Virtual streets, real training

I had just barely strapped into my squad car and turned the key when a message came across, against a blazing red background:

SHOTS FIRED IN A GANG-RELATED INCIDENT AT THE SCHOOL ON 3RD AV. AND E. ST.

Rob Boe, my instructor, seated behind me, read my mind. "I'll help you find it," he said. "Take a right from this parking lot, turn on your lights and sirens, and let's go."

The next couple of minutes, at the command of a $200,000 state-of-the-art simulator, would leave me unnerved, coated in sweat and queasy. And not because of any shootings or gangs: It was just from flying through the virtual streets, teeming with unpredictable civilians, to get there.

Welcome to the new world of virtual training. And to the immense distance between the excitement of a high-speed chase on TV and the reality of a cascading sequence of live-or-die decisions. Each split second forces the question of whether to hit the accelerator to fly to the scene or hit the brake because a car might sneak out from behind that semi that's letting you pass.

The driving simulator was installed two months ago at the Regional Public Safety Training Facility that is shared between Scott and Carver counties, located in a small room deep in the countryside between Shakopee and Jordan. Across the nation, training of cops and other high-pressure drivers in the public sector is shifting more and more from the street to simulators like these, experts said.

"Every time we take a car out of fleet and go out and simulate chases or driving in hazardous conditions, as we're mandated to do by the state, cars come back with a lot of mechanical issues," said Carver County Sheriff Bud Olson. "We've bumped the cars and damaged them.

"It doesn't take an airplane to learn to fly, and it doesn't take a car to sit in and blow around a corner and simulate a chase -- the motions, the feelings, the policies governing what you're doing."

Better than the real thing

Real tracks exist -- outside St. Cloud, for instance -- for this sort of training. But advocates say that the advantages of a souped-up video game are numerous. No gas is consumed. And an immense number of environments can be plugged in instantly and altered to create wind, light snow, ice, fog, heavy snow -- anything nature can hurl.

Carver County deputies who patrol Chanhassen are trained in a generic suburban world of malls and gas stations. Those who cover the farming hinterlands to the west get lonely rural roads with their own hilly two-lane hazards.

In either case, the realism is striking. Cars pass needlessly back and forth on distant roads. The renderings are not quite perfect -- people walk stiffly -- but they're close. It's real enough to do its job, which is to create decision points.

Boe, for instance, takes the wheel in pursuit of a motorcyclist. He's in the left lane of a four-lane urban road. Several cars ahead of him, in his own lane, are stopped at a light. The other three lanes are open.

"Which way do I go?" he asks with a smile.

Every normal human instinct commands a swerve to the open lane on the right. But the instinct of those drivers, hearing a siren behind them, is to bolt to the right. He swings to the left instead.

In the first few weeks of operation, trainers have learned a lot. Among the lessons: Younger officers, reared on video games, take to the simulator much more readily than oldsters. But just as important, it's not a video game: It costs thousands of times more because it's hugely more involving, with three surround screens, and can leave even veteran officers weak with nausea after just a few seconds of simulated motion.

But it's worth it, Sheriff Olson said. "Years of review take place after an officer's split-second decision. It's so easy to Monday morning quarterback. We need to give our front-line troops the best training to make good decisions in the first place."

Training for many jobs

The simulator at the training facility in rural Scott County was paid for in part with a $1 million state grant, and it's open to trainees from throughout the state. It's not just for cops, but also transit drivers, snowplow drivers and firefighters.

"To be honest," said Mike Briese, the director, "it is a little worrying that we have inexperienced volunteer firefighters getting out of their cars and behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound vehicle on icy roads. It's not the same driving experience at all."

The shift in training methods nationwide has coincided with a period in which the number of deaths of law enforcement officers in crashes is declining steadily across the nation, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which keeps annual figures.

Berneta Spence, the group's research director, said she couldn't address the reasons for the decline, but the numbers are clear. Officer deaths in the line of duty are at their lowest point since 1959, even though the number of officers on the street has tripled. Deaths in car crashes have declined almost every year for the past ten, reaching 40 after lingering in the mid-50s for years.

The number of simulators is rising. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center has bought 43 of them in the past two years alone, according to the East Coast firm that is supplying Scott and Carver counties. The number in Minnesota, including mobile units in trucks overseen by the State Patrol, is thought to be 10 or so, with more on order.

David Peterson • 952-882-9023