Never Stop Driving #97: School’s Not Out For Summer
My son Sam was rear-ended last weekend and nearly pushed off the road. Scary, right? In normal circumstances it would be, but we were at a local driving school and I couldn’t have asked for a better teaching moment.
Sam, 15, is following in the footsteps of his two older siblings by attending a variety of driving schools. Car crashes are the leading cause of teenage death, so I load up my kids with instruction. Sure, there are physical skills to learn in a driving school, but what I really like about professional instruction is that my kids learn from someone other than their old man. If they’d just listen to me—for once!—they’d know that the largest factor in driving safety is the idiot behind the wheel.
But they don’t.
We’re lucky here in the Motown area because Waterford Hills Road Racing, a vibrant racing club with generous volunteers, stages a yearly racing school on a 1.5-mile track. Built in 1958 and located just an hour outside of Detroit, the Waterford facility is a gem. In addition to the six races they host every year there are numerous informal track days and other activities that spread automotive passion and driving skill.
Last weekend at Waterford, Sam was braking for a turn when the following car hit him. Thankfully, his older brother, John, had installed a camera in the car, a Spec Miata, which provided handy proof that Sam was a victim. Thankfully, he was fine. Cars on track, driving at speed, sometimes bump into each other. This weekend, all three Webster men will be racing at Waterford, so please come by and say hello.
The art of driving, for both enjoyment and safety, is a consistent theme for us at Hagerty. We teach folks how to drive a manual transmission, offer discounted membership in the Sports Car Club of America via the Hagerty Drivers Club (join here), and regularly report on driving schools in our media channels. We’ve written about inexpensive and excellent programs to learn car control like the Tire Rack Street Survival Teen driving school, the Teen Street Skills program, and commercial racing instructional programs like the Radford Driving School in Arizona.
This week on the Never Stop Driving Podcast, we interviewed Nigel Tunnacliffe, founder and CEO of Coastline Academy, the country’s largest driving school. Tunnacliffe founded Coastline to help rid the world of car crashes and to support the scores of independent operators that emerged to replace discontinued high-school driving programs. Coastline is currently in eight states, including California and Texas. I was fascinated to learn more about this vital but largely unseen industry. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
In addition to the podcast, here’s a handful of more new, must-see Hagerty Media material:
- Crazy Brit drives replica Caddy race car cross country
- How to find the right repair shop
- Joe Dirt’s Charger just sold
- Watch Davin and crew rebuild a 1000-hp BMW engine
And tell us about your favorite driving road!
Enjoy your weekend,
Larry
P.S.: Your feedback is very welcome. Comment below!
Please share this newsletter with your car-obsessed friends and encourage them to sign up for the free weekly email. The easy-to-complete form is here. And if you’d like to support the efforts of Hagerty Media, please consider joining the Hagerty Drivers Club.
Just be glad he was not driving that “Italian Mistress” of yours. Most importantly it was in a controlled environment with safety equipment ready to aid. Not in this case but so many are accidents of distraction by cell phones, games, doo dads, etc. I used to cringe every morning when my son used to drive to/from high school. I would request he call me and let me know when he was leaving and when he got there. Both ways morning and afternoon. City driving is the worst. There are far too many aids in cars today seems like driving is not the primary function anymore.
Racing together is one of the best things a family can do. Good thing this incident proved less than serious. My son Erik and I raced a Porsche that could do zero to 60 in less than 2 seconds and 6 second laps on a road course. An aggressive driver, Erik rolled the car a number of times and broke it in half once. Fortunately, it was a fuel-burning 1/8th scale radio-controlled car. The only thing that was injured was my pocketbook!
PS: Love Waterford Hills!
Nice to see the shout-out to Waterford Hills. My dad took me there as a kid in the 1960s, good memories. The Vintage Racing weekend in July is fun.
I took my kids (and their kids) to the Teen Defensive Driving program at Mid-Ohio, that’s another one to consider.
I will always read a story about Waterford Hills. My dad raced there in the 70’s and early 80’s. I raced there through the 90’s in addition to instructing at the drivers school, stewarding during the race weekend, etc. Great track. Great place to learn driving skills and how to string together a series of corners. My girls were never interested in racing but they spent a bunch of years helping in timing and scoring and other needed tasks.
I remember running at Waterford back in 73 in my Showroom Stock car. Great little track!
The thing I remember most was going down the stretch on the backside, and looking over and like 30 feet away on the other side of the fence there’s a guy grilling in his backyard.
Thanks Larry ! Another great read. I live just north of Waterford Hills, I may stop by to introduce myself. Appreciate all your articles !
Already a member of the Hagerty Drivers Club.
We are in spot 123!
Ahh, Waterford Hills…did a Skip Barber Racing School session there back in 1993. Nice little track. To your point though, there weren’t as many options when my kids were learning to drive, and I do agree that having them hear another voice than our own, is valuable for sure. I sent my kids to a driving school which was really just a prep for taking their driving tests, which as we all well know are sadly inadequate in terms of preparation for real world situations. I did take them out for snow covered parking lot slide sessions and the local autocross group allowed them each to experience what handling limits were, but that was all that was available then. They both had accidents as I predicted they would. Fortunately, no other vehicles were involved and they were not injured. So, I guess I should consider that a success?
I required my kids to learn to drive a stick, change a tire, change the oil, attend three Porsche Club skills days, and attend three PCA track days as a condition of licensing. It has served them well in the two decades they have been driving.