In West Virginia: Drive for Life

By Robert C. Wurmstedt

The night is balmy. The highway is lit by a full moon. Suddenly, as the car crests a hill, there it is, just 50 yards ahead, a terrorist roadblock: two small foreign cars, parked across the pavement. With only a second to react, the driver lunges at the emergency brake to lock the rear wheels, then jams down hard on the brake pedal too. He jerks the steering wheel to the right. The rear of the car twists savagely in a 180DEG "bootleg" turn.

There is a horrible screeching and the hot stink of brake pads and burning tires. Heart pounding, the driver guns his motor, racing away from the barricade. But now another car pulls out of a dark side road to cut him off. Though half blinded by its headlights, he jams on the brakes again, and just as his car is shuddering to a stop, he slams it into reverse and guns the engine. Seconds later he takes his foot off the gas and turns the steering wheel hard. Tires screaming, the car spins around once more, but is again facing the roadblock. There is no choice now but to pray, step on the gas and try to ram his way through.

He hits. But no deafening, jolting crash occurs. On impact, the two cars swing away easily, for they are on casters and covered with polyurethane foam pads. The terrorist threat was not for real, but still there is genuine sweat on the driver's palms. This is part of the final exam given at the BSR Counter-Terrorist Driving School. It is the culmination of a four-day course held at Summit Point, W. Va., about 80 miles west of Washington. Instructor Bill Scott, 42, a Yale Ph.D. in geology and an ex-champion Formula Super Vee race-car driver, started the course in 1976 after the Air Force asked him to provide driver training for some of its officers. Since then, Scott and three other instructors, backed by a team of mechanics, have trained hundreds of chauffeurs and corporation executives in how to foil attempts to kill or capture them on the road. The basic course, including films and lectures plus actual driving, costs $1,495.

Scott does not advertise. Many of his clients demand that their names be kept secret. Information about the course is passed along by word of mouth through an old boy network of corporate security chiefs and ex-CIA and Secret Service types. "Worldwide, attacks on cars happen every day," says Scott. "They don't even make news any more. About 90% take place in European suburbs. About 90% are successful."

There are six or eight drivers in most of Scott's classes. The first day is devoted to shooting up an old Buick with a 9-mm machine gun, an automatic pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun so the students will be familiar with the firepower available to the "opposition." Most slugs easily penetrate the side of the car. Then four of the class put on crash helmets and seat belts for an initiation run around the track in one of Scott's four new, high-performance Chevrolet Malibu police cars.

It's the white-knuckle express. Scott does straightaways at 110 m.p.h. and rarely corners at less than 65 m.p.h. The car seems to be flying out of control. Passengers are jerked around hard as Scott throws the Chevy into bootleg and J turns. Tires scream. Heads (and stomachs) spin. Everyone is scared witless. "This is hardball out here," shouts Scott in the understatement of the week, "but you'll be doing it in a few days." No way, each student groans to himself. But only 10% fail the course.

The next three days are a kind of Outward Bound for driving. At the speeds required (70 to 80 m.p.h.), students at first have no sense of how to control the car--or whether they have it in control at all. Many Americans are defensive drivers, quite content to putt around in an underpowered, six-year-old sedan, carefully navigating the maniacal freeway traffic that surrounds many cities. And every sensible and safe reflex built up for that kind of driving must be violated in Scott's course.

Skid control comes first, performed by going through a slalom course on an inch of loose gravel. The trick is to accelerate and brake and countersteer the car as the rear end skids violently. You must use the skid. It's like driving on ice. The best way to stop a car is to brake steadily and very hard, not pump the brakes as many people believe. Next comes emergency braking and swerving to avoid objects at high speeds. Each student is ordered to drive absolutely flat out toward a sharp curve until the last possible second. Just when he is convinced that the car will shoot off the road, just when every instinct and a lifetime of conditioning demand that he brake and slow down, Scott shouts: "Gun it! Faster! Faster!"

"We want to jam you right into the middle of it," says Scott. "Whether you are normally cautious on the road or a hotshot, it upsets nearly everyone. Especially the macho types. It's a heavy landing for them to find out they really can't drive and are nowhere near the limits of the car." For reassurance, the student looks at the special brake pedal installed on the passenger side of Scott's Malibu for the instructor to use if a student panics and freezes.

The class learns to make fast, tight turns so the terrorists cannot get "inside" and force their quarry off the road. "Driving a car is a very sensuous thing," says Bruce Reichel, 33, one of Scott's instructors. "You have a lot of feedback from a car. Be aware of it."

The feedback from the car-ramming exercise is anything but sensuous. "Use the car as a weapon, if necessary," insists Scott. To learn what that means students take turns driving a beat-up 1974 Cadillac into an old bronze Buick special. Proper technique: slow down, then slam on the brakes to make the terrorists think you are stopping. Then gun the car, aiming for the front or rear axle. At 30 m.p.h. this barely rattles the Cadillac. But it spins the Buick into a full 360DEG turn and produces a very satisfying roar, crumpling metal and shattering glass. The Cadillac is hardly dented, but anyone inside the Buick will be badly shaken up.

Ramming is almost the last alternative to consider. In an ambush the two basic maneuvers are the bootleg and J turns, which students practice for hours. The worst thing is to do nothing. During "confrontation and chase," a sort of midterm exam on wheels, each student jockeys one Malibu around the track, trying to anticipate, and avoid, ambushes by "terrorist" instructors in three other cars.

In one pattern the student drives at 30 m.p.h., with two cars following. Over a hill and 50 yards ahead a barricade looms. At the same time one of the cars behind passes, distracting the student driver. He grows breathless, loses control, can't think. Can't do anything, in fact. Finally he just stops the car. "All you learned just dropped out of your head," Scott chides. The next try is much better. He spins the car into a good J turn, evading a sudden roadblock, and escapes. When Scott concedes that the move was a "reasonable reaction," the student feels as proud as a small boy the first time he manages to stay up on a two-wheeler. Fear turns into exhilaration. He can hardly wait for the next ambush.

Scott advises students "to be suspicious of anything unusual." In the Third World, for example, where official police roadblocks are common, it is not difficult for terrorists to get weapons and government uniforms. But it is hard for them to get police cars. "That could be the tip-off," Scott warns. "Look at the vehicle in the roadblock. In the Middle East or Italy, if a van, baby carriage or wheelchair appears in front of you, you can be statistically assured you are being attacked."

To be useful, the reflexes of antiterrorism must be instantaneous. And though they have saved several of Scott's graduates from trouble, on occasion they can be dangerous. A corporate chauffeur confronted by a man pushing a rack of clothes across a downtown street in Pittsburgh was suspicious enough to gun the car onto the sidewalk, smashing several parking meters in an escape attempt. It was not an attack. Luckily no pedestrians were injured. Though trying to drive around a roadblock is the worst thing to do -- it exposes you to broadside fire -- the chauffeur's startled boss gave him a $5,000 bonus and paid for the parking meters. --By Robert C. Wurmstedt

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