The genesis for this thread arose from a customer demonstration event that I was involved with last year. There were two SUV's from one manufacturer being displayed and our "job" was to engage with the visitors and demonstrate various features of the vehicles. Both SUV's had been introduced in last couple of years.
We were really not surprised to find that the sales teams of their dealers were most knowledgeable about the features - but only as far as rattling off jargon was concerned. They had absolutely no idea about what these features actually meant for the customers or their safety or how they operated.
For instance ABS
ABS - Anti Skid Braking System - is much talked about selling point in all cars. Ideally cars without ABS ought not be sold as this is one important safety feature.
The problem was that :
One: They do not know what ABS actually is
Two: No one teaches you how to use ABS.
About ABS basic information can be gleaned from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system and also various threads here itself. The readers here knows ABS but does the average Joe walking in to the showroom know?
Quite a lot of time was taken up by "taxi" rides for the sales staff - right form top - and explaining to them what and how of ABS.
For this purpose we had a large flat ground at our disposal and here we built a setup of a two straight parallel run up's with a flex board depicting a wall at the end of one. There were cone placed to indicate "braking" point at which we would jam the brakes with full force.
First run was done in the open lane and by switching off ABS (pulling out the fuse) and braking with full force with steering movement to left while wheels were locked. Then in the "walled" lane we would approach the end at a speed and at last moment jam the brakes causing ABS to kick in while steering to the side to avoid the "wall". . Diagram:
In the first instance the car would skid straight (red arrow) even with steering input as the wheels were locked. In the second we would be able to avoid the "wall". It also demonstrated that the braking distance would not vary much in either case but with ABS we were able to avoid the wall. Most of the sales staff were dismayed that ABS did not cause the vehicles to stop quicker - as they had been telling customers!!
Then we would talk to them about what wall could represent in real life city driving scenarios - a child jumping in front from between two parked cars in city roads or a careless scooterist coming in from side lane even on a rainy day - and how even for city driving ABS is a life saver. Only then they could relate to this essential safety feature.
Some of the VIP invitees were also allowed to test drive after we had finished the explaining. Here I noticed that most would freeze on steering inputs when I asked them to do ABS braking on the open lane assuming a " sudden intrusion". That is normal expected reaction
but if your car has ABS then you need to learn not to "freeze" on steering control while braking heavily. Being VIP invitees they all had high end cars but no one had explained till then how ABS works and how to use it.
One such customer returned in the afternoon with his driver in tow. He wanted me to demonstrate and explain ABS to his driver. His reasoning was that a few months back he had had a crash on highway - thanks god and airbags saved him - which ended up totalling a car worth more than 50lacs!! Seeing my demo he realised that how proper use of ABS could have saved them from getting in to crash in the first place.
AFAIK no drive teaching school has this sort of training imparted. Nor do almost most of the test drive reps in dealership know this.
That said there is another part of ABS story from the same demo. The two SUV's had far different responsiveness of the ABS system. In fact the cheaper of the two had much better ABS system with much faster pulsations. And no one talks about these issues - yet!! Even for the knowledgeable it is hard to find information about type of ABS being used - brand / generation - in vehicles being sold.