A few months back, I overheard a couple of our instructors in the office talking about a recruit fresh back from the college. You know the shorthand we use — "poor planning," "weak habits," "no policing sense." It's how we talk about the new ones before they've found their feet.
But as I listened closer, the specifics caught my attention. This driver kept missing turns onto streets that mattered. Getting late on the brakes. Nearly rear-ended a target vehicle a couple of times during a catch-up exercise — you know the one, where we point out a random car in traffic and have the student close the gap safely, no emergency equipment, and come back with the plate and a description of who's inside.
I asked, half out of curiosity: "Does your driver wear glasses?"
The instructor looked at me. "I don't think so. Might be contacts."
"Ask them," I said. "Because there's a good chance the reason they're late on the brakes is they can't read the street signs until they're right on top of them. Same with plates — they're probably having to close distance just to make out the marker."
After lunch, the instructor came back. "You were right. He couldn't read the plates or street signs nearly as well as I could, and I'm in my mid-40s. He's 23."
Here's the thing about that: if you can't read a plate clearly in daylight, night driving is only going to get worse. And it's not just the reading — it's what closing that gap costs you. Every extra car length you have to eat just to make out a marker is a car length you don't have when that vehicle does something unexpected. Same story hunting for an address on a street you've never been down. You're late on the brakes because you're still trying to find the sign, not because you don't know how to drive.
And all of this is happening under the eyes of an instructor sitting a foot away, evaluating every move. So of course, the pressure's already working against them before vision ever enters the picture. Nobody's going to volunteer "I can't see that sign" when they're already worried about being judged on everything else.
Why nobody caught it
I posed a question on LinkedIn a few days ago: two drivers, same eye movement, same head turn, same mirror checks — so why do they end up in different places?
Here's one answer. This recruit was going through all the right motions. Scanning. Checking mirrors. Doing what he'd been trained to do. And yet his own instructor — someone riding beside him, actively evaluating his driving — never picked up on the fact that he simply couldn't see as well as everyone assumed. The technique looked fine from the outside. What was happening underneath it didn't.
That's the part that should give us pause. If a trained instructor sitting a foot away can miss something this basic, it tells you the problem doesn't announce itself. It hides in plain sight, inside a driver who's doing everything he's been told to do.
Why commentary driving catches it
This is exactly where commentary driving earns its keep as more than a scanning drill. It wasn't a checklist or a stopwatch that flagged this recruit — it was an instructor with enough experience to hear something off in what the driver was describing, and enough curiosity to chase it down with a simple question.
Sitting in the right seat, you're hearing exactly what a driver claims to be seeing — plate numbers, street names, hazards — in real time. If someone's commentary is consistently trailing the environment, or they're slow to name something you can already read clearly from where you're sitting, that's worth chasing. You don't have to guess. You can test it against your own eyes, on the same object, at the same distance, in the same light.
But the technique only works if there's someone experienced enough behind it to notice the pattern and ask the right question. Commentary driving surfaced the symptom. It took a mentor who'd seen enough drivers, in enough cars, to recognize what that symptom usually means.
If something feels off, say so. More often than not, the student who swore they had 20/20 comes back a week later and says their eye doctor told them to wear glasses for driving — they just hadn't been. And sometimes they'll tell you flat out, right away: "Yeah, my doctor said I should wear them. I just don't."
What this means for FTOs and instructors
If you're riding with a driver who's consistently late on the brake, slow to name a target vehicle, or missing turns they should reasonably see coming, ask the boring question before you assume the interesting one. Not "why can't they drive," but "what are they actually seeing." Vision is the cheapest variable to rule out and the easiest one to overlook, because nobody wants to be the one who admits they can't see as well as they think they can — especially not a 23-year-old sitting next to someone evaluating them.
In policing, that's not optional. Every half second counts behind the wheel of an emergency vehicle. And when I say half a second, I mean the difference between getting the information early enough to actually process it, decide, and act — versus getting it late and just reacting.
Same eye movement. Same mirror checks. One driver had a hidden problem. Commentary driving surfaced it — but only because someone experienced enough was listening for it.
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Hugh Anderson EVOC Trainer | Author of Emergency Vehicle Operation Instruction: 5 Steps to Enhancing Your EVOC Training Grab the book on Amazon
