[tense music]

Any of this PIT maneuver stuff

and J-turns and high speed backing.

If you're using any of those skills,

you've done something probably really silly or just gotten

into a hornets nest of trouble all of a sudden.

My name's Wyatt Knox and I'm the special projects director

here at the Team O'Neil Rally School.

I've been instructing, professionally,

high speed driving, high risk driving for over a decade now.

So I started rallying when I was 18

or 19 years old and I'd do a few a year.

2012 I did the entire National US Championship

and I won two-wheel drive.

The definition of rally racing,

getting from point A to point B quickly

with the vehicle still running underneath you

is basically the definition of tactical driving.

Tactical mobility, in a nutshell,

is basically having excellent car control

so that if something happens, you know you're capable of

handling your vehicle and its occupants safely,

and also being able to respond to other potential happenings

depending on what sort of a mission

you might be involved in.

For the most part of the folks that we put through

these types of courses here at the rally school

are with the United States and friendly governments

venturing into special operations folks

who spend a lot of time in some

pretty rough places around the world.

Disclaimer, a lot of the stuff that we're doing here

on our private 600 acre facility

hidden away in the mountains in New Hampshire,

is training folks for high risk environments overseas.

It's definitely not for the roads of America

and that sort of thing.

Tactical mobility, the way that we train it here,

getting really, really good car control

in all different kinds of vehicles,

and then introducing some of the offensive

and defensive skills that you might need.

So this car is a Ford Crown Victoria.

It makes a really excellent training platform for us

because it's representative of so many heavy American

rear-wheel drive automatic vehicles

that are commonly used by security professionals.

A rear-wheel drive car like this when you accelerate,

the rear tires spin and the back end

of the car swings all over the place.

So it's really good for training

and getting into a bunch of skids

and sliding around and learning how to handle that.

We do weld on these big heavy duty steel bumpers

so that we can run into each other

without doing so much damage but they've got

good suspension and really thick wheels

and tires and stuff from the factory.

We have snow tires on this one.

You can see it's met some of the other cars.

And then we just do the big steel bumpers in the back.

All right, so we're gonna set up a course out here,

take this car out and run through some representative

scenarioses that you might find out in the real world.

All right, coming back at ya.

So a J-turn is essentially just a reverse 180.

You're gonna use a J-turn if you're driving

along down the road and up ahead, for whatever reason,

you see something you don't like.

You'd much rather be going the other direction quickly.

J-turns, it's kind of a Hollywood move.

You see it a ton in action movies and TV shows,

and that kinda thing.

It's not something that a lot of people

are really gonna use operationally overseas,

especially if you're in an armored SUV.

Are you gonna do a J-turn?

No, it's gonna flip over.

If you're in a congested urban area,

are you gonna do a J-turn?

No, you're gonna run into something.

But if you've got enough area and you've deemed,

hey we need to be going backwards at high speed right now.

The more tools you have in the toolbox,

the better off you're gonna be.

Come to a full and complete stop, get it into reverse,

back up, we usually give it the count of three.

So one, two, three, let off the throttle and turn.

Add a little bit of break and you can get the car

to snap around nice and quick.

While it's rotating, engage drive,

straighten the wheel and get outta there.

The PIT maneuver is basically a pursuit technique

when you need the vehicle that is in front of you

to either get out of your way or come to a stop.

It's necessary to do that by doing as little harm

to your own vehicle as possible.

[Policeman] Here comes looks like they might

try a PIT here getting up on the right hand side.

He'll get up there.

Here it is, here's the PIT maneuver, coming to a stop.

In order for the police to use it,

it's considered use of deadly force here in America,

so unless whatever that person has done

warrants that, you're not gonna see that,

but you will see it very commonly overseas.

You can do a PIT maneuver on either side of the vehicle.

The reason that most folks in the United States,

the police departments used to train

match your left front to their right rear,

is because it's easier for the driver

and you're spinning them away from oncoming traffic

for police department use.

Say this is your target vehicle

for a PIT maneuver, kind of the sweet spot

that you're going for is right in this area right here.

If you're too far to the back, chances are you'll just

damage the car without actually spinning it out enough,

and if you get up into the wheel and that sort of thing,

you're gonna do a lot of damage to your own vehicle

and it might not work out so well.

You're following a vehicle, lagging behind,

when you decide it's time, drive up quickly,

match your left front with their right rear,

make contact, turn in and accelerate.

And if you do it just right and drive through them,

that car's gonna spin out.

And even for an expert, it's not gonna be recoverable

and they'll be spun around and stopped.

A much more useful skill than being super good at J-turns

is actually just being able to back up at high speed.

If you're in an urban environment, you need to back around,

back through traffic and parked vehicles,

you're not gonna be doing J-turns.

When you're backing up, a lot of the engineering

that's gone into making your car perform

the way that it does, is working against you.

Whenever you're in reverse, your car is rear steering.

If your car is rear-wheel drive, now it's front wheel drive.

Even the way that the breaks work and everything else.

Cars are not designed to drive quickly backwards

and most drivers are just not great at it.

The easiest sneaky trick is to get your left arm

over the seatbelt, brace your left foot

over where the dead pedal might be

and turn yourself around in the seat as much as possible.

My hand is at what would be 12 o'clock

if the wheel were straight.

I'm not very good at high speed backing.

I will need one more attempt.

It's terrible on the ice.

You've gotta be good with your mirrors.

So hopefully you've got them adjusted

and you got a little bit of wherewithal.

And it's not that tricky, it's nice,

you got both hands on the wheel.

Watching your left side and your right side

and backing through traffic or around some obstacles.

And the best thing you can do is get

backed into a side street or an alleyway,

or something like that, get it into drive so you can

really get some speed up and get out of there.

If you're ever the passenger in a vehicle

and for whatever reason, the driver becomes incapacitated

to the point where they're no longer able

to operate that vehicle anymore.

Somebody's diabetic or if they're prone to seizures,

or anything like that, that's where hopefully

you've practiced the driver down drill.

You're in the passenger seat, something happens

and you realize that the driver's no longer able

to operate the vehicle appropriately.

First step is get your belt off

and reach across to grab the handle on the door,

not the handle that opens it but like the safety handle,

and that'll just help hold them in position

while you scoot over, basically sweep their legs

out of the way and you're gonna be operating the pedals

with your left foot only and the steering wheel

with your right hand only.

The way that we train it, is yeah,

you've actually gotta get through some exercises like that

so that you're pretty capable and you can make it around

a few turns and get the vehicle to a stop.

I feel much better now.

Oh yeah, no I don't care.

I needed that. No problem, yep.

Some of the folks that are headed overseas

to pretty hostile environments will train the same drill

but with three men in the car, four men in the car.

The driver down drill at that point turns into

passenger takes control, rear seat gets the driver out,

do what you can for them, passenger moves completely

into the driver's seat, car continues driving.

Most drivers out there on the street are probably just OK

driving round with perfectly normal unaltered vehicles,

but it's good to be able to do some of these things

and to go through this training and have those skills,

and know how to prepare vehicles so that if,

for some reason you do need to just drive at the limit

or get through some different situations,

you've got those skills.

Personally, when I'm looking for a vehicle,

I either select an older vehicle that doesn't have ABS

and traction control and that sort of thing,

or at least an older vehicle,

it's usually easy to disable.

In this 2002 or three Subaru, I can pull a fuse or two

and in about 30 seconds, we're analog, no electronics,

ready to go have a good time, slide around corners.

Basically, driving with ABS and traction control

is like swimming with a life jacket on.

It's really easy to swim and you can swim around just fine,

but ABS and traction control limit your car's performance

a dramatic amount on a slippery road.

You can't really stop that well,

you can't get up hill sometimes, it can be frustrating.

But, ABS and traction control, and also stability control,

they're all wonderful systems

and they've definitely saved lives.

So the first time you approach an unfamiliar vehicle,

there is kind of a little checklist that you can do

even if you just have a second to look at one side

or do a quick walk around.

Number one's always gonna be tires.

What kind of condition are they in,

do they have air in them or do they have tread?

So winter tires, much softer rubber,

like a pencil eraser almost.

You can hit it with your thumb and kinda squish it around

and that's what you're looking for in very cold temperatures

to stay stuck to the road.

Just gaging the tire pressure, usually you can give it

just the thumb test of just pushing in

on the middle of the side wall,

and you should get a quarter inch of deflection or so.

Too hard's not really a problem.

If it's too soft it'll overheat and you'll have a blowout.

If a car like this might be strange to you,

get yourself in, get your seat and your steering wheel

properly adjusted and adjust your mirrors.

It's really the silly stuff that ends up biting people.

The mirrors haven't been adjusted

or you don't know where the wipers are

and you hit a big mud puddle, and then you're turning

the headlights on and whacking the stereo

in trying to figure it all out.

And it really only takes 30 seconds to a minute

of sitting in a car to make yourself

kinda happy with it and you're good to go.

So we've got here is a Subaru WRX.

It's an all-wheel drive turbo charged car.

We don't have any ABS or traction control

active on this, it's fully analog.

We're gonna take this car, put it through its paces

in a few exercises out here at the rally school.

Just rolling the windows up,

it's gonna get a little slushy.

[car engine revs]

Most of the skills that we're teaching here

at the rally school are rally based skills.

The Scandinavians came up with left foot breaking

for the most part, using left foot breaking

in front-wheel drive cars to get around corners faster,

doing the pendulum turns.

It's called the Scandinavian flick by most people.

Intentionally chucking the car

sideways to get around corners.

They were really the early masters

of this kind of car control and it's developed since then

as cars have gotten a little better

and tires and suspensions have gotten a little better,

there's more kinds of racing

that have used left foot breaking.

Now, basically everybody's doing it.

There's a lot of different reasons for left foot breaking.

The first one is always just gonna be reaction time.

Being able to get to the break very quickly

lets you drive a lot faster, a lot more safely.

One of the other main reasons for left foot breaking

is to be able to control the weight of the car.

Part of what you're doing is putting weight on the front

to help the car turn, and if the back end slides around

because of that, you need to

put weight on the back for stability.

And that's what you're doing with your right foot

on the throttle and your left foot on the break,

is just transferring weight smoothly

to the front and smoothly to the rear.

There's a common misconception in the world right now

that a skidding car is out of control.

Because if you skid you'll crash.

And the truth is, there's a huge amount of gray area there

where you're skidding around and you're sliding a car

but you're well under control.

And that's really where you're getting the most performance

out of any vehicle.

If you watch a dirt bike, they're always spinning tires

and locking tires up and sliding round corners.

It's the same with cars, it's just people have forgotten

how to do it and most people were never taught how to do it,

and now most cars come with systems

that don't even allow you to do it.

One really important skill to have if you're traveling

to these high risk environments, is to be able to move

other objects and or vehicles out of your way as necessary.

Going hot.

If you need to breach a barricade with a vehicle

or get through some kind of road block,

the most important thing is knowing

where the strong points on your car are.

And those are gonna be your two frame rails on the front,

and sometimes they're closer together, further apart,

or higher up or lower down, and you're gonna wanna

line those up directly with whatever it is

you're trying to move out of the way.

With a vehicle blocking the road,

you're gonna line up one of your frame rails

with the rear wheel of the vehicle

that you're trying to move.

If you happen to see that it's a pickup truck

that's freighted down in the back, sure, go for the front.

Whichever end looks lighter, usually it's the back,

that's where you're gonna wanna square up with

and push out of the way.

And if you can manage to hit that

rear wheel with your frame rail,

you're jut gonna break that contact patch with the ground

of those rear wheels and push that car out of your way

very easily, without doing

really any damage to your own car.

Be aware, in a normal car, your airbags are gonna go off,

the fuel pump might shut off, and you're now gonna be

stranded right in the worst possible situation

just having done something really stupid.

Most vehicles that are kind of fleet supplied

to the folks that we work with that are going overseas,

that stuff's all deactivated.

Really, the baseline of all the training

that we do here is car control.

And that comes from just spending hours

sliding cars around and learning where

the road's limits and your own limits

and different vehicle's limits all exist.

And it just gives you a tremendous amount of capabilities

to get in and outperform 90 something percent

of normal drivers that might be out there on the road.

[dramatic music]

[Man] Making decisions based on what you're presented with

is one way to exercise your mind

and learn how to pay attention to the small things.

I was a special agent with the FBI.

My job was to catch spies.

[Man] Retired Navy SEAL, 21 years combat experience,

and now a crisis management professional.

I've been instructing professionally high speed driving

with the United States and friendly governments.

If you take the time to evalsuate

walking or driving that same route every day,

you've just reduced the number of things

you have to pay attention to when something bad occurs.