Scaring Parents for Profit
The Globe (ever the fan of teen driving "education" programs), is hosting a little chat session where so far the proprietor has done a wonderful job of hawking his program at almost every step, and a lot of the questions from the "audience" have been blatant setups.
These programs involve a $300 fee, and your kid spends most of four hours standing around watching demonstrations or waiting for other kids to finish the exercises, without much actual seat time. When it comes time to try it themselves, they're not driving their own car. They're supposed to be learning what their car feels like and what it is capable of, and they don't get much practice.
Skip the people scaring parents to cash in, and join a local non-profit car club that runs driver education events (samples: Porsche Club of America NE, BMWCCA Boston, Audi Club, North Atlantic, SCCA New England Region.) If they have fun- steer them towards autocross type events, or high performance driver education (highway speeds, whereas car control clinics are parking-lot/country-road speeds.) Ask about eligibility; some clubs are only open to drivers of a particular brand, but many will take any drivers, especially for novice schools. Most of these programs get you a full day's worth of activities, complete with in-car one-on-one instruction in your own car. Fees are in the $100-150 range (mostly for facility rental and insurance.) Instead of being in it for the cash, the instructors and club volunteers are there for the reward of teaching others how to be better drivers.
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Exactly!
That post is spot-on, Brett; I couldn't agree more.
Driver education for the love of cars and people is what motivates the club instructors. No one's in it for the money; they're volunteers.
-Carpundit
(member BMWCCA, and PCA)
DIY is an option
Thanks for the listing, Brett. I may save this for when my kids are preparing to learn to drive - courses in actually controlling the vehicle are going to be required in my household! I'll probably take the classes with them, too.
That said, I will also do what my parents did with me - DIY training. All you need is an empty, wet or snowy parking lot with nothing to hit. A few cones make it more interesting. This is how I learned to NOT pump the brakes when I got my first ABS-equipped vehicle, as well as practice emergency handling in snow/ice with a new vehicle. Heck, hand them a cel phone and watch them plow cones, etc. - there really isn't a drill covered by the referenced course that can't be set up this way.
Great fun, too.
For motorcyclists, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation offers courses (my BIL teaches these in NH and Maine). AARP offers training for elders looking to drive smarter and learn adaptive techniques as well - they may have them in MA by now.
With a stick-shift, if at all possible -
Yes, learning the clutch takes time, and yes, you make an a$$ of yourself the first few times you stall trying to drive around the block, but you develop a better sense of the vehicle, a relationship, if you will.
When I learned I didn't have much choice - both parents had standard shift vehicles - so that was that. But, it came in handy when I was away at college and the only other one out of an entire carload of girls who had to navigate home from a college frat party after the driver became too intoxicated to drive. Just a good survival skill for a young woman - you never know when you'll need it.
Plus, it's fun to play with the clutch at traffic lights and psych out the laggard pedestrians crossing the street.
different recommendation:
Teach the kids on an automatic. It's intimidating enough just learning rules of the road and how to do basic control of the car.
Once they're comfortable with the rules of the road, driving in traffic, etc- then bring a stickshift into the equation.
If you have a choice ...
They only reason I own an automatic transmission vehicle is that minvans are shiftless as a rule. I may not buy another once we get past the van stage.
My parents didn't own a vehicle with an automatic transmission, so I had to learn to bunny hop the car until I got it down. My brother and I each burned out a clutch learning. That gave me much entertainment in college, teaching my (now) husband and other classmates to use a stick shift. I have to say that it is probably easier to learn the driving stuff and then learn the standard transmission, but that wasn't an option for me.
I did take my exam on my aunt's car - a clone of my parents car but with an automatic transmission.
Disagree
Teach them on standard. It's kind of like the whole "square can be a rectangle, but rectangle can't be a square" thing. If you can drive a standard, you can still drive an automatic. I actually wish they had taught me standard, because I have encountered several times when I couldn't drive a friend's car because of it.
Since I haven't driven for about 3 years, I'm unfamiliar with cars they're putting out these days. Are automatics becoming more the norm?
the old parking lot myth
All you need is an empty, wet or snowy parking lot with nothing to hit.
That's the common "words of wisdom", but I disagree. Not only will it probably get you ticketed by the cops these days (I used to hear about this all the time) which means your kid is out of their license for a bunch of months PLUS $500, ad nausea...but it doesn't really teach you much except what it feels like to lose control of the car. It doesn't do anything to explain why, or what to do. Also, in an open lot, your sense of speed is different.
Take your kids to a car control clinic in the summer, then to one of the winter driving schools run by the aforementioned clubs. They'll get 8-16 hours (depending on the school) of instruction and practice...and actually learn something.
Still some places to play
I wouldn't call it a myth, as I have done this with every car that I've bought to get used to the handling in extreme situations. You just have to know your local parking lot scene. We do have some sense of what to do and what situations to simulate, but that is because my husband's brother runs these same sorts of clinics for newby motorcyclists.
I got a good laugh from the campus cops when I was faced with an unfamiliar (and much larger) vehicle with ABS, a 30 mile drive home in snow, and an empty UMass Lowell parking lot with 1-2" of snow on it. They not only understood, but they broke out the cruisers for some practice as I was leaving. I don't know about being ticketed, but I would be interested in stories about it happening as I still do this stuff every winter.
That said, the "official" training is nice for reasons of convenience and insurance discounts. Easier if somebody else is putting out all the cones, sweating the details, printing out the manuals, etc. I don't think it is unreasonable to practice the clinic skills after the clinic is over if you can find an appropriate place to do so.
defensive driving courses =
defensive driving courses = good
$300 for 4 hours of group lesson = very bad :(
and I thought £75 for 5 hours and then £22 per hour after that of private lessons was expensive. Guess I finally found something cheaper over here.