Event: Tire Rack Street Survival Driver Training, First-Timer, First-Hand Account

By: Mina Achorn

This summer my father signed me up for a Tire Rack Street Survival course, a teen driving clinic hosted by a collective of car clubs and held on Temple University’s Ambler campus. For the most part, I knew what I was getting into. What I didn’t know when I agreed to do this was that I would have to wake up at 5AM. Like most of American teenagers today, I don’t have a decent sleep schedule. Thankfully, I wasn’t made to suffer alone. My little sister had agreed to accompany us and help take photos. Because I was tired and the third person in the car lacked a license, Dad drove us to the venue.

After arriving on the campus, we checked in, signed waivers, and pulled literally everything that couldn’t fit in the glove box out of my car. After all that was settled, the volunteers and staff offered all the new arrivals some breakfast. I wasn’t expecting so many kids to be there, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn I’d be embarrassing myself in front of over twenty other young adults. At this point, I still didn’t really know what to expect. Down the road past a soccer field, I could see their course set up in a large parking lot. I didn’t understand what the mess of orange cones meant for me and my car. That morning, I was still scared that I would lose control, wipe out, and somehow flip the car, or–god forbid–scratch my paint – I’m very proud of my 2018 Audi A5 painted in the gorgeous shade of Cumulus Blue. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had nothing to worry about. Everyone there was skilled and knew the limits of our cars  well better than we did.

Each of us had an assigned instructor who sat with us in our cars, helped us check our tire pressure before we headed out to the course, verbally guided us through the day’s activities, and offered us encouragement when we needed it. All of us were pushed to test the limits of our cars and step outside our comfort zones. My instructor, John, even helped me better understand the dimensions of my car. At the beginning of the day he noticed that I’d been taking wide turns to avoid curbs I wasn’t going to hit anyway (the whole scratching the paint fear might have fueled that). He set up some cones for me to nudge so that I could see where the front of my car was. That made everything ten times easier.

By the time we finally hit the lot and got down to business, it was sweltering hot. The on-site crew was constantly reminding all of us to keep drinking water. Before approaching a new challenge, we were told to exit our vehicles and meet up for a powwow. During these talks, the head instructor made sure we knew what was expected. This included both the expectations for the course and the safety measures. Only one car could go through the planned challenge at a time and you generally had 4-5 chances to master the skill. Throughout the day, the courses they set up for us grew more technical. We were literally building up our skill set. 

The first limit we would test was our brakes. During the meeting we were instructed to slam on our gas and accelerate until we passed the green cones. Then, we had to slam on our brakes. The goal was to teach us how the ABS system in our cars felt when activated. Most of the students reported that the sudden brake caused a vibrating sensation from the pedal. Not everyone got it right away, though. Quite a few of us were dealing with nerves and would either brake prematurely or slowly. Some students, me included, stopped accelerating prematurely in an effort to have more control over the car. However, by my third try, I had gotten over my nerves and resigned myself to the reality that my tires were just going to take on some wear and tear. They did. Evidently, I introduced myself to my car’s ABS system. 

After the brake exercise was completed, all the drivers and teachers headed to a campus building. There, one of the instructors informed us what we’d be doing that day, asked us some questions about driving, and of course, lectured us on safety. One of the main topics was the safety systems already in our cars and what the reactions would look like in case of a crash. While going through this part of the classroom course, the instructor shared some statistics and had us guess others. The number of crashes caused by teens is incredibly high. The same goes for the number of teens who will eventually get into an accident at least once in their lives. This was shocking and served the purpose of putting some fear back into us students before we returned to our cars. (Author’s note: To put some fear into readers too, just going to drop quickly that tailgating and road rage are extremely stupid and in some cases, extremely lethal. Don’t drive stupid guys.) 

Back out on the test track and after another brief meeting, they had us run through a new course; the skid pad. This was my favorite part. I was able to do doughnuts. Sadly, this is not something I could recreate in a Walmart parking lot because they had a solid ring of cornstarch down on the ground. I don’t have that much cornstarch. They also had two rings of cones, an inner ring and an outer ring. I don’t have cones either. Honestly, I’m so glad they had professionals on-site for this. Two brave dudes stood in the center. One had a flag. He would signal us when to enter the circle and when to exit. This was where we tested our car’s ability to handle oversteer and understeer. At one point, my car freaked out and thought we were crashing. The windows rolled up and the seatbelts tightened. It was crazy, but I had so much fun. What I learned from this exercise was how to stay calm. I also learned that when your car’s wheels gain traction again, the car kind of jolts. When this happens, you need to stay calm and not tug at the wheel. Anyway, my car has got my back and my dad has a few photos of me smiling like a madman.

The next exercise was emergency turns. Again, everything was explained with a meeting. You had to accelerate until you hit the end, make a turn, and brake. Things were pretty simple with this one. Well, things were simple for the left and right lanes. For the left lane, you turned left. For the right, right. There was a third lane where the instructor picked which way you had to turn. John insisted on holding a conversation with me up until the last moment. Then, when I was least expecting it, he would shout out a direction. This was the first time I hit the cones. It would not be the last. Luckily, for both me and my car’s paint, these were soft cones. No cars were hurt during these exercises. I cannot say the same for the cones. The MVP of this whole day were the volunteers who ran around in over 90-degree weather to fix the cones we’d all knocked over. 

The time for another classroom session rolled around after a pleasant lunch and an informative airbag demonstration. After another good reminder of what we stood to lose, we headed out for our final activities. The last two exercises before our mini graduation at the end of the day would be emergency lane changing and weaving between cones. The weaving bit was easy. I got through that between two rain showers. That was nice. While the slick ground presented a challenge, I didn’t have to weave in pouring rain. The students were advised by their teachers to stick close to the cones and build up speed. 

The next event was a little less relaxing. When we held our final meeting of the day, we could tell another storm was just about to hit. Emergency lane changes would be done in what the instructors called “ideal conditions” much to the dismay of my friends and I. Almost as soon as we got back into our cars, the rain started to fall. It was light at first, but as we got more comfortable the conditions got worse. At one point a new friend in a Toyota Camry asked the guy sending us off if we would stop. He told her that conditions would have to be Jurassic Park bad for him to call it quits. With all our hopes of getting out of this dashed, the rest of the students and I gripped our steering wheels and proceeded to learn more than we had from any previous challenge. I forgot I had brakes at one point and slammed into an entire grid of cones. That was fun–more fun than it should have been. John helped me through all of it and I quickly realized the extent of my car’s abilities. I pitied my tires for all the rubber burned by the end of that day.

Adrenaline rush over, the students returned to the campus classroom for the graduation ceremony. I was awarded a certificate of completion. To the parents reading this, my dad says he gets an insurance discount for me because of this certificate, so another reason you should have your kids complete a driving school is because it saves money in the long run. I said goodbye to John, my new friends (who I exchanged numbers with) before we hopped in the car and left for home. My dad drove again, of course, so I could take a much-needed nap in the passenger seat.

This was easily one of my favorite days this summer. I not only learned the capabilities of my car, but the risks posed to both me and other drivers if I don’t know what I’m doing. The core lessons I took from this are as follows… Don’t drive distracted. Keep an even temper and stay calm. Remain vigilant and check your mirrors because even if you know what you’re doing, other people around you might not. Don’t speed; it doesn’t save time; it just endangers lives. And lastly, trust yourself to react how you need to. Once you spend a day in a hands-on instruction setting like this, you’re a better driver for life. Ten out of ten would recommend Tire Rack Street Survival to other teens.

Program Background: Tire Rack has always focused on educating consumers about tires, so educating new drivers in order to help keep the roads safe is a perfect fit. Leaders at Tire Rack saw teen accidents were on the rise and wondered if there must be something Tire Rack could do in order to help change that. From this Tire Rack was inspired to sponsor Tire Rack Street Survival, working hand-in-hand with car clubs and volunteers in order to facilitate driver education for teens around the country.

Links: 

Tire Rack – https://www.tirerack.com

Tire Rack Street Survival – https://www.streetsurvival.org