Tom Green County sheriff’s deputies are getting some high-tech driving training this week, without even setting foot inside a vehicle.
The Texas Association of Counties rolled into San Angelo this week with its state-of-the-art driving simulator to put some of Tom Green County’s finest in some dangerous driving situations, but without the eventual involvement of tow trucks, Stop Sticks or hospitals.
“It's mainly for county deputies and county drivers to help them hone their skill for driving,” TAC Driving Simulator Consultant Don Courtney said. “Normal everyday driving as well as a little bit of high-speed driving.”
Another of TAC’s main goals with the training is to reduce costs to the county by replicating real-world driving conditions that deputies could actually encounter on the road.
The rig itself, which costs just shy of a quarter of a million dollars, wraps almost halfway around the “driver” with three large screens, and will rumble, shake and slide to match whatever chaos is happening in the simulation, which can include hazardous weather conditions, clueless bicyclists, children wandering into intersections, and even gunmen shooting at the screen.
Launched in 2000, the simulator has made its way to over three-quarters of the counties in Texas, and logged more than 1,000,000 miles at no cost to those counties.
For more information on the driving simulator and other services TAC provides to counties, visit their website.
