Don't let your kids drive...EVER!

Let me start by saying no one was hurt at all. Not even my five day old grandson.

So, last week my son called me and said he was going to be late for work. His wife had wrecked her car. She was on the way to town for the grandsons first doctors appointment. She had dropped two wheels off the road on a causeway. To avoid hitting a guy fishing she snatched it back up on the road. I'm sure Y'all know what happened next.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture.

The car landed upside down in a creek on the other side of the road. Thank the Lord it was low tide and the creek was nothing but mud and there was no traffic. Another hour or two or an on coming car and I would be telling a much sadder story. The car would have been underwater or destroyed. The DIL couldn't get her seat belt loose and ended up fishing a pair of scissors out of her knitting bag to cut the seat belt. The doors also wouldn't open because the entire top of the car was buried in mud. She ended up crawling out of the back window pushing the car seat to the fisherman. As it is, by the time the wrecker fished it out it was drowned with salt water and full of pluff mud. Totaled of course. The grandson apparently slept through the entire thing.

I'm getting too old for all this stress. I think I'm just going to take all their driving privileges away. This is their fourth major wreck in two years.

I think you get them both gift certificates for Skip Barber or Bondurant driving school for Xmas.

Extremely glad no one was hurt..

Supercoupe wrote: I think you get them both gift certificates for Skip Barber or Bondurant driving school for Xmas.

Either that or a family ticket for the bus.

Supercoupe wrote: Extremely glad no one was hurt..

+1

I will say that the first three weren't their fault. Rear ended, Deer, rear ended again. One Nissan Sentra totaled, one Ford escort rebuilt front and back.

The bus pass sounds like a great idea.

we get people fishing off of the bridges and causeways here all the time. I have gotten more than one starred windshield from a lead weight over the years.

I am glad everyone made it through that wreck in one piece. No doubt the soft mud cushioned the blow

When I saw the picture I was hoping it was a joke but wow. Glad everyone is ok.

That was no joke, for sure. We get too many people driving into canals down here. Some jump right out, some are found 10 years later. Ecchh

Ver glad everyone is OK, scary stiff. I get a funny feeling in my stomach every time my wife puts all the kids in the car and starts off down the road. she is a good driver but E36 M3 happens.

I will second the driving school thing.

Supercoupe wrote: I think you get them both gift certificates for Skip Barber or Bondurant driving school for Xmas. Extremely glad no one was hurt..

^^^This. I hope there wasn't a distraction like a cell phone or texting going on that caused a wheel to drop off the road... Real training could help.

Wow- glad to hear everyone's ok. My brother pulled a similar move with our parents van when he was 17, broke his back, totalled the only brand new car my dad had ever owned.

Both of my kids 15 and 17, have been to driving schools. The 17 year old twice; no she didn't flunk.

Driving school = Cheap insurance.

Jack

In reply to Toyman01:

Sorry to hear about the accident, but man, thank God they were not injured! A 5 day old? Wow. My twins are currently going through a very comprehensive driving school to get there licenses. It teaches not only skills, but responsibility, and goes infinitely farther (okay, exponentially farther) than what the state requires. They have a 12 acre parking lot, so they can do some pretty high speed training. Most of the driving is on an autocross type course. Then there's 100 hours of driving with us and 12 hours on-road with an instructor. So far it's working. I'm still going to hide a GPS system with data logging capabilities in the car when they start driving alone. Trust? no such thing when you're trying to keep your teenage boys alive. This winter they will go back for winter driving training. I've also had them autocrossing a sprint kart for two years, and they've had off-road karts since they were 6 years old. They've been driving my crew cab dually on my property for 3 years. Nothing is fullproof, but I'm doing what I can.

Yikes! Glad to hear they're all right.

A local reporter (and track day enthusiast) did a story on teen driving skills just last week: http://www.nbc11news.com/localnews/headlines/11_News_Special_Report_Seat_Time_106969473.html

I don't have kids. But if I did, they'd spend time on the track before they got on the road in order to develop the correct instincts and hopefully keep them safe. Safer, anyhow.

Dood, glad she and the new grandkid are OK. Between this and the daughter's misadventure you will soon have more gray than me.

Nope, not possible.

And I don't think that's going to buff out. I think we need to build them a car: I suggest we drop an Iron Duke with an automatic in a Roadmaster. None of the HP, all of the steel.

there is no need for any sort of a driving school- just teach the kids to respect the vehicle and learn to control it at an early age. some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my dad's lap at about the age of 4 and steering the car when we were going somewhere. if i wasn't doing that, i was riding shotgun and watching what he did. if mom was in the front seat, then i was standing in the back seat looking over his shoulder.

this was the late 70's, and cops would just wave at us when they passed by.. it was a different time, and i suppose all of those things would be considered child abuse in the age of the dvd player built into the back of the head rests so the kiddies can have Spongebob with them everywhere they go to avoid having to actually look out the windows at the passing scenery..

my grandpa taught me how to control a slide when we took my dad's Buick nailhead powered '30 Model A street rod out into a hay field and just started whipping it around when i was 12. he also let me drive him around town in his 74 Olds Delta 88 4 door during bad snowstorms when i was like 14 years old. this was the late 80's, and the cop would just shake his head when he saw us..

i've been legally driving for just over 20 years now and have exactly zero accidents and only two offroad excursions- one in a friends Citation because he was drunk and riding shotgun and decided to screw around with the radio and bumped my arm and hte steering wheel in the process, which sent us into a ditch which we were able to drive out of and once on an icy day in my 86 GMC 4X4 when a snow plow went by the opposite direction and literally blew me off the road. i just kept it moving and drove back up onto the road and continued on my way.

Keith wrote: I don't have kids. But if I did, they'd spend time on the track before they got on the road in order to develop the correct instincts and hopefully keep them safe. Safer, anyhow.

That's what I did. They both started driving at about 10, and were allowed as many laps on the track as they wanted.

The oldest wasn't that interested, but the younger one would do 100 laps at a time, and could corner on 2 wheels at 12.

Although it seems obvious to me (and to you guys) that driving school is a good idea, Tommy has actually encountered some kids whose parents won't let them ride with him because he's been to a few driving schools. They think it means he's a speed freak who's going to drive like a lunatic and kill their young ones.

It's okay with me, because I have a policy against letting my kids drive the children of idiots.

Margie

Yes, they would be idiots on other issues too.

Marjorie Suddard wrote: It's okay with me, because I have a policy against letting my kids drive the children of idiots. Margie

As you should.

When each of my kids came home from the hospital, each a day or two old, I took them to the Lethal Locost and politely informed them "this is the car you will never drive." That way it won't be a fight when they get older - it'll be merely review.

Marjorie Suddard wrote: Although it seems obvious to me (and to you guys) that driving school is a good idea, Tommy has actually encountered some kids whose parents won't let them ride with him because he's been to a few driving schools. They think it means he's a speed freak who's going to drive like a lunatic and kill their young ones.

Try as you might, such people will never understand. Even though my daughter never caught the car bug, some of her friends' parents wouldn't let them come with her on a trip with me because I (48yrs old, driving since age 15, ex-SCCA Improved Touring driver, many schools/autocrosses/track days) was going to drive instead of her (at the time, 17yr old, driving for half a year, hyperventilated and couldn't participate in the one school I convinced her to attend).

Marjorie Suddard wrote: It's okay with me, because I have a policy against letting my kids drive the children of idiots. Margie

I wish I'd thought of that! I tried to remind them that if driver training didn't help, then there'd be no reason to have semi-truck drivers attend schools for that, but it all fell on deaf ears.

Studies by the Andy Pilgrim Foundation show that MOST teenage boys that take performance driving courses will show what they've learned to their friends ON THE STREET.

This is a much better way to teach them at first.

http://www.andypilgrimfoundation.org/

That's part of teaching them - not only how to drive well, but that going fast on the street is merely an exercise in how stupid you're willing to get and that nobody can truly go fast on the street. There's a difference between a short-lived performance driving course and instilling a proper attitude.

I'd never heard of Andy Pilgrim, but this quote on his website means we do certainly share some beliefs. I think we're both saying the same thing:

Andy Pilgrim said: The thing most parents don’t realize is that they are their child’s driving instructor for the whole first 15 years that their child’s life. Research is showing that over 70% of new drivers will drive exactly like their parents in the sense of distractions. If the parents drive distracted then 70% of the children will drive this way too. In most cases, if the parent eats while driving the child eats while driving when they start to drive. If the parent texts while driving, the child texts while driving when they start to drive. If the parent doesn’t wear a seat belt, the child doesn’t want to wear a seat belt, on and on.

If you show your kids it's cool to drive quickly on the track and that the street is no place for serious speed, they'll behave the same way. In our town, street racing dropped dramatically once organized track days started up, and some of the worst offenders now reply "If you think you're fast, come out to the track and you'll get your butt kicked by a Miata" instead of racing on the street. That's the attitude you want.

Hmm, something makes me think I should know more about this Andy guy. Check out the image up on the screen behind him.