Teaching Street Survival

"Trunk Impaired 318" (matteocscaptura) 11/10/2014 at 15:59 • Filed to: None

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Saturday I had the pleasure of teaching at one of Tire Racks Street Survival courses throughout the country. For those of you who don't know what Street Survival is, it's basically a low level car control school for young drivers, usually teenagers around 16 or 17. All of the instructors are volunteers and are typically BMWCCA Members who have experience with HPDEs or Autocross, most are well into their 40s or 50s so at 21 I was a bit of an oddball. Despite being a BMWCCA member some of the instructors had their doubts as to whether or not I was capable of teaching properly. Fortunately, there were a number of instructors from my SCCA region who were more than happy to talk about the "kid" who came 2nd overall in PAX for the season and showed "impressive" car control skills.

Now I'm going to throw my $0.02 about the BMWCCA in here so feel free to skip this mini rant: They're more like what you would expect from the PCA (Porsche Club of America) than the BMWCCA. When I think of the BMWCCA I think of fairly laid back guys who like to race and the PCA as old guys who take it too seriously and tend to be not that talented. It's almost the exact opposite, while the BMWCCA guys are talented drivers, they all tend to take everything way too seriously whereas the PCA guys are there to have fun and some are pretty impressive.

Anyways, back to Street Survival. This particular session took place in my backyard (also known as Watkins Glen International) specifically the parking lots within the track. I arrived at 7:30 and by 8:00 we had a "Wake and Brake" exercise where the instructors got into any students car and basically had them accelerate flat out and then slam on the brakes so as they got a feel for their cars. The students then went to go have some classroom time while the instructors went to go see which student they were assigned to. As I looked on the list I saw that my student had a name that I knew very well. The reason I knew the name was because my student just happened to be the son of the track president of Watkins Glen, right. No pressure then.

Once the students had finished their classroom learning they met the instructors outside and got right into the exercises. I was pleased to see that my student had been allowed to bring his mother's car, an E60 530i, as I'm very well acclimated to the handling characteristics of BMWs. I was also lucky that my student was also a budding Jalop as he was very into cars and really wanted to be there, as opposed to many students who are forced to be there by their parents. Our first exercise was the skidpad. Sadly we weren't able to get any runs in without electronic aids so there was no oversteer but we were able to get a lot of understeer which he was able to cope with very well. Next up we headed to the slalom where I had him trying to talk on his cell phone or text to demonstrate how much it impaired his abilities, needless to say some brave cones left their mark on his front bumper.

Our next exercise was a brake and turn where the students accelerated at full throttle than had to slam on the brakes and turn before a wall of cones, but the turn was covered in corn meal to reduce their grip. On only his second try my student nailed it, keen on helping him further his skills I turned of his electronic aids prior to the next run where he proceeded to understeer right into the cone wall. He then had what was probably my favorite moment of the entire day, he asked if it was possible to do the exercise without the driver aids. He genuinely wanted to learn how to control the car by itself without the help of electronic aids so he wouldn't be as tempted to rely solely on driver aids. Following the brake and turn was a lane change exercise which he did exceptionally well on.

Then we broke for a short lunch and were treated with a rather pleasant surprise. The instructors were allowed to take their own cars out onto the track with their students riding along. We eagerly hopped into my little AW11 MR2 and blasted around the track for a few laps. I expected that being the son of the track president that this was probably the least exciting ride he'd ever had around the track but he seemed to enjoy himself and often inquired about my lines and the dynamics of my car. The track did take its toll on the old girl however, as somewhere on our last lap I lost a lug nut off of the right rear. I still haven't figured out how or where exactly it happened but fortunately I had a spare and was able to throw it on right after.

The afternoon sessions were a bit more boring save for two exercises. The first of which was called "Fox and Hound" two student lined up next to each other with one about a car length ahead of the other and essentially drag raced until the car ahead slammed on their brakes. The goal was for the trailing car to react quickly enough to avoid having their front bumper cross the plane of the other car's rear bumper. Again my student did very well and even tried to see how close he could follow and still react quickly enough to avoid a would be accident. Finally we had our combined exercise which was basically a mini autocross. After about 3 solid runs I again turned off the driver aids which seemed to cause my student a bit of trouble, racking up a kill count of at least 10 cones. On the last run though it finally clicked for him, namely coming out of a hairpin turn that also happened to be wet he lost the back end pretty badly but listened to me to keep his foot in it a little and apply a touch of correction and he was able to control his slide for a good 30 feet and came out of it very well. After that last run he was the proud owner of what might be the biggest smile to come across a 17 year olds face. I may have inadvertently created a new autocrosser.

All in all teaching the Street Survival course was a wonderful experience, it feels great to know that you have given the skills to a young driver that just might save their lives. I highly recommend having your children take this course (if you have them) as well as instructing if you have the ability.

SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman > Trunk Impaired 318 11/10/2014 at 16:02

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I did this 3 months ago!

http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/teaching-teens…

Trunk Impaired 318 > SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman 11/10/2014 at 16:04

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You at least had the presence of mind to take pictures! And your big rig showed up! (Ours was a no show)

BKRM3 > Trunk Impaired 318 11/10/2014 at 16:12

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I also instructed one of these back in August! TRSS is such a fantastic program, so glad to see other people on here involved!

http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/tire-rack-stre…

SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman > Trunk Impaired 318 11/10/2014 at 16:16

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Did you take the online training? You know you're not supposed to let them do any exercise with any of the driving aids off, right?

aside from the official reason being that we assume real word condition for the car as delivered, the unofficial reason is our (BMWCCA) insurance policy.

As a BMWCCA member, I have to ask you to not do that in the future, no mmatter how helpful and insightful it is for the student.

Ps: if your event coordinator OKed, he should be reminded of his responsibility in this specific matter

Trunk Impaired 318 > SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman 11/10/2014 at 16:24

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I did do the online training as well as going over the in car instruction book in the morning. Our coordinator told us that we could take the aids off to show them the differences (I actually questioned him on it since it was in the book NOT to do that which we had just went over but almost everyone there acknowledged that they usually took the driver aids off at specific points) Traction control was also the only thing we turned off, stability control and ABS were always left on.

shop-teacher > Trunk Impaired 318 11/10/2014 at 17:04

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Very cool! I didn't know bout this program.