British Police train on PlayStation’s GT Sport for PS4

Automologist MAC can no longer tell his kids that spending too much time on the PlayStation is no good for them…

Policemen in the County of Lincolnshire have been honing their skills in an initative that is in partnership with PlayStation. Officers spend some time at the world famous Silverstone F1 track setting benchmark laps; they then return to the ‘lab’ and race the track virtually on the GT Sport game, and then go back out to the track to see how they have improved. The results so far have been marked with the average ‘Bobby’ saving some 6 seconds from their original lap times. This is all done with the GT Academy, which is an annual contest whereby PlayStation jockeys compete for the chance to train with the real life and official Nissan Race Team. So far it is not confirmed whether the Lincolnshire Constabulary will continue to train this way, but Inspector Shaun West, who is the Assistant Chief Constable, was enthusiastic about the results.

The British Police are not looking for PlayStation to replace the more traditional ‘on-road’ driving training, but are certainly interested in seeing how relatively low-cost methods can improve the individual skills of their officers, and of course Grand Tourismo, another PlayStation favourite in my household, is used by professional race drivers to learn the circuits.

West believes that nothing will fully substitute the rigorous training that the police drivers currently undertake, but new technology can augment their ability and refresh current police training methods. GT Sport was given a limited demo last week and a mere million people took part. The game is launched this week and I am sure that it will be on the Christmas list in my house.