Drivers learn to escape worst case scenarios.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: ARMORED VEHICLES

WEST POINT, Va. -- A driver in an armored sports utility vehicle pulls up to a roadblock in a spot called Junkers Alley. The flash of a roadside bomb tells him that it's a trap. Two gunmen pop out from behind a scrap car and open fire.

Their ammo is blanks and paintballs, though. As the windshield is splattered with lime green splotches, the driver throws the car into reverse, and he escapes the mock attack.

"Get off the X" is the main lesson drivers who find themselves in sticky situations need to learn, says Brad Simmons, a driving instructor.

No matter what the situation, you can't sit still, he says. The average vehicle takes six to 12 rounds in an ambush. If a dozen bullets strike one spot on an armored car or windshield, they will eventually penetrate, he cautions.

Even moving 5 miles per hour will spread the pattern out and allow the armor to absorb the bullets.

"That's why we don't sit still," says Simmons, one of the instructors at ArmorGroup International Training's Virginia site, which sits on a former World War II auxiliary airfield. All the expensive armoring customers are placing on passenger vehicles is only there to buy drivers a few precious seconds.

Hundreds of U.S. government officials and corporate customers make the two-hour drive from Washington every year to learn how to survive such attacks. The company trains about 6,500 students per year at locations in Virginia, Texas, Great Britain and Iraq.

Rich Weaver, manager of the Virginia branch, says "our focus is not having the experience in the first place. We'd rather recognize the attack and avoid it."

The first lesson is to spot when others are conducting surveillance. Are there any suspicious looking characters standing around where they shouldn't be?

Varying routes to work is one of the more obvious tactics. It's "common sense, but most people don't think about it because they don't think it's going to happen to them," Weaver says. Of course, a driver can't vary his or her place of work, or his home. These are spots where they are most vulnerable.

The second lesson is how to quickly recognize when an attack is underway in order to buy crucial seconds that may save a life or prevent a kidnapping. Drivers should be able to tell when a checkpoint is real or fake.

The basic tactics used to conduct...