KEY POINTS:
Sometime last Tuesday, God learned how to do a proper three-point turn, swing and not lift His foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal, put His hands on the steering wheel in the 9-3 o'clock position, and look way beyond the car in front.
Welshman Wayne Price
had arrived in Heaven from Auckland. Odds-on, he would have told God: "There's carnage on the road down there, mate. You've gotta pass on some driving skills. Get the message across. Here, let me show you how it's done."
Price ran what is New Zealand's most comprehensive driver training centre, on land leased from the Ardmore Airport Authority. Some would call him passionate. Others, those whose egos he had bruised, would say he was obsessive.
The former British Army driving instructor came to New Zealand in 1994 to work with the Automobile Association. What he saw scared him.
"I saw a need for higher driving skills because I was shocked at the carnage and the unwillingness of the Government to save on the social costs of accidents," he said.
He wrote letters to local and national politicians urging them to back state-owned driving centres. "But while they all agreed that driving skills are important, they didn't see a need for government to get involved in the driver-education business," he said.
So Price went it alone. He left the AA and set up his own driving school from his home in Howick. He showed big fleet companies how to reduce accident rates and costs. Hire car company Avis liked what he did. So did racing driver Greg Murphy and radio host Leighton Smith.
A few years ago, he found land near Ardmore airport. Price mapped out plans to use an old runway as a "highway." Papakura District Council okayed the project.
Not long after the driving centre was up and running, the California Highway Patrol recommended a new way to hold the steering wheel: 8 to 4 on a clockface, not 10 to 2 or 9 to 3.
The reason? Airbags mostly. During a collision an airbag will explode out at more than 160 km/h, protecting the driver's head and chest against hitting the steering wheel. But with the hands at 10-2 or higher on the wheel, said researchers at CHiPs, the airbag can throw a driver's arms back into his or her face as it deploys.
Price went with 9-3. " I prefer 9-3 because the hands are better balanced. It gives you better control. If you shuffle the wheel around bends you have to shuffle it back to the straight-ahead again. You never have the car fully under control."
That was what Price taught: control of the car at all times. Korean carmaker Kia sponsored the centre and Price had instructors to help with tuition. A couple of them found him on the centre's "highway" on Tuesday morning. He was lying near cones he had been putting out for the day's instruction. Heart attack, they reckon.