Teen Driving Clinics

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 it’s 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
  • Driving Position & Attitude
  • Use of Controls and Mirrors
  • The Importance of Vision
  • The Traction Circle – Impact of Road Conditions and Tires
  • Car Dynamics – Weight Transfer and its Effect on Handling

• Cornering Theory
  • Corner Geometry – Turn In, Apex and Turn Exit
  • The Six Zones of a Corner
  • Impact of Road Conditions
  • Under-steer & Over-steer
  • Impact of Vehicle Drive System – FWD, AWD and RWD
    Importance of Being Smooth

• Braking
  • Emergency Braking
  • Braking distance vs. speed / surface conditions
  • Using ABS to Maximum Benefit

• Driving on the Road
  • Courtesy
  • Following Distance
  • The Right Lane
  • Distractions
  • Proactive Driving vs. Reactive Driving
  • Merging Techniques
  • Off Road Excursions – How to Deal With Them Safely
  • Modifying Your Driving to Deal With Driving Conditions

Driving Exercises

• Braking (both dry and wet)
• Slalom – Weight Transfer
• Accident Avoidance – Quick Left or 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.

2010 Schedule and Registration

• Saturday, April 17
• Sunday, June 27
• Saturday, August 21

Registration will be open soon.

Clinics start at 8 a.m. and complete at 4:30 p.m. 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 Driving Clinics are proudly sponsored by: