Taught at Street Survival today

My view is that there are always teens (mostly males) who think they are The Greatest and will try stuff no matter what you do. I can only hope that the skills I give them help them to not crash into something as hard as they normally would when they do their stunt driving. These guys are easy to spot, and I generally cycle them through my skid recovery section pretty quickly because they want to turn it into a drifting game. That's not what I'm there for.

I tell them that if they try these things on their own to impress people, they WILL crash into the nearest solid object. And then I tell them about the multiple times it happened to me as I learned the hard way.

More surprising, though, is the number of kids who have no clue how to even begin to hoon around in a car. We initiate skids using the hand brake. I can't tell you how many of them had no idea I was even tugging on the thing while they were doing their exercises; they just thought the car suddenly broke loose. Which, frankly, is perfect.

Basil Exposition wrote: My nephew went to something similar after wrecking a few cars. Didn't do any good. Turns out he was a pot head. So, he went to a slightly different course after that-- one with 12 steps. So it could be worse...

Sounds like my little brother. 23 year old high school dropout pothead who's worked one day in his life (at a low-pressure $20 an hour job and hated it so much he quit immediately), has failed the license test ten times, and drove my parents' car illegally all the time until he plowed it into an onramp wall hard enough to do $5k or so of body and mechanical damage. He was so high on god knows what that he didn't realize he'd crashed, drove the car home, and had no memory of how or where the accident happened.

I'm not sure if even this program would do him any good...

In reply to Max_Archer:

Sorry to hear that. In my nephew's case, he seems to have turned himself around. But it took about $25,000 in rehab costs to do it (fronted by my parents, since my brother couldn't afford it). My brother just dropped him off at rehab and told him he wasn't getting out until he was clean and could stay clean. My nephew wasn't 18, yet, so my brother could control the situation.

Now my nephew is in college and eventually wants to be a rehab counselor.

Sounds like there is little you can do with your brother at this point since he is an "adult." He'll have to decide to get better on his own. I wish you and your family the best.

glueguy wrote: The thing that I don't like about Street Survival is that they use the SCCA waiver, which for minors requires both parents to sign. We're a second marriage where the father is highly uncooperative and won't sign. It keeps us out of SCCA autocrosses and street survival. WKA, NASCAR and others are fine with one guardian signature.

I sent DD#2 and her boyfriend to one last year. Boyfriend's mother is not part of his life in any way. We just had his father's signature, and that was no problem at all for us.

I made both daughters go through the program. DD#1 had been driving and autocrossing for a couple years already, so it was of less dramatic usefulness. But it was still a worthwhile bargain at $65. DD#2 and her boyfriend both improved and gained confidence.

I have volunteered and instructed. It's very worthwhile and rewarding. I would gladly instruct again, but this year both schools conflicted with autocrosses I was stewarding.