Street Survival Driving School

Just wanted to post an endorsement for the Tire Rack Street Survival driving clinic designed for young drivers (16-21). It is sponsored by Tire Rack, BMW CCA, and SCCA. It only costs $60 and has very limited class size. The clinics are taught around the country by BMW CCA members from the local chapter. At the clinic my daughter attended there were only 18 students, which were divided into 3 groups of 6 students.

My daughter attended the Fresno, CA clinic, in my MCS, and she was amazed at how fun it was and how much she learned. They do four different driving exercises. 1) wet skip pad circle to experience sliding and slid control. The instructor would pull the hand brake to get the car to slid and observe how the student corrected the slid. 2) slalom course for car control in order to feel the limits of the car, and 3) straight line braking to get the feel of the ABS and the required braking distances, and 4) emergency lane change to learn to steer around an incident. They also have some classroom discussions but the clinic is geared towards hands-on driving experience.

The students get hours of driving time and always have an instructor with them for guidance. The instructors were great. They knew when a student needed more practice and when the student could be pushed a little harder to be challenged. The instructors were also very encouraging.

As a parent it was great fun to watch all of the students improve at each exercise. I highly suggest the Street Survival clinic for all young drivers. We had to drive 3 hours each way to the clinic and we agreed that it was well worth the drive and cost.

More information is available at: streetsurvival.org