UnspoilTT

The short review: don't waste your time.

The long review: A few weeks ago, some LA-area folks wrote that they'd like to attend a driving school that was about controlling a car under normal driving conditions, rather than how to drive a race track. A car show on a local public radio station, KPFK, had interviewed the owner of Advanced Driving Dynamics, and later during a pledge drive the school was offered as a pledge premium. I took one. Based on what I had heard on the show (it was described as something like what BMW does in Spartanburg), I suggested that this school might be a great alternative to track-oriented schools. But that was before I actually attended the school. Now that I have, I cannot recommend it very highly. The school was informative and we did some fun things, but much of it was a waste of time for a mature driver.

The course, I learned right away, is actually designed for 15-19 year olds, either people who are about to get a license or who have had a first accident. There's a lot of talk about driving safety, and while I agree with just about everything that was said, this was not something I wanted to pay money to hear. The owner/head instructor argues that speed doesn't kill on the highway, bad driving does, and that rather than punishing people with traffic school, states should require real training modeled something along the lines of what they do in Germany. Cool. Fine.

So we spent time listening to his guy give his op-ed, and then we got in some Toyotas for driving. The activities were fun (well, the how-to-parallel-park bit was something I didn't much appreciate), and they exposed us to some out-of-control skid pad exercises--all of it certainly worth the price of an E ticket at Disneyland, but being exposed to out of control situation isn't the same as learning to control them, and a couple of hours just won't do it, IMHO.

We braked with ABS, without ABS, tried turning with and without ABS, tried to turn without ABS but by modulated the brake.

In the next exercise the car was made to spin by a quick application of the handbrake. Then we went back into a spin and tried to break out of it by quickly turning in and out of the turn.

In the last exercise, we road in reverse into the skip area, induced a 180 turn and then accelerated straight ahead. A lot of fun.

I'm glad I experienced these things. But I feel like I only experienced these situations than really learned how to control them.

This program seeks to do the right thing, but there is still to little seat time to make me feel that it can significantly improve driving skill.

What about for a teenager? Maybe, but I don't think the training is significant enough to send my own 17-year-old.