Tire Rack Street Survival

by Andy Bell

photos by Aaron & Simi Ritch, Mike Reddy

Over the last couple years the SCCA National office has been promoting a new teen driving program at the National convention. Unlike most of our driving events, this one is not about speed. It’s about the safety of our young drivers out on the road. The program is known as the Tire Rack Street Survival program. The importance of the program means so much to so many people that it is being shared across many automotive clubs including BMW, SCCA and several others in the near future. This year OVR was able to get involved in the program and hosted two classes over the course of a weekend in mid July.

Why did we get involved?

What possessed me to pursue hosting this program? Well, I grew up in a rural part of Clark County Ohio and shortly after getting my drivers license I began to race around the back country roads with friends my age. This practice by my friends and I led to at least 4 totaled cars and one fatality. Fortunately, none of the cars were mine, but I personally witnessed 2 of the crashes and was first on the scene of the fatal one. Sadly even these events did not curtail my need for speed and I did not learn about the SCCA until I had left college and was started working in Columbus. Needless to say, I learned a lot of my car control skills in a way that could have been fatal if I had not been extremely fortunate and lucky.

In addition to my own experience, here are many teen driving deaths reported on the news. Some are alcohol related, but many are simply teens that are distracted by in the in car antics of their friends or driving at excessive speeds. Many times they simply do not have the experience to make the correct driving judgments when things start going wrong. Today’s student driving classes do not provide this type of training to their students. Street Survival was designed to help give young drivers a taste of that experience in a safe, controlled environment. This is more than just a car event. This is a service to our community.

Pulling it together

Hosting the program for the first time can get stressful for the organizer. In this case everything came together right before the event. OSU generously donated the use of their Ackerman lot for the program. We needed a water source which was a problem until the Columbus Fire department stepped up to send a pumper truck out. Autobody Specialists gave me airbags to demonstrate and UPS provided a semi truck to use for blind spot training. The Tire Rack Street Survival program even provided instructor shirts and materials for the class. The training materials for the instructors arrived just a week prior to the event and I did not have a chance to pass them out until Saturday morning of the event! I do want to give a huge thank you to all of my instructors who came out. They all did a great job with the kids especially since we were learning on the fly too!

The event

Saturday morning started out rough when all of the nearby 315 exits in both directions were blocked for repaving over night. Several groggy, sleepy parents, students and instructors were less than pleased with ODOTS decision to block off every exit to OSU! At least that turned out to be our roughest part of the day. The instructors went to work with the kids going over their cars from front to back and checking all their tire pressures. We did a quick introduction meeting and immediately got the kids out onto course to do some straight line braking exercises. We introduced Barney at that point. Yes, “that” Barney the dinosaur stuffed animal. We used him as a stop cone to judge how well the kids were doing. It also loosened up the mood because everyone would laugh when Barney got pulverized when someone did not stop in time.

From there we broke up into groups. One set of students went to the skid pad, one to classroom, and one to additional braking exercises. All of the instructors found things that would work for their session. In particular Tonya’s "screaming mother" routine really shook up some students when she "thought" she saw something running out in front of the cars. Once they realized the ruse they would start chuckling about it.

On the skid pad instructors were using every trick in the book to make cars push, oversteer, slide etc to get the kids to react. As the classroom instructor with a view of what was going on, I was amazed that everyone didn’t get dizzy from the pad!

Working lunch!

Once we had rotated the groups through it was time for lunch. The instructor groups compared notes and chatted with each other and the kids. Channel 4 showed up and gave us a nice segment on the news over the weekend as well.

When the UPS truck showed up, we took a bunch of instructor cars and parked around the truck in a simulation of rush hour traffic. We had the student try to pick out how many cars they could see. Most could only see 1 or 2. There were about 6 cars parked around the truck in all the blind spots! Most were not even that close. Even the driver looked a little shook when he climbed out of the cab after taking a look!

Flying Barney

From there we did the airbag demonstration in coordination with the fire department guys. The idea was to show the explosive force of the airbags so that you don’t put your feet on the dashboard or your hands right over the airbag on the steering wheel. Once again Barney was our volunteer and took a ride on the airbag! I have to admit I was impressed when Barney cleared the light pole at OSU from the force of the explosion!

Stepping it up in the afternoon

In the afternoon we used the pumper truck to wet down the skid pad and introduced emergency lane change exercises. One again the kids got many runs and the instructors had figured out where each student needed additional work. Once the pumper ran dry we gathered together and built a small driving course to put the elements together. On the evaluations this was universally the top exercise the students liked.

We received many compliments over the weekend. Most of the parents assumed we were a professional travelling crew that puts on theses schools. They were shocked when we told them that we were all local volunteers and that this was our first time putting on the class! A few members of the BMW club came to shag cones and take notes as well. They were very impressed and we compared notes throughout the day to figure out how to make the program run smoothly when they do their class this fall. We really enjoyed seeing the students progress as well. You could really see them learning about tire grip, situational awareness and car control. The progress the students made in a single day was incredible.

Thanks

I want to thank all of my instructors and helpers who came out. Aaron and Simi Ritch, Orion Fairman, Sue Rupp, Craig Butt, Paul Weikel, Mark and Joyce Gleckler, Dave and Dianne Packard, Mike and Tonya Smith, Jeff Robinson and Craig Wollenslegel. If we have prevented or reduced the severity of even one accident, it has been worth it. You guys were the real heroes of the weekend!

2008, August