Hijackers threaten road users as well as air travellers. Anthony Howard gets a lesson in how to cope....

TERRORISM has many targets ranging from Lockerbie-scale mass tragedies to individual royals, politicians and tycoons. Countering any of these demands eternal vigilance, common sense, deftness in evasion and, if the worst comes to the worst, determined preparedness to see off any assailant.

Mid-air explosions are dramatic, newsworthy and political hot potatoes. Yet single targets may be even more vulnerable in a car, where the same principles of counter-terrorism apply.

Armouring the vehicles of the great and the rich has long been big business. Though much of this is useless without the right skills behind the wheel - far more than conventional chauffeurly virtues such as smooth driving, discretion, keen polishing and slick door opening.

A course to impart evasion driving expertise to professional chauffeurs has been devised at the John Watson Performance Driving Centre, based at the Silverstone grand prix circuit.

The methods adopted are those of Ruben Börjesson (left), one of the world's leading authorities on anti-hijack driving. He embarked on this speciality at Sweden's Police Academy more than 10 years ago.

His pupils include King Karl Gustav's bodyguards, and he has trained or advised instructors as far afield as the USA, New Zealand, Switzerland, West Germany, Austria and Denmark, as well as police in Britain.

Techniques

Sweden may not have rated high on your list of dangerous countries. But Börjesson declares: "Your prime minister is alive. Ours was killed. And people who know about terrorists in Western Europe say they keep their money in Switzerland and live in Sweden. So we have a problem."

The new course is distinct from lessons the Centre’s existing programme of lessons in improving driving skills to match the performance of cars such as the VW Golf GTI or Ford Sierra Cosworth.

I sampled Börjesson's techniques while he was working up the course with Silverstone instructors. He told us: "It can be life or death, but you still have the laws of the land to comply with.

"You must use your brain, plan ahead. You should never have an accident because you should never put yourself in a position to have one. If you do, you're a complete and utter failure.

"On the other hand," he smiles, "if you become so paranoid that you see danger everywhere and won't drive your boss anywhere, you'll be sacked."

The course teaches two main principles:

1: How stay out of trouble.

2: How to get out of it by taking the initiative away from assailants.

Should an attack occur, you have maybe five seconds to react and half a minute to get away to safety. This was all too clearly dramatised by a "gunman" lurking in wait while we took a "ministerial tour" around the Silverstone complex. When he struck, the ideal pre-emptive response was always to have the doors locked and the car positioned, ready for a quick forwards getaway from a confined space.

Or, when confronted head on, we were shown how to reverse rapidly out of range, then make a handbrake turn into forward motion for an even quicker retreat.

Where unavoidable, the best means of defence is attack, and pupils are shown how to do this, using old bangers from a nearby scrap yard.

Body language

"You have a weapon," says Börjesson," and that's your car. It's the only help you have in an emergency. Sometimes it can be dangerous even for you. So you have to learn how to handle it.

"If there's a road block where they're expecting you to stop, they've probably been planning it for two weeks. But you can change all that in five seconds. If you drive straight at them or reverse fast, you've blown it for them."

Learning to read the "body language" of other traffic or pedestrians is just as important to minimising a potential attacker's chances as it is to avoiding conventional road hazards. If another car draws alongside for a pot shot, do you try to out accelerate it, ram it, or hit your brakes hard?

Rotten eggs and tomatoes have often been part of the fun of the hustings, and chucking paint over a ministerial car is a modern form of dissent, which renders screen wipers useless.

Börjesson has thought of that too. He blacks out the windscreen and rear window with blankets, then urges pupils to find their way backwards and forwards through a complex high-speed driving test, leaning out of the window and using the wing mirrors.

Playing dignitary in the back seat during this performance is pretty sick-making, but it's preferable to getting stuck, helplessly embattled by the mob.

The aim is to make this the best tuition of its kind in Britain, so it doesn't come cheap - around £750 for three days. Its exclusivity is further assured by Joe Hawkins, the former Detective Inspector who markets the course and carefully vets all candidates to prevent such know-how falling into the wrong hands.

Concludes Börjesson: "The only goal I have is that everyone will be better, and that's easier with very bad rather than good drivers. The purpose is to put you under pressure, so you get the feeling.

"If you make a mistake on the course, that's not a catastrophe - you'll learn a lot by your mistakes. After all, you're chauffeurs, not racing drivers."

Real life

I experienced a real-life sequel one bright summer afternoon while driving a colleague back from an event we had attended - and competed in - at Prescott Hill Climb in Gloucestershire. I knew the cross-country road well and, when I saw a group of three rather slow cars ahead, I realised we could be stuck behind them for 10 miles.

So I overtook them quickly and, I thought, courteously. A few miles later, a laden truck pulled out of a quarry and began its crawl up the steep hill with a blind summit ahead, so I collected first gear and settled for following the truck to the top.

Next the trio of cars appeared and the first driver, stupidly I thought, made to overtake. Not wanting to become embroiled in the accident he was about to trigger, I backed off and left more distance between my car and the truck. The newcomer swung in front of me and immediately slowed to a standstill, while the second car stopped at my right and the third at my rear.

Six large tattooed bruisers, faces red with beer and sunburn, closed in, wielding hammers and jemmies. Concluding in those few seconds that they intended to smash the car to pieces with us in it, I shut the windows and the sunshine roof.

They had us trapped, but not quite. Luckily for us there was a steep six-foot-high earth bank at the roadside, instead of the usual dry stone wall. With a rush of adrenalin I aimed the car along the bank, heeling over at an angle of 45 degrees, and got on the throttle. The car popped through the narrow gap like a cork out of a bottle, leaving our new chums gawping as we legged it up the hill.

My colleague Mr Cool declared himself unfazed. “I had not a scintilla of doubt that you’d get us out of that,” he drawled. Oh, sure – any time.

1,220 words copyright © by Anthony Howard for Business magazine

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