Satch, at this kid's age how many cars had you wadded up?! - I already had two that came home in a gunnysack. Mom's car wasn't an M3 (Rambler didn't make an equivalent) but my "drivers training" was even farther removed from what I needed to know. Great column - wish we could make this point with all those trying to legislate safety into the cars instead of the drivers. Win Phelps
I thought this was a rather interesting article. Sucks to be that kid. I'm 16 and just got an e46 m3 in December. Haven't crashed yet. I don't drive it like that kid did though...
No mid-teens aged kid could have processed the limits of what a car could do the way most of us were taught: "just slow down for the curves..." said the gym teacher acting as a driving instructor. Yet I observed my kids participating in several Street survivals and Teen schools at the performance center, completely process and understand the meaning of these limits by the end of these courses. They were prudent, responsible drivers, not today's multi-taskers behind the wheel. My kids had developed enough judgement to balance out their lack of experience and were able to drive without crashes being "inevitable". Of course, I know others will hit them as they have hit me, over the course of their driving lifetimes; sometimes your number is up, but they won't hit, or slide into something unless they intend to. As a result of these observations, I am a complete evangelist among my friends, imploring them all to put their kids through these teen oriented performance driving programs as soon as they can. I see the laments of parents on other forums, bemoaning the loss of some nice cars given to new teen drivers. The cars are driven into other cars and sometime even into stationary things in broad daylight within weeks. Fellow forum posters offer sympathy for the "bad luck". COME ON... These crashes are a result insufficient driving proficiency due to no experience combined with almost no training. These crashes are almost completely foreseeable. They are not "accidents"! I am right in agreement with the good folks at Autoweek who have devoted entire issues of their respected journal to spreading the word: Parents: Get your kids properly trained to drive. There is just no valid reason not to do this for your kids.
At my last job with a police department, I taught a Teen Driving Course, using the same course we trained officers on for emergency driving. My son went through it more than once, and also had plenty of supervised driving time. 2 weeks ago he asked to borrow my 528i to go the the Winter Dance at school. As he and his date left the house to go, I reminded him....drive that car like it belongs to your father. He did just that and took very good care of it!
Remind me to tell you the story of the time I loaned my Lotus Esprit to a friend's kid for the Prom...
Ok. Hey, Satch! Tell us about the time you loaned your Lotus Esprit to a friend's kid to go to the prom. How'd that turn out?
Okay, then: I had a friend in Anchorage (a great mechanic) whose son was a junior or senior. The big prom was coming up, so without thinking too much about it, I said, "Why don't you take the Esprit? Mind you, this was in the late '70s, so a '77 Esprit was still considered somewhat nifty (which was also its license plate, come to think of it). The kid was ecstatic; he showed up early to pick up the car. (I think he wanted to wax it one more time or something, but actually, it was spotless—or at least as close as any of my cars get to that condition.) At about 9:30, I got a call from my friend; the kid was too traumatized to make the call himself. "He thinks he's ruined your car," said my friend. "The lights have quit." "Oh, that's easy!" I laughed. "Tell him to look in the glove compartment. There's a small fuse box there—and about three dozen extra 30-amp fuses. He'll get about an hour on the headlights before he blows another fuse!" I don't know why our kids are not properly educated about the nature of British automotive machinery.