The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Annual Conference and Exposition is the premier event for law enforcement professionals. The theme of this year’s conference is Equipped to Innovate, and will bring together more than 16,000 public safety professionals to enhance their skills, knowledge, and department capabilities.

FAAC is pleased to join MILO at IACP this year in Boston, MA, October 19-22, where FAAC will be debuting the most accessible fully immersive driving simulator yet: the LE-500. The new LE-500 offers improvements in three key areas: smaller size, affordability, and self-paced training.

 

The Benefits of LE-500: FAAC’s Most Accessible Fully Immersive Police Driving Simulator

As FAAC Training Group Lead Chuck Deakin explains, “the LE-500 meets the customer’s need for flexibility. It can be placed in more strategic locations so the students can have access to it at a time that’s convenient for them, whether that’s during the quiet hours of a night shift or in a free moment just before going to the field or assigned station.”

This LE-500 is more compact than any other comparably immersive simulator on the market, and can be easily stored and moved to different areas of your facility. But while the LE-500 is smaller, that doesn’t make it less capable of training the fundamentals of emergency response driving. The simulator has been lab-validated to give an experience comparable to a full-size sim. Deakins notes, “this is proven tech drawing on decades of in-house experience building simulation for academic research and automotive industry R&D. We’ve found that people connect with this size of simulator, like a racing simulator used in F1 racing. This scale has proven to be effective in training for the road.”

Because this sim is physically smaller, it is more affordable and more accessible to more agencies, community colleges, academies, and municipal departments. This accessibility is further expanded by the new self-paced virtual instructor interface. This self-paced interface is directly integrated with FAAC’s industry-leading VITALS (Virtual Instructor and Trainee Assessment and Learning System).

Instructors customize curriculum and scenarios, adding instructional elements that can run before or alongside each scenario. The self-paced system automatically evaluates the trainee and supplies immediate feedback without a physical instructor present. Instructors can log in at their convenience to review the data and VITALS feedback with the student and identify areas that need more work or demonstrate mastery.

According to Deakins, “the agency sets the standards in VITALS, and the time it takes to meet those standards is up to the student. The student can take as much time as they need, or move as quickly as they want through the scenario based lessons. Training is expensive: in time, in absence from primary duties. If a student doesn’t need all those hours of lecture, they shouldn’t spend their time there. Nonetheless, everyone is being held to the same standard, documenting and demonstrating they are up-to-date with your policies and procedures.”

 

Looking Forward to Seeing You at IACP

We hope to see you at IACP, at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, MA, Booth #1306. You’ll have the chance to get in and drive the LE-500, and discuss simulation training in detail with FAAC Training Group Leader Chuck Deakins, FAAC Public Safety Business Manager Bill Martin, and other simulation and training experts. In addition to the new LE-500, FAAC will offer demos of both the VR headset and desktop versions of inCommand. FAAC is eager to work with new inCommand customers to expand the included library of scenarios to cover a greater range of complex incidents.

Can’t make it to IACP this year? Please feel free to reach out to us anytime!