EverydaySpy Podcast - How to Drive Like A Spy

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

One thing spy movies get right is that every covert field officer is trained to drive like a badass! Elite operators use advanced driving skills (aka: vehicle dynamics) to escape capture, crash through barriers, drive at high speeds and even survive hostile attack. In this episode, Andrew lays out the rules for advanced driving and gives you the core skills you need to practice and perfect the same vehicle dynamics elite operators use to keep themselves and their families safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. I was recently on a drive from the deserts in Nevada through the mountains of Utah to land in Arizona. Now, I'm actually on the road right now for about 55 consecutive days filming for a new television show. Now, I'm under a nondisclosure agreement with the TV show, so I can't tell you where it's going to air or when it's going to air yet. But when it goes live this year, I'll be able to tell you all the details about where and when you can. can find it. But on that drive through the Utah Mountains, we came into a ton of snow. And we were just one of five cars in a massive caravan because the whole crew and cast all stay together when they drive. And we found ourselves coming into some very deep patches of snow. Now, thankfully, everybody

got through safe, but there were still a number of missteps where some cars ended up skidding or sliding. And I realized that it's really important to teach vehicle dynamics anytime you start talking about espionage tactics. Because here's the truth. The truth is that when you're a spy and you're operating overseas, you have to be in control of your vehicle no matter what the scenario is. And sometimes those scenarios get pretty hairy. Yes, there's rain and there's snow. But then there's also off-road terrain. There's times when you might be being chased. There's times where you might come into contact with hostile forces that are trying to pin you in or pin you down. And you have to realize that your vehicle is both your first line of defense and your most dangerous weapon. Unlike a

gun or a knife, you don't have to be exposed to danger yourself in order to use a car. If you think about it, a car is multiple thousands of pounds and it's both a shield and in many ways a mobile battering ram. So if you can understand how to use your car as a weapon and as a shield, you're going to be in a distinctly advantageous position over whoever is trying to assault you. And that means whether you're out there in the field, on the road, trying to escape, or if you're just going through everyday life. In everyday life, car accidents are one of the biggest killers for Americans. And the reason is not because cars are inherently dangerous, but because it's so easy to lose control of your car or to come into contact with another driver who has lost control of their car. So I am dedicating today's episode to the very fun and extremely sexy topic of vehicle dynamics.

Now, if you don't think cars are cool, I just, I don't think we're going to be friends, right? Because they're awesome. I mean, everything from the engine to all the technology inside them. to the way that they've evolved over time, cars are a fantastic, fantastic thing. And even though cars used to be started with a crank and now you can start them from your bedroom to warm them up in the winter, there are certain characteristics of a car that have not changed over time. Now, before we get ready to deploy anytime we're overseas, we go through a driving course. And our driving course is called OPSC or Overseas Personal Security Course, OPSC.

That's what we call our driving course. You can tell that it's a CIA acronym because it really doesn't have anything to do with driving. But nevertheless, that's the course we go through. And in that course, we're taught three fundamentals to keep ourselves safe in any vehicle, anywhere we go. And when I talk about keeping ourselves safe, that safety runs two ways. It means keeping ourselves safe in the car when we drive it, but also keeping ourselves safe using the car as a tool for our survival. whether that means using it offensively or using it defensively. So when I tell you these three fundamentals,

and as we talk about vehicle dynamics on today's episode, I want to make sure you're understanding at all times that we're using these skills through a lens of both defensive driving and offensive driving. If you ever have to escape from a disaster, if you ever have to get off the X because there's some threat looming or someone's trying to kidnap you or carjack you or you're at some sort of checkpoint that's being overrun by some,

some kind of hostile force, these are the same three techniques, the same three fundamentals that you use to offensively keep yourself safe using your car as much as a weapon as you do as a vehicle for transportation. And those three fundamentals are this. First, momentum is everything. Momentum is everything. And I'll expand on that in just a second. But what we're really talking about here is the fact that once a car starts moving, it builds momentum. That means every pound of mass, in that vehicle is moving at a certain speed and creating energy. So the first fundamental to understand here is that momentum is everything. The second fundamental is that you have to break to steer. Break to steer. This is a common, common misconception among drivers who think that you're supposed to

steer and then break. In fact, a car works in an exponentially better, more efficient way when you actually use your braking system before your steered system. And I'll expand on that in just a second as well. Now the third fundamental, anytime you're in a car, is to understand you should always aim for the rear. Aim for the rear. And what we're talking about there is the difference between the front of a car and the back of a car. And it doesn't matter whether you're talking about a sedan or whether you're talking about an electric vehicle or whether you're talking about a truck or a tractor trailer. There's a distinct difference between the front of every vehicle and the rear of every vehicle. So I want you to start getting these three fundamentals stuck in your head because we're

going to talk about them at length today. Remember, the first fundamental. Momentum is everything. The second fundamental, break to steer, and the third fundamental aim for the rear. You can see how these roll off the tongue and it becomes a mnemonic that we use at CIA over and over again. Momentum is everything, break to steer, aim for the rear. Momentum is everything. Break to steer, aim for the rear. That's the Can't we go through when we get ready to take a vehicle overseas for any kind of covert operation? Now, let's talk about these in greater detail because I really want you to understand them as you drive into the coldest, harshest part of winter this February. And as you continue to use your vehicle through the spring and spring break and into the summer

and summer vacation to keep yourself and your family safe, and especially if you are going overseas into any kind of dangerous situation for business or for personal travel or otherwise. Now, first, we talk about momentum is everything. A vehicle, if you can imagine, the average vehicle right now weighs about 3,000 pounds. That's the average vehicle. That means that there are some of vehicles like efficiencies and mopeds that weigh less than 2,000 pounds, but then there's also, you know, strong, heavy commercial vehicles that can weigh in excess of 10,000 pounds.

Your average sedan, like a Toyota Camry, for example, a loaded Toyota Camry, full of gas, with, you know, decent extras inside it is going to weigh about 4,400 pounds. So that means any time you step into your vehicle, whatever your vehicle is, sedan, truck, or otherwise, you're stepping into a box that weighs more than two tons, most likely. Think about that for a second. You're stepping into a piece of welded steel that weighs more than two tons. And as soon as that piece of steel starts to move, you are building something called. momentum. Now the specific calculation for momentum is actually mass times velocity. So for all you

math geeks out there like me, you know the calculation. P equals MV where P is momentum. Momentum equals mass times velocity. That means the more you increase your velocity or the more you increase your mass, the more you increase your momentum. That's why a car moving at 10 miles an hour is nowhere near as dangerous as a car moving at 70 miles an hour. It's because of the difference in momentum. Unlike most moving objects, a car actually has its maximum potential energy when it's at a stop. Think about that for a second. A car has its maximum potential energy when it's at a stop. And that's because the kinetic energy that that car is going to create doesn't actually happen until the car starts to move. So a car parked is a car that's full of potential energy. And it's not

until you start to move that vehicle that that potential energy becomes kinetic energy and that kinetic energy can actually cause damage. That's the magic of vehicles. So whether you are trying to break out of a situation by ramming your way through two other vehicles or whether you lose control because of a rainy storm or you slip on a patch of ice. Once you have that big 4,000 pound chunk of steel moving, it's got momentum and it has transformed its potential energy into very real, very destructive kinetic energy. So the first fundamental that we learn at CIA about vehicles and vehicle dynamics is that momentum is everything because momentum can get you through any kind of bad situation that you

come into. If you have ever driven into a snow drift, you know exactly what I'm talking about. A car that's moving into a snow drift will actually continue to move even as the snow and the ice come under its tires because that momentum is plowing the car through the snow. This same concept actually saved my life about three years ago in Abu Dhabi when I was rammed at high speed from the rear and spun off the road into the sand. Now, I knew that moment. momentum was everything and I knew that if I kept my wheels straight and I continued the car moving in the direction of the sand drifts off to the side of the road, that eventually the sand itself would steal all that momentum away from the car. But if I tried to fight it, if I tried to turn my wheel,

I would end up creating a situation where the kinetic energy of the car would either cause a roll or a flip or some kind of worse situation for myself. So whenever you're in a car, understand that momentum is everything. If you're trying to slow the vehicle down, you don't want to stomp on the brakes to slow the vehicle down if you're on some kind of surface that's wet or slippery. If you're going into a deep puddle, three inches, four inches, six inches of water because there's flooding, or if you're going into mud, or if you're going into snow, or if you're going into sand, the last thing you want to do is stomp on your brakes, because what you want to do is let the momentum of the vehicle compound with the resistance

of the natural terrain and then start to apply braking. So that way you're actually transferring that momentum, not to the brakes, but you're transferring the momentum to the environment around the wheel. And that's going to matter a lot more when we talk about our second fundamental. But just keep this in your mind. Momentum is everything. That car creates momentum. That momentum mathematically is the mass times the velocity.

If you increase the velocity, you increase the momentum. But if you decrease the velocity, you decrease the velocity. you decrease the momentum. So whether that means you want to drive into a snow patch or drive into a sand pile, the truth is that as soon as you transfer that momentum from the car into the environment, you're going to start gaining control of the vehicle. Now our second fundamental is about braking to steer. What does brake to steer mean?

So in any car, there is a weight transfer always happening. And the weight transfer shifts from the left to the right side of the car and from the front to the back of the car. And if you've ever taken my ghost tactics course or my tactical driving course out here in Florida, then you've seen and experienced some of this firsthand. Now, if you think about your car, your car has four wheels and each of those four wheels has four independent suspensions. And those suspensions are really just springs. So when you turn a car to the left, you're actually compressing the springs on the right.

And then the car's natural inclination is to resist the compressed springs and bounce back to the left again. And the same thing is true if you turn the car to the right. If you turn a car to a right, the springs on the left will compress and the car wants to resist that compression and bounce back to the right. That's why if you've ever found yourself in a fish tail, you have seen how the car swings left and right, left and right. It's because it is compressing and releasing the tension in each of those springs. The same thing happens when you break and when you accelerate. When you stomp on the gas to accelerate, you're actually lifting the front end of the car because you're, the rear tires are pulling so fast or the front tires are pulling so fast. So you're going to compress the springs in the rear. And if you stop on the brake, what you're actually doing is you're compressing the springs in the front of the car as the car starts to dip to the front to slow down. The engine compresses those front springs and your rear springs will expand. So at all times, a car is always moving on these four independent springs. Now, when you steer, even though there are different types of cars, four-wheel drive, front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, all cars steer from the front.

We call that your steerage tires. Your steerage tires are on the front. To maximize the contact patch in your steerage tire, your contact patch being the patch of rubber that's actually in contact with the ground, to increase that contact patch, you want to compress the springs in the front of the car. Shift that weight forward. The only and best way to shift that weight forward is by braking. So if you think about it, in order, you're driving down the road, you press the brakes gently, the front end of your car dips down, it compresses the front springs in your car, which increases the size of your contact patch, which increases the amount of steerage you have on your steerage tires. You see how that works? I know that this is a visual example that I'm telling you

through an audio medium, but I think you're starting to understand what I'm saying. So anytime you want to increase the steerage in your car, you actually want to bring. break first. Now, this goes contrary to what most people actually do. If you've ever driven in the car with your parents or with a girlfriend or with a boyfriend or even with a friend, you've probably seen them go into a turn too fast and what do they do when they're too fast inside a turn? They turn their wheel and then they feel the shift of weight in the car. They realize they're going too fast and then they apply break. They're doing it in the wrong order. What they're actually doing is putting the car at greater risk of losing control because when you turn the wheels, you actually

decrease the size of your contact patch. And then the weight shifts to one side or the other, like we talked about earlier. And the outside wheel has even less of a contact patch. And then you apply the brake, which shifts the weight of the car forward onto the smallest possible contact patch. That's exactly why people spin out of turns all the time, because they're putting a lot of weight on a small piece of contact patch when they're at speed going through a turn. In contrast to that, what we're taught to do at the agency is brake before you steer. So you're going into the exact same turn at the exact same speed. You tap the brake before you go into the turn. That shifts the way to the car forward and increases the contact patch on both tires. Then when both contact patches are

maximized, you turn the car. Now what you have are the maximum contact patch going into a turn. Now, if you really want to talk about performance driving, then what you do after you have that weight shift to the front and after you apply steerage, then you increase the gas and you actually drive a performance turn coming out of the turn and getting back onto a straightaway. It's completely different than what the average person does when they're going through any kind of turn. Now, apply that same concept to if you're turning at night in the rain or if you're turning in a snowstorm or if you're turning during some kind of flash. flood. The same principles apply. If there's a layer of water or ice or snow between your tires and the ground, the contact patch is actually still the same. It's just the surface that the contact patch is touching that changes. So in all cases, you still maximize the performance of your vehicle. When you tap the brake, drop the front end down, compress those front end springs,

the whole weight of the engine and the whole weight of those of the front end of the car from the shift and momentum drastically increases the contact patch on those front tires and maximizes your ability to steer. I understand and appreciate that somebody somewhere invented anti-lock braking, but anti-lock braking does not actually help you maintain control of the contact patch because now you don't really know when the tires are going to roll and when the tires are going to lock. there's this weird frustration that operatives and elite operators have with modern technology because they create all this technology to basically make cars safer for bad drivers. And what they end up doing is making cars more unpredictable for very good drivers.

You've probably seen this yourself where your car beeps at you whenever you're getting too close to the person in front of you. You know you're close to the person in front of you. But then that giant beeping alarm goes off and it startles you and it takes your attention. off the road for a second. I hate it when that happens and you probably know exactly what I'm talking about or you go to make a left-hand turn or a right-hand turn. You know there's a car behind you, but then the car beeps at you when you turn on your left-hand turn or your right-hand blinker. And then you're like, why is the car yelling at me? I'm supposed to be making a turn and it distracts you from the road.

That's exactly, if you know that feeling, then you know exactly what all of our Delta and Navy SEAL brothers out there feel every time they have to get into their own modern day vehicle and fight with the car to get the car to do what they wanted to do. And we're not even, I mean, I haven't even touched on when cars vibrate, when you cross the center line without turning on your blinker. Oh my gosh. Modern day cars are the bane of a lot of operator existence. But getting back to our fundamentals, the main thing to keep in mind with every vehicle, modern or ancient, is that momentum is everything, which you understand now, and that you have to brake to steer. Break to steer because braking increases steerage. Now, our third and final fundamental here is that you want to aim for the rear.

Now, what I mean by that is, again, if you think about the vehicle dynamics in a car, if you treat a car as if it's a shoebox and you put that shoebox on the table in front of you, you take a brick and you put a brick in the front of the shoebox, and now you have a shoebox with a brick in it. Essentially, that's the same thing that every car is. It's an empty piece of metal with a giant engine block like a brick inside it. Now, only half of that shoebox has the brick in it, the front half. That means that the front half of the shoebox is heavier than the back half of the shoebox.

Now, in science terms, in physics terms, what we call this is a lever because the heavy end of the box essentially has a strong point of contact with the ground or with the tabletop. And the back end of the box can pivot. It can move. So if you push the shoebox away from you, the piece with the brick in it will basically stay stationary. and the piece with no brick in it will push backwards. It'll pivot around the brick. The same thing is true with a vehicle. A vehicle is nothing more than a giant shoebox with a brick in it. It's nothing more than a giant lever. So if you're getting ready to crash, if you see yourself losing control of your vehicle and you're going into a situation where you might crash into the car in front of you, do you hit the car in the

front? Do you hit the car in the middle or do you hit the car in the rear? The answer is you always ways aim for the rear. If you aim for the front of the car, you're going to be putting engine block to engine block. And essentially, you're putting the two heaviest parts of both vehicles and you're crashing them together. That's why head-on collisions are so dangerous. If you aim for the center of the car, you're not doing as much damage as you would with the engine block, but you are coming into contact with the piece of the car that's most likely carrying passengers. So it's a big risk of life and limb to the other vehicle if you aim for the center. But if you aim for the rear, the rear of almost every vehicle is an empty trunk. Even when you're talking about performance vehicles like

Porsches or like Lamborghinis, still the rear of the vehicle is the lightest part of the vehicle. So you always want to aim for the rear, put your heavy engine block, because if you're the one driving forward, your heavy engine block is in the front of your car. It's heading towards the rear of the next car. That means that the rear of the car in front of you is actually going to absorb the momentum from your car, pivot around the engine block of the car that you're running into, and you're creating a giant lever while protecting yourself and protecting the people in the other car. Now, let's take this out of the defensive driving realm and put this into the offensive driving realm. Let's say that you're trying to escape a kidnapper or escape someone who's chasing you. Now, if they pull off or they

have multiple cars, they're going to try to block you from the road. And how do most cars block people from the road? They park, engine block to engine block directly in front of you. You've seen this a thousand times in movies and in action films. Two big SUVs come driving out of side roads and they park nose to nose. The drivers and the passengers jump out of both cars and then they aim their weapon at you. Right. And then in most movies, what does the car that's the car that is being targeted do, it stops, it looks around, sometimes it backs up or it does some high, exciting j-turn or something like that. That's not what would happen in real life. In real life, what we would do is we would turn the vehicle, we would recognize these three fundamentals, we're coming up

onto a pair of vehicles that have blocked our road. First fundamental, momentum is everything. We don't want to give up our momentum. The car is moving at a certain speed. That speed times its mass equals momentum. We have a lot of kinetic energy. at our disposal so we don't want to slow the car down. What we do want to do is tap on the brake. We tap on the brake briefly, shift the way to the front of the car, increase the steerage, and now we can steer the car and aim the car at the rear of one of the two SUVs that's blocking our path. We have maximum momentum. We have maximum steerage, and we are aiming at the lightest part of the car that's trying to block our way, which is going to turn into a giant lever,

as soon as we crash into the rear of that vehicle. And what you can actually do, whether you believe it or not, is you hit the rear of any vehicle, and then you compress the gas pedal again, and you actually create more momentum, and you swing that lever around, and then before you know it, you have just passed the roadblock

that was trying to block you in. That is how real vehicle dynamics work for real elite operators in the real field, using those same three fundamentals. Momentum is everything, break to steer, aim for the rear. Now, why am I talking about vehicle dynamics and tactical driving on a conversation that has to do with how to apply spy skills to everyday life? Because here's the truth. The truth is that most of us are going to live a very safe life. We're going to have a very

comfortable existence with no major road accidents and no hostile threat coming at us. But for many of you out there, you've already lived firsthand through something scary on the road. whether it's a driver coming from another lane crossing in front of you, whether it's a bad snowstorm or a bad ice storm, or whether it's some kind of flash flood situation, or heaven forbid, you have actually had someone try to carjack you or carjack someone in or actually pin you in to do some kind of personal harm to you or your family. I'm not telling you how to drive like an operator because I want you to go out there and drive dangerously. That's not the reason. It's because I want you to understand these three fundamentals so that you can use them. if the time ever arises. Now, unlike most of those TV shows that tell you not to try this at home, I absolutely want you to try these three fundamentals at home. Find a nice empty parking lot. Find a nice empty stretcher road.

Find someplace safe. Take your car out there for a drive. Take mom, take dad, take a boyfriend, take a girlfriend, take a best friend. I don't really care. But go out there, turn on this podcast, and remember these three fundamentals. Momentum is everything. As soon as your car starts to move, it becomes both a weapon and a mobile shield. And as long as it's moving, you have transformed potential energy into kinetic energy. You have real power in your hand. The second fundamental, you have to break to steer. Go ahead and take a turn at 30 miles an hour. Tap on the brake. Feel the weight of the car transfer to the front and then yank on that wheel left or right and feel how the car performs. It's not going to release that traction as long as you're moving at the right speed on the right kind of terrain. Whether you're driving on a dirt road, whether you're driving on a paved road, whether you're driving on an icy road,

you will always benefit by just briefly tapping the brake to shift the weight of the car to the front and compress those front springs to increase the steerage on your front steerage wheels. And then the third fundamental, always aim for the rear. You now know exactly what to do anytime you find yourself in a car accident, anytime you find yourself out of control in the snow or the rain or the water from flash flooding or muddy roads. And you also know what to do if somebody tries to pin you in and cut you off from the road. Don't ever try to hit another car in the engine block and always try to avoid the center piece of a car. You don't want to T-bone another car because that's where the center of most probable life exists. Instead, you always want to aim your front end at the back end of whatever vehicle is trying to block you or whatever vehicle has spun out in front of you. Because if you have to have an accident, you want to have an accident with the rear end of the vehicle where it's going to absorb your momentum like a lever.

Push the vehicle into a half circle or a half moon and you won't kill anybody, including yourself. These three fundamentals will keep you safe in the winter. They'll keep you safe in foreign soil. They'll keep you safe in any size vehicle. And when you know how to use your car as both a weapon and a shield, that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people.

I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media. at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.