Over thirteen years ago I clipped and saved a short article written by Cory Farley of Autoweek magazine (March 4, 1996, The Plight of the Navigator). It was a story of his trials and tribulations in training his own son to drive. Back then, my oldest hadn't even reached his second birthday but knowing that this day would find us quicker than I could probably imagine I decided to hang on to it. So here I am, over a decade later I pull the yellowing copy from my briefcase and smile. Exactly one month from today we will embark on my son's journey out onto the blacktop jungle.
Actually since that day I have amassed a good sized collection of articles on the topic of teen driving. The reason that this particular story got my attention is because like Mr. Farley, I have driven in the triple digits before with family in tow. I took the "racetrack road" that my kids suggested when we left our house, listening to their laughter as we would glide through a corner a bit faster than the posted limit. I pulled the parking brake on snow and spun us into the driveway like only the finest rally driver would. I've even rolled a car once. Relax! I was twenty years old and single. No children or spouses were harmed in that particularly embarrassing moment in time. And now with a long line of events in my life that my kids are all too aware of, I'm forced to play the "Do as I say not as I do" card. God what a hypocrite!
One thing unique to my situation that Mr. Farley didn't have is a child who has logged a substantial amount of time behind the wheel of a race vehicle. At ten years old my son was moving along at speeds upward of sixty miles per hour before I even took the playing cards out of my spokes as a kid! What I can't quite figure out though is if this fact should assure me of his respect of a motor vehicle or if it's going to turn out to be the kiss of death.
I've been told that I'm certifiable if I buy into the fact that he's going to be safer than those without his training. That when I let him loose he'll tear around town like the whole world is his racetrack. And that he'll obviously drive much faster than the other kids because he's more comfortable at high speeds. On the contrary, I feel that ignorance and a lack of respect for your new steed is the perfect combination for disaster. On my first night with my license I had managed to take about thirty-thousand miles off my father's tires on his Cutlass and about ten years off the transmission. I had seen burn outs at the drag strip and heard of this thing called a neutral drop but never experienced them first hand. By about 11pm on that night I had become a pro. And by some miracle of God I didn't kill myself or take anyone with me in the process.
After reading that article for the first time back in '96 I had the whole orientation planned out for him. But given his resume to date I'm thinking there may be no need for me to pull a parking brake on him to see how he reacts, or take him to a snow covered parking lot to feel the tail come around. He's experienced this already in spades, and at a quicker and much more violent rate than a clumsy two-thousand pound car would. What I do need to do is remind him that not everyone is moving in the same direction as he is. And with people texting, blasting their stereo, and fixing their faces while driving, this environment is ten times more dangerous than any race track he's driven on. Even at a substantially reduced pace the behemoth that you pilot out in the real world- with its doors, roof and sound steel structure- could very well hurt or kill you much easier than anything you've experienced before in competition.
I think the hardest thing for me to teach him is going to be to trust that gut feeling which warns you of impending doom. You know that over anxious and sometime nauseous feeling you get which is quickly followed by a little voice telling you that you're going too fast for the turn ahead. That same voice that asks if the guy parked on the side of the road (who happens to be turning his wheels into traffic) has checked his mirrors and sees you coming. Or those moments when you're at an intersection and you get the green light. You pause for a brief second, check both ways, and then proceed through the intersection after an idiot blows the red light and damn near takes you out of the picture. You can make your new driver aware of these situations but honestly how do you truly teach them? They're just going to have to experience it, have a few close calls, catch their breath, and with time they'll become second nature.
The old saying goes: What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. But when it comes to the responsibility of driving, even if we survive the event, we could be left with the incredible guilt of hurting another individual. We ourselves could become so badly injured that we are restricted to a hospital bed and a ventilator. And if we're lucky, maybe a wheelchair and feeding tube. I just hope he realizes this because even though he's had several years behind the wheel of his kart he's also had the luxury of a reset button on his Xbox. But in real life, and especially out on our roads and highways, there are no do-overs.
