George:
Not everyone here is a police officer and many of us are using concealment rigs that are pretty slow to draw from. Plus there's the decision time to deal with. When you are doing the test, the defender has already made up his mind to draw and fire. But in the real world, you have to recognize the situation, make your decision, and then act.
A local club did some IDPA-like matches last year, except there were several differences. There was no timer, and no score. The targets were movable and were controlled by the safety officers (a crude rig of fishing line and surgical tubing...). The targets were dressed up in old clothes. The safety officers behind you spoke the parts of the targets. They also had starter pistols. So you interacted with the targets in this "match." The goal was simply to survive to see the next day. Having the safety officers screaming in your ears and the starter pistols going off really added to the stress level...
Another safety officer videotaped the whole thing, so you got to see the mistakes that you made. One of the thing that I noticed was that universally the time to draw was very slow. What seemed quick when I was in the match was agonizingly slow on the video. Most of that time seemed to be the time taken up by the decision.
M1911