How many chances do you get, when it comes to your child's safety; ONE
The thought of turning a 17-year-old son or daughter loose on our busy freeways, with barely six months' experience behind the wheel, strikes terror into a parents heart — even though he wasn't the least bit intimidated himself. So when they had the opportunity to send him to a defensive driving school, taught by the most experienced instructors, they jumped at the chance.
The cool thing about the one-day school (and when you're dealing with teenagers it's important to be cool) is that the teachers at Oomph Driver Education don't try the old adult trick of scaring the heck out of the kids. There are no scary style videos shown here, instead, the instructors talk about the best ways for teenagers to avoid accidents by becoming better drivers and increasing their knowledge of vehicle dynamics.
While Laurie Ratcliffe stood in the classroom, covering basic principles of braking and cornering, Laurie casually mentioned that most race car drivers are defensive drivers on city streets because they don't have anything to prove. And, by the way, he added, why get into a road rage situation? "It's not a competition out there," he said. "You'll never see the other driver again."
But that's about as far as the cautionary material went. Mostly, Laurie was interested in teaching young drivers the physics of how to guide a "2 Tonne-missile" safely around our roads. The principles of avoiding accidents are similar to those of driving a race car at its limits. Therefore, the defensive driving classroom session was combined with a high-performance driving class.
The class begins with very basic information about how to sit in the vehicle and the best way to grip the steering wheel. Later, Laurie explains how a car's weight shifts in severe braking and steering manoeuvres which change the contact patches — and thus the traction. Finally, the class moved outside for real-world experience on the road.
Teenagers enrolled in the $275-class perform the driving exercises in their own cars. This made sense since the benefit of the class is to better learn the handling characteristics — and the limits of — the car they most often drive.
"They get two things out of this, "Vision is huge. They learn to drive so that they aren't just looking at the end of the bonnet. So when they are driving on the roads, they are looking at everything that is going on around them.
"The other thing they get out of this is they feel vehicle dynamics and what happens under an emergency situation. This is similar to when a kid runs out from between two parked cars and they have to react instantly."
Young drivers come to our school to understand why. Once they understand why, it's amazing what they can accomplish. That's why the young driver, when they're trained right, are so good behind the wheel."
Most drivers know before they came here that it's not good to brake when you're in the middle of a curve, Doing the exercises so many times you get used to not braking in the turns. If there is a car that stops in front of you, you will have an overall better feel for how to brake and avoid the accident."
But would the class save your son's or daughter's life? For $275 and a day in the sun, I'll take the chance that it could someday make all the difference.
