A car races through a busy
street to a highway at 110 kilometres per hour. After making a swift U-turn
between two lanes, the vehicle swerves over a traffic barrier with an upward
blade. Despite a burst tyre, the driver still has control of his car and slows
to a smooth halt.
It is not a scene from a Hollywood action film, but part of a police driver's
training course, located at a closed training centre deep in the mountains of
northwest Beijing. Thousands of Beijing police will receive the training in the
run-up to the Beijing 2008 Games.
The driver-training programme, which began on July 20 and runs to the end of
2007, includes courses like driving down narrow roads, overtaking, intercepting
cars and high speed U-turns. It aims to teach Beijing police high-level driving
skills so they can drive safely and deal with emergencies during the 2008
Olympic Games.
About 5,000 police, of whom 5 per cent are female, will be selected for the
training. Those who pass a test will be eligible to drive patrol cars and
service vehicles for the Games, according to the Beijing Municipal Public
Security Bureau.
The driver training is just a small part of the city's comprehensive Olympic
security training project that started in April. It includes more than 30 other
training drills, such as anti-terrorism and emergency rescue. More than 100,000
police, armed police, security guards and volunteers are expected to be
involved.
"The real number that will be trained for Olympic security will far exceed
the estimated 100,000 people," said Zheng Weiping, vice-dean of Beijing People's
Police College, where some of the Olympic security drills, including the ongoing
driver training, are taking place.
Zheng said the driver-training programme consists of about 100 sessions, each
lasting two or three days. A total of 22 faculty members from the college have
been chosen to coach the police drivers. "The driving skills taught here are
much harder than the requirements for acquiring a driver's licence," Zheng said.
"The courses here are really very demanding," said 34-year-old trainee Mi
Haiquan, a police officer from Fengtai District.
Mi, who has been driving for 11 years, said the training programme had
corrected several of his long-standing bad habits; he has learnt how to hold the
wheel correctly, and how to manoeuvre the clutch, gears, brakes and accelerator
properly.
After finishing basic training at the facility, police drivers take a field
exercise around Olympic sports venues, hotels and streets, according to Beijing
Municipal Public Security Bureau.
A number of police cars will be refitted in order to run faster and to deal
with emergencies.
