Teen Advanced Driving Clinics
(Click here for a printable pdf version)
Overview
The Teen Driving Clinic, presented by the Glacier Lakes Quattro Club, is the perfect place for the teen driver to have fun and improve your driving skills at the same time. The driving clinics, held at Dakota County Technical College, are designed to help you improve your ability to control a vehicle in both normal and emergency situations.
The all-day school is a
combination of classroom and driving exercises. You have a personal driving
instructor who will coach you throughout the day as you participate in exercises
to practice techniques including safe braking, accident avoidance, driving on
slippery roads and reacting to over or under-steering a vehicle. Each student
driver has an instructor in the car at all times to advise, praise and coach.
The exercises are great fun and tough at the same time. For example, it is a challenge to blast down the course and be expected to brake hard enough and at the right time in order to stop in a space no larger than the average garage. Or, imagine driving through the slalom course, weaving through cones feeling your car swaying as the weight shifts side to side.
Perhaps the most
challenging and the most fun is the accident avoidance exercise (we adults who
have done it call it the lane toss). You have to do what is totally the opposite
of what you might expect -- stop in front of a green light -- but not before
changing lanes and braking. The instructors running this exercise are truly
diabolical in their efforts to trick you into stopping in the wrong lane. It is
debatable about who has the most fun, the instructors or the drivers. The
outcome is a powerful lesson in how to react to the unexpected.
One young driver told her mother on the way
home that if her friend, who was in a fatal
accident recently, had
attended the clinic, she would be alive today. While this is a very dramatic
assessment of the value of the clinics, it makes the point that our teen drivers
do not get the same type of coaching and experience from commercial driver
education schools, whose purpose is to teach someone the rules of the road and
get them use to driving a car. Once they get the basics from the commercial
schools, young drivers need to attend the Glacier Lakes clinic to experience the
nuances of keeping a car under control, even when the unexpected happens.
Participants must be between 15 and 19 years of age and present a valid driver's license or permit. A parent must accompany drivers under 18. Participants must provide their own vehicle, which must be in good running order and pass a technical inspection, which will include tires, brakes, fluids, lights, and other essentials. Unfortunately we can not accommodate trucks, SUVs or minivans.
Objectives:
 | To improve overall awareness of driving position and its effect on ability to control a vehicle. |
| To educate participants on the physics that affect car handling, and how to use the physics to their advantage. |
| To significantly improve participants ability to control a vehicle in all weather conditions, both in normal driving and in emergency situations. |
Format:
| Multiple classroom sessions alternating with various exercises on the track. |
| In car instruction and critique while participating in the exercises. |
Theory Topics:
| Driving Basics
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| Cornering Theory
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| Braking
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| Driving on the Road
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Driving Exercises:
| Threshold Braking |
| Slalom Weight Transfer |
| Accident Avoidance Quick Left of Right Lane Change |
| Cornering Left and Right |
| Forced Over-steer On Wet Skid-pad |
| Forced Under-steer On Wet Skid-pad |
| Quick Lane Change and Emergency Braking on Wet Skid-pad |
| Forced Off Road Excursion |
| Combination of Exercises as Final Test |
Our Teen Driving Clinic was featured on Minnesota Public Radio. The program and an interactive set-up can be found on the MPR website at: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/04/10/teendrivers/
Participant Requirements:
|
Participants must be between 15 and 19 years of age. |
|
Participants must be in possession of a valid Driver's License or Permit. |
|
At least one parent must accompany a minor (under 18) to this event. |
|
Participants must provide their own vehicle which must be in good running order and pass a technical inspection which will include tires, brakes, fluids, lights, etc. |
|
Unfortunately we can not accommodate trucks, SUVs, or minivans at this event. |
|
Parents are encouraged to register as helpers for the event. |
2008 Schedule and Registration
| Sunday, April 6 Registration is closed |
| Saturday, May 3 Registration is closed |
| Saturday, June 14 Registration is closed |
| Sunday, July 27 Registration is closed. |
| Sunday, September 28 Driver Registration Helper Registration |
| Sunday, October 26 Driver Registration Helper Registration |
Clinics start at 8:00AM and complete at 4:30PM. Lunch and refreshments are included for participants and helpers. Parents are encouraged to register as helpers for the event. Registration fee for drivers is only $149. However, a $50 rebate will be sent to you after successful completion of the clinic from our wonderful local Audi Dealers, Carousel Audi and Maplewood Audi. This rebate is available on a per student, one per year basis. That brings your total cost to just $99!! Helpers are free.
Venue
Dakota County Technical College
1300 145th Street E.(Co.Rd.42)
Rosemount, MN 55068-2999
Glacier
Lakes Quattro Club Teen Clinics are proudly sponsored by:
