Teenage Drivers: Improving Their Odds of Survival the First Year

One of the most stressful times in any parent’s life is the day they allow their child to drive alone for the first time. It happens to all of us and no matter how well we teach them, it is still terrifying. There are literally thousands of things that can go wrong and unless they have the experience handling themselves, the chances are pretty good that they will get in an accident the first year.

1 in 5 of 16-year-old drivers has an accident within their first year of driving-Dosomething.org

Blacktop Bootcamp, a local driving academy is dedicated to teaching their students advanced, life-saving driving techniques and hope to change those odds. Christopher Ihara, founder and chief instructor states, “We believe that the best way to survive a crash is to avoid having it in the first place. To that end our students learn inside the classroom and inside the car.”

Teens are more likely than older drivers to underestimate dangerous situations or not be able to recognize hazardous situations.-CDC

Recently, I attended Blacktop Bootcamp’s Advanced Driving Arts course. I was very impressed by the professionalism they offered and the information they provided, it was all very helpful; what really impressed me was the hands-on instruction they taught. Blacktop Bootcamp instructors come from one or more backgrounds: High Performance Driving Instructors, Race Car Drivers, or Law Enforcement. These experienced instructors have learned far more about driving than just about anyone on the road, including most any driver’s education teacher.

I’ve had to endure the Virginia’s Defensive Driving classes 3 times in my life, twice when I was a teenager and 15 years later with my own daughter (karma). Each time was worse than the other. I was always bored out of my mind and left feeling robbed of 8 hours of my life. Not one bit of information given during those classes was something I did not already know.

This was not the story after my time spent with Blacktop Bootcamp. Sure they provided some of the same information, but most of what they teach is not taught in any driver’s education class, and it’s how they taught that made all the difference.

Classroom AND Hands-on Training

Each course is divided up evenly between classroom and hands-on instruction allowing the instructor to use the Tell-Show-Do method of instruction. They start in class explaining what they will instruct, then work with the students in their own car teaching them such things as:

• basic vehicle physics and dynamic
• basic vehicle maintenance
• proper driver positioning and setup
• proper hand position and steering technique

Their detailed instruction also included explaining what all the lights on the dashboard mean and how your tire pressure changes with the air temperature and its effect on the car’s handling capabilities.

Teach Experience, not Talk about it

Each student has an opportunity to work with their own personal instructor in their own car on a course that provides a variety of hazards such as:

• emergency lane changes
• hazards in the road
• emergency braking
• skid prevention and recovery

This ensures the student actually has an opportunity to experience how their own car handles in emergency situations and feel their specific braking system in action.

I asked Chris about his teaching technique and he explained,” Modern vehicle capabilities have advanced tremendously. Even the most mundane mini-van can out handle sports cars of the 1960s. Yet most people never get close to reaching their vehicle’s full handling capabilities. In fact in panic situations once most drivers get to about 40% of their car’s capability, they stop driving. The drivers stop making steering and braking inputs because they don’t believe their car can perform any better.”

Ihara continued, ”This is partially because as people drive around on a daily basis they are only using about 20% of the vehicle’s handling capabilities, thus 40% is so far beyond their comfort zone that they stop making inputs. It is this deficiency that can cause crashes. Blacktop Bootcamp pushes students to go beyond this 40% threshold so they will feel and understand that their vehicle is capable of so much more when they need it to save their lives.”

Teach Muscle Memory

Any course can talk about how to handle oneself during an emergency, Blacktop Bootcamp has the tools to safely cause the emergency to happen and instruct how to handle it. The use of their Automated Traffic Scenario Simulator enables the students practice emergency maneuvers in their own car with an experienced instructor coaching them from the front passenger seat.

Blacktop Bootcamp also has Virginia’s only privately owned “Skidcar” a tool normally reserved for law enforcement training. This unique tool enables the instructor to induce skids at very low speeds. The student gets to feel the vehicle’s behavior in various skids, then they are taught how to prevent and recover from them.

Each student does these exercises numerous times. Experiencing these emergency situations on a first hand basis allows the student to understand their car’s limits and gain muscle memory so when the real thing happens, they have a better chance of knowing how to identify the problem and correct it themselves.

Blacktop Bootcamp is passionate about teaching and each student they work with leaves with a much greater understanding of how their car works and how to handle it when things get hairy. Every course they teach they send a new class of “better” drivers into the world, improving the odds one teenager at a time.

To learn more about Blacktop Bootcamp’s Advanced Driving Arts or other course offerings such as their corporate and fleet training and seasonal clinics please visit them at www.blacktopbootcamp.com or email Chris Ihara at info@blacktopbootcamp.com.