.”
Zwicke said he was glad to hear that Courtney said his deputies were doing well.
“I’m pleased to know that. This is a tool we can use to identify a problem driver in a controlled environment rather than out on a public highway,” Zwicke said.
In the case of Rios, he did manage to run down Balderas — literally so. The BMW ended up as a pile of smoking junk after rolling twice.
Courtney said it was a good piece of driving on both of their parts.
That was OK with Rios because, after all, he’d showed his buddy one of the reasons why he wears the sergeant’s stripes — being able to run down the sporty BMW with a relatively stodgy Crown Vic.
“What we can learn in a controlled environment helps us out on the street, and you can’t go wrong with that,” Rios said.
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