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February 18, 1990, Page 008009 The New York Times Archives

Hey, I know these guys! There is Sandy Stevens, the driving instructor - I went through a course with him in Rutland, Vt., some years ago. And there is Sam Posey, the racer and television commentator. I followed Posey's pace car, a red Ferrari Boxer, around the track at Lime Rock, Conn., back when I was proving to everybody how truly fumble-thumbed I was at competition.

Now they are in my living room. They are there on the television, playing show-and-tell, teaching me how to drive an automobile and to apply lessons learned on the track to my commute. And you know what? They aren't bad.

They are on a 67-minute videotape called ''In Control,'' produced by Road & Track magazine, and it offers quite a lot of general and arcane information about the physics of automobile handling and how the viewer-driver should deal with it.

The videotape tells us how to brake and steer and approach corners. It talks about emergency maneuvers. And it does it with film and graphics that are appealing.

In short, this is a tape for anyone interested in learning to pilot a car like a pro. It is certainly not a substitute for practice, but it is an excellent series of lessons to keep on the tip of your brain while your hands are massaging the wheel.

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Unfortunately, the tape starts with a bad idea, a too-long segment of speeded-up and jerky moviemaking that takes us through traffic while a voice-over talks about the importance of driving well.

But then we get to it. Stevens, who has been teaching highway patrolmen and others to drive for the last 15 years, points out that we lose enough people in car crashes every day to be the equivalent of an airliner going down. And it doesn't have to happen. ''The technology is there now,'' he says. ''If we insist on using the technology in the cars and changing the attitudes of those of us using the equipment which has been so well designed, we can eliminate car crashes that cause fatalities or reduce them to a bare minimum.''

Posey has his say, too, of course, and the two alternate in demonstrating how to adjust the car seat and the seat belts, how to steer through a course of pylons that represents the Sturm und Drang of real life, and how to apply the brakes and respond to emergencies.

''It's funny,'' Posey says, ''because the actual skills that you need to drive well are not so great. You put somebody behind the wheel who is thinking right about what they're doing out there and you've basically got a good driver. We can talk all we want about improving your skills and that's a definite part of it, but driving - and I'm not talking Indianapolis or grand prix racing - but driving is not brain surgery.

''It's common sense. It's concentration. It's having a positive attitude to the whole experience. And the people who go forth with that attitude come back with a lifetime of enjoyment behind the wheel and a good record in terms of safety.''

All the same, every driver knows those moments of panic, and accident avoidance is the tape's long suit. Much of the footage is devoted to the slalom - a line of pylons 75 feet apart - and the ways that cars behave when they are hurled this way and that. A driver who understands weight transfer, understeer and oversteer, and how to cope with skidding, stopping and cornering is nicely forewarned.

The tape was made on the twisty course at Lime Rock, and Posey points out that the track is a natural ''because it is narrow, more like the roads we drive on than like a super speedway.''

The technical segment is particularly interesting. Oversteer, which means that a car's rear tires slide and twitch out the tail, and understeer, in which the car ploughs ahead with its front wheels skidding instead of steering, are well illustrated, as are the effects of a vehicle's shifting weight under acceleration, braking and turning.

Mechanical aspects, such as sway bars, are discussed, and Stevens even touches on the effect of alcohol, noting that he set up a test several years ago in which a control group stayed sober while another group of students took booze breaks.

''The most significant fact came out very early on,'' he said.. ''Before anyone had a drink, we had everyone practice on the course and then tell us how fast they were going to go for the rest of the day. All the people who didn't drink maintained that speed. Each of the people who drank tried to go faster than they told us they would.

''What that means to me is that the very first thing that goes before you see any physical symptoms of alcohol intake is judgment. Judgment goes before you can look a person in the eye and say that person has been drinking.''

You don't need to spend money for a videotape that tells you not to drink and drive. But you very well might want to send bucks for all the rest of it. The address is Multivision Inc., Box 564, Needham, Mass. 02194, and the price is $39.95, plus $6 for shipping. Tell them Fumble-Thumb sent you.

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