Driver’s Ed

Who taught you how to drive and what lessons have followed you.

We had access to a super large parking lot. In Eastern Pennsylvania, we got decent snow. The instructor was a principal at a local GM dealership. In the winter months, he would take us to the lot and show us how the car would react to inputs on a slippery surface. We would get to 25-20mph and he would say jam on the brakes; now turn the wheel. The car wouldn’t turn until the brake was released.

A few more lessons stay with me;

1) if you are approaching another car on a narrow road, let the other driver show you how good a driver he is

2) the only defense you have approaching a blind hill, is to stay as far in your lane as possible

3) when turning left, don’t cut the turn short; the closer to 90 degrees, the better

A big flat sandy dust area near a lake that had been dug for development. Many donuts and no one ever fell into the lake, so I'd say it was a good school.

Rexedgar said:

Who taught you how to drive and what lessons have followed you.

We had access to a super large parking lot. In Eastern Pennsylvania, we got decent snow. The instructor was a principal at a local GM dealership. In the winter months, he would take us to the lot and show us how the car would react to inputs on a slippery surface. We would get to 25-20mph and he would say jam on the brakes; now turn the wheel. The car wouldn’t turn until the brake was released.

A few more lessons stay with me;

1) if you are approaching another car on a narrow road, let the other driver show you how good a driver he is

2) the only defense you have approaching a blind hill, is to stay as far in your lane as possible

3) when turning left, don’t cut the turn short; the closer to 90 degrees, the better

Click to expand...

We did the same thing in packed snow a few times. Dad took us out to a deserted road, with nothing on the shoulder, and we jammed on the brakes to get the car sliding sideways, and tried to keep the car on the road. That "turn into the slide" wasn't intuitive at first. After a few tries, it was...

The only thing I learned in Driver's Ed (I'd gotten my license three months prior) was the parking brake on a hill trick for a manual transmission. Other than that, we drove around, to get breakfast, them maybe donuts, and the instructor nursed his hangover with cigarettes and soda.

My brother's kids did a fun thing. They live just 5 miles from Bristol Motor Speedway and the racetrack offers a defensive driving course. You must use your own car and they do things like take the car to 50mph, and tell you to jam the brake to the floor. It's to learn how ABS brakes work, that you CAN do it, and to figure out how long it does take to stop at running speeds. The point is to take the car into all kinds of extreme situations, over and over, and just let the drivers see what happens. My SIL said she learned a ton. Of course on all the contests, her two girls with like 3 months of driving experience kicked her butt....

Learned in the city. In a very dense crowded part of the city. My dad had me driving before I turned 15, in part because he could send me for his cigarettes (rather than walk a block & a half!). My not yet having a license didn't seem to matter to him, since his father taught him the same way at the same age.

At my first driver's ed driving practice when I was 15, which was done in the local public school parking lot, our driving instructor asked who of us had driven before, knowing we were not yet old enough - but he knew some of us had. About half the class' hands went up, mostly boys. The instructor then paired the experienced drivers with with never-drove-before students.

I was paired with some girl I didn't know, who appeared hopeless. As we lurched a few feet towards the first turn in the practice course delineated by traffic cones, she stopped and asked me which way to turn the wheel? She just couldn't get it. She could not figure out counterclockwise was left, and clockwise was right. She also confused the pedals, and had no idea how to use the gear selector - so I had to do the gear selector for her, as well as help her turn the wheel to get her going.

Finally several turns later with my assistance, I tried to let her work everything, trying to slowly talk her through the steps. Somehow when putting it in gear she dropped it into reverse instead of drive, while stabbing the gas. We lurched backwards through the cones, over a parking curb, and came to a rest with the rear bumper up against the cyclone fence of the basketball court - as I was shoving it into park to stop us. The distance was short, and it happened in a flash.

I jumped out of the car, the instructor came running. We were unhurt, though the fence was bowed back pretty badly. The tank that is a 70's Impala, with those large chrome rear bumpers, looked like there was no real damage. But the rear axle & rear wheels were definitely on the wrong side of the traffic curb, with the curb now underneath the passenger compartment of the car, between the axles. Before the running instructor could fully get to us, I shouted-out that I was done with the girl and not getting in another car with her.

Drivers ed was ended for the day on that note, with the car stuck on the curb and blocking part of the training course. The instructor & the girl went into the school building, and I and everyone else went home. I never was questioned about the accident, beyond a brief moment at the scene telling the instructor I have no idea what she was doing, because she herself didn't know what she was doing.

The girl never came back to drivers ed, and I didn't have any mutual friends with her so I don't know if her not coming back was her choice or the instructor's. But my next pairing was with a girl who was moderately experienced and a decent enough driver, and we became friends lasting until years after high school when I lost track of her. No idea how the car was removed, but the fence took a week or two to repair. Until it was repaired, I was reminded about my incident several more times while playing b-ball in the courts, and my buddies never let me live it down! For a time after, I had to live with the nick-name "crash".

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it! :thumbs:

tl;dr my driving partner got in an accident within several hundred feet of starting out the first time

Who taught me to drive: Numerous sources.

What lessons have followed me: All of them.

1. Driver's Ed in High School.


2. US Army.


3. My first car.


4. My friend's motorcycle/my motorcycle(s).


5. German driving and motorcycle training. (Many years after my first time in Germany.)


6. Military tractor/trailer driving training.

I grew up driving golf carts, work carts, tractors and such so it was no big thing when I finally got to get on the road. We had drivers ed classroom in school if you wanted to take it there but you had to take the road part privately or you could do both parts outside school. When my dad was in high school you did both at the school. They had a big driving course with intersections, lights, signs, figure 8's, etc. They pretty much did it all and then the instructors took 2 or 3 people out a day on the real roads if he thought they were ready, but everybody had to go out successfully at least twice to pass the class. He said there was a girl in his class that wrecked both times she went out and by second semester senior year she was still taking and failing driver's ed every single semester. What was cool was they had to tune the radio to a certain station and that was the one the instructors used to direct the cars on the drivers ed course liek "Car No. 8, take your next left and then parallel park. Everybody else, stay the hell away from Car No. 8"

Just a simulator. The drivers ed teacher was the track coach. It was track season. He asked me "Do you know how to drive?" in lieu of taking me out in the student car. Of course I said yes. Class dismissed.

Rexedgar said:

Who taught you how to drive and what lessons have followed you.

We had access to a super large parking lot. In Eastern Pennsylvania, we got decent snow. The instructor was a principal at a local GM dealership. In the winter months, he would take us to the lot and show us how the car would react to inputs on a slippery surface. We would get to 25-20mph and he would say jam on the brakes; now turn the wheel. The car wouldn’t turn until the brake was released.

A few more lessons stay with me;

1) if you are approaching another car on a narrow road, let the other driver show you how good a driver he is

2) the only defense you have approaching a blind hill, is to stay as far in your lane as possible

3) when turning left, don’t cut the turn short; the closer to 90 degrees, the better

Click to expand...

I took drivers ed' in high school after classes were over the second semester of my sophomore year. I learned to drive in the snow by doing donuts and sliding the car around in a large parking lot at a manufacturiung facility that was closed for almost a decade. I took a racing school at Bertil Roos in May of 1994 before I got my SCCA racing license.

Self taught.
My father came with me later

Left, right, left look
Always do that before entering an intersection, stop sign -light-yield. That is the first side that gets tagged.

Mirrors and good shoulder check when changing lanes