i've never been able to afford a performance driving school but i grew up racing friends on closed roads (mostly dirt) and with very mismatched vehicles. we used to sneak into a closed construction training site where by day students learned to operate graders and earthmovers so all day students built gravel roads over 20 acres for practice. the roads always changed so there was always a different circuit to run and it was all dirt and fine gravel with some intermediate asphalt sections. we used to sneak in and go drifting, do battle with any and every vehicle, i once ran a dead even race against an 86 honda crx with an '82 ford f150 pickup. we ran toyota 4wd trucks, chevy s10's hell i even brought my ford ranger out to play a few times, scrappile built ford tempo's nissan sentras, delta 88's or whatever people cpuld get ahold of to come out and session at night. there was nothing to hit or wreck on, except each other. we'd run 2 cars head to head, we never got busted, ever, cause it was a tight scene and only about 8 or 10 uf us were in on it. we ran hard, at night, on varying and far from perfect terrain, sometimes in rain. we drifted, traded paint, got dings, scratches, slid, skid, oversteer, pushed through corners, and drove with the intensity like we were running fia WRC. we learned a lot about control and the line where it goes away and we did it all, undercover, and never had a single injury or major damage to a vehicle. those days were tight, we were kids, we ewre all motorsports freaks who grew up racing no less than 4 different classes of r/c cars in the state points series both on road and offroad, we never missed a grand prix event when the series stopped in the city and we learned how to drive hard from trial and error. since those days i've had a confidence in being able to push cars to the edge if the situation arose and all that practice drifting saved my life a few times when i was confronted with red light runners and wrong way drivers while batttling traffic to commute. i can train a lobotomized monkey to get a d/l in the US, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more than just getting a license to be a safe driver. i'd feel a lot safer if everyone had to perform a few simple tests before getting a licvense and being released onto the roads such as a high speed emergency braking test both straight and on a curve wet and dry, some kind of skid/oversteer/spin recovery training, and possibly a few mild laps around something like an scca solo2 cone course, nothing extremely extreme, but enough to demonstrate control of the vehicle beyond simply pointing it where you want to go. i know it makes testing tougher buti believe it should be done. as a pilot i learned how to recover aircraft from unusual attitudes, stalls, aborted takeoffs andf landings, power losses, etc, and that is some of the first things you learn when you learn to fly. driving should be similar, and everyone should have at least a few hours of professional instruction in dealing with road hazards. this will not eliminate the problems on the road of the 16 year old landrocket pilots running into everything possible, but would save a lot of lives and reduce highway death statistics. i've seen several people have their first hard braking experience when it really counted and had no idea wht to do when they locked up because although they were taught to pump and modulate the brakes (or rely on abs) they were never taught in the car and when panic set in that they were gonna crunch the ass end of the vehicle in front, they just put the pedal to the floor, stood on it, and slid into the vehicle. I've gotten to do a lot of extreme driving in some not so performance oriented vehicles also, as i have been through courses on emergency vehicle code 3 driving (driving fire trucks, ambulances, tankers, pumpers) and have been properly trained how to do some really scary **** safely (or as safely as is possible)in a 26000 pound plus airbrake turbo diesel vehicle carrying firefighters and 500 gallons of sloshing water.
anyways, i guess what i wanted to say in a long drawn out rambling way is this:
practice. learn to drive hard safely so you know what to expect and do when it comes down to it. learn to drift and control it in a safe environment. progress slowly, know your limits and the vehicle's limits. learn to do stuff like j turns in an empty wet parking lot at low speed, learn how your vehicle handles outside it's normal range of operations. it will pay off one day when you find yourself sliding backwards towards an intersection after the old lady pulling out in front of you clipped your bumper in the rain or when you hit a lost fender or road debris on the highway and swap ends in heavy traffic(happened to me at dark in rush hour on i-95 in an astrovan while changing lanes)
sorryu this got so ong i just started ranting and raving and had to spill all this out
Peace ouT
. ill post some pictures of the car when it gets back from the mechanics thisafternoon. its getting new cv joints and a radiator.
