Article and photos by Simon Hill and Steven Bochenek
Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them.
Beating the Roadblocks, by Simon Hill
Following our frightening near-miss with the parked cars and subsequent tailgating trauma, Ian and I had pulled over to ‘take a moment’ out of the car. Sitting in the grass, he confided to me that one of the things that stressed him about driving was the feeling that he wasn’t fully in control of the car, and that a moment’s inattention might cause it to run amok with damaging or tragic results.
 Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
I may bear some blame for this, having viewed too many scare-tactic videos with Ian, clips graphically illustrating the importance of seatbelts and responsible driving. But it was still a bit of a revelation: after all, one of the things I like about driving compared to say, horseback riding, is the feeling of being fully in control. It was time to impart this same confidence to Ian, and to do that I grabbed a pile of cardboard boxes and drove us to a large, lightly used parking lot that was once part of Vancouver’s Molson Indy track.
I set up two courses, a tight slalom and an emergency maneuver gate. We started on the slalom, slowly at first and then working up to what Ian reckoned was a pretty good clip. Then I took over for a couple of runs and showed him just how fast you could attack the slalom, and let him have a couple more goes. Even over the course of a few runs his confidence with the steering grew significantly – he become less tentative and more decisive. And we were both having an absolute blast.
The emergency maneuver gate consisted of an approach lane that splits into two short lanes, blocked at the ends. We’d approach at about 40 km/h, and at the last moment I’d point either left or right, and Ian would have to swerve quickly into the appropriate lane and brake hard before hitting the box at the end. Again, his decisiveness with the steering and braking visibly increased over only a few runs, building important muscle memory while also providing a huge boost to my confidence as co-driver.
Unfortunately we still had trouble with manual-transmission hill starts, which was impeding our ability to progress past flat residential roads, and my efforts to get Ian over this particular hump had resulted only in some rather jerky launches and an expensive broken subframe mount.
Expert Help
 Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
With Ian’s progress stalled and the family car temporarily out of commission, it seemed a perfect time to call in the experts. As luck would have it, the Mercedes-Benz Academy for New Drivers just opened in Vancouver this spring – the first of several planned Canadian locations – and I was able to book a couple of lessons with them to not only aid Ian’s progress, but also let me see how the experts approach teaching.
Our instructor, Jim Buerk, proved to be cheerful, friendly, and remarkably unflappable. I suppose his experience as a flight instructor likely helps in this regard — once you’ve been exposed to student mistakes in the air, anything that happens on solid ground would seem mild by comparison.
Jim was also very thorough: in a single 15-minute introduction he reviewed everything Ian and I had managed to cover in our first two or three lessons – exterior checks, oil, tires, lights, seat positioning, hand position and motion when steering (hint: the shuffle is only for the Brits – here we cross over), and mirror adjustment (the Mercedes-Benz Academy for New Drivers recommends the SAE approach, which allows much softer shoulder checks, or what Jim calls “shoulder glimpses.” See this helpful article about mirrors and blind spots.
The Academy uses a “coaching” model rather than an “instructional” model, and on the road this meant Jim asked questions rather than giving instructions. “What’s the speed limit on this road?” “What colour is the car behind you?” “Do you see any hazards here?”
Score one for this dad, because while I used a bit of a mixed instructional/coaching style, Ian told Jim I was actually pretty good at asking questions myself. But one immediate difference I noticed is that while I tended to offer my coaching as Ian drove, Jim would frequently get Ian to pull over – itself an important skill that involves signaling, visual checks, steering control and braking control – and would have Ian perform a self-evaluation once stopped. “How do you feel about that last intersection?” he’d ask.
 Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
“I think I did good visual checks,” Ian might respond, “but I braked too late, and went a little wide when I pulled out.”
“I think those are good observations,” Jim would say, pulling out an iPad to help illustrate a point. “Let’s clean it up. What would you like to do?”
Jim also used games to help coach. Want to teach better forward scanning? Make a game of who can call out upcoming signs earlier. Want to work on smoothness? Pretend you’re holding a big bowl of sour milk and don’t want to spill it. (“Whoops!” said Jim after a rather abrupt acceleration, “I think we just lost some milk!” To which Ian responded “Really? I think the bowl was already empty from that last stop!”)
Ian’s driving skills blossomed under Jim’s expert tutelage, but it must be admitted that the automatic transmission in the Mercedes-Benz Academy car helped. “It’s definitely easier and more relaxing,” Ian said of the automatic, “so I felt like I was able to concentrate more on what was going on around me and drive better.” Indeed we finally made the drive to the Music Academy that almost ended in disaster previously, and we didn’t take the side road either, but drove down busy Burrard Street. In the parking lot there, Jim demonstrated another of the tricks the Mercedes-Benz Academy for New Drivers uses: the breakdown of complicated tasks.
  Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
He had Ian park the car in a marked spot, then back up into the spot behind us. Then he had Ian repeat the exercise, this time backing up into the spot beside the one behind us, which was up against a curb. “Notice what you just did?” he asked Ian. “You just parallel parked.”
“What is this sorcery?!” laughed Ian.
Dollars and Sense
 Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
Here’s a number for you: $864.52. That’s how much it costs to stitch a mid-’90s BMW back together if age, worn rubber bushings and a beginner driver conspire to rip its rear subframe mount apart. On the other hand it’s only $350 for a three-pack of lessons (or $550 for a five-pack) from a reputable driving school like the Mercedes-Benz Academy. It’s worth considering when you factor in the reduced wear on your own car when those early, rough-edged drives are done in a school vehicle. And most schools offer manual transmission training too, though few likely allow the students to tool around in a manual-equipped SLK roadster like the Mercedes-Benz Academy for New Drivers does.
Certainly I came away from my experience sold on professional training. As Jim observed, I’ve got a better understanding of driving than many motorists thanks to some advanced training and track time, and I’m apparently even quite passable as a coach, but I’d still missed several tricks (for instance, I know how to position myself when reversing, but hadn’t communicated it to Ian, and he was doing it all wrong, making it hard to stay on course).
Even little tricks like breaking down complicated tasks — it’s easy to forget. In the end, that’s the technique I used to teach Ian how to hill start: I stopped the car on a slight incline in a parking lot, set the parking brake and told him I wanted him to work on a clutch-friction-point exercise, relating it to something he knows: “It’s like finding the right fret on your guitar,” I said, “you want to train your muscles until they just go there.” So with first gear engaged we rapidly clutched and declutched a dozen times or more, barely touching the friction point each time, just enough to make the car twitch. Then we held that early friction point for a couple of seconds before declutching. Then, while holding the friction point I asked him “Now, while holding that, can you release the park brake and drive off?” Turns out he could. And we were off. “You realize you just did a hill start, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Ian, “but I saw what you did there – you used Jim’s sorcery.”
Final score: Ian says he’s glad to be learning to drive standard, and he gives me a grade of 75 percent for my coaching compared to the professionals. “That’s okay though,” he explains, “it’s a compliment.” As for his grade, well, that’ll have to await the road test in a few months.
Revisions and revisions, by Steven Bochenek
After reading Simon’s contribution, I intend to implement the questioning method right away, and will try not to ask questions like “Why the hell did you do that?”
Simon’s piece also clearly outlines the wisdom of choosing a government-approved program. Teaching, as a vocation, gets a lot of abuse in the media but it’s not easy. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you can show others how it’s done.
 The Teen Driving Chronicles, Part 3. Click image to enlarge |
My daughter J has learned well, no thanks to me and my lack of questioning. Her confidence in traffic is solid without being cocky. She maintains calm and anticipates boneheadedness well. However, exams are coming up at school and she’s put the last of the online studies needed to complete the Young Drivers of Canada course on hold temporarily. Although she has done some and they purportedly include little morality-play type films that clumsily deliver messages and make viewers feel awkward – like watching Stephen Harper shake hands with royalty. “They didn’t blow the budget on union talent.”
You can see what she means. Scroll and play the last video this page – it’s inspiring.
What youth wouldn’t want to join these groovy cats as they learn to parallel park and signal? One assumes the nervous high five at the end was done in one take.
Aaanywaaay, I’m pleased to report that Young Drivers teach better than they produce video.
(Random interlude: The Ontario government videos are genius! Play this for just for 20 seconds: the music soundtrack is too catchy for someone with ADD who grew up playing the same loop by these guys. J has always loved much of the same music as me but she’s still learning to drive despite the myriad distractions on the road and online.)
Until exams are over, she’ll continue to practice driving to school and on weekends. This entry was written during the Victoria Day weekend. She drove most of the way back to town from the family chalet 150 km north. My wife had to take over for 10 minutes on the busy 400-Series highway.
How the graduated system works in Ontario.
For now, J has a G1 license. Ostensibly it’s a learner’s permit. To get it you must have a pulse and be semi-literate – at least enough to pass the test mentioned in the first Teen Driving Chronicles entry.
To maintain your G1, you must have zero alcohol in the blood when driving, ensure all passengers are wearing a seatbelt, not drive between midnight and 5 AM, stay off 400-Series highways and high-speed expressways, and drive with a booze-free passenger who’s had a full license for at least four years.
After you’ve had a G1 for a year, you can take your license road test. Or, if you’ve passed a recognized course like Young Drivers of Canada, you can take the test after just eight months. J falls into the latter category, having taken the test very soon after her 16th birthday last September. These are the schools the Ontario Government recognizes. Inexplicably, my personal favourite, the Lucky Driving School in East York, didn’t make the cut.
If you pass your G1, you have another year to gain experience, providing you continue obeying several of the aforementioned restrictions, before taking the G2. Pass that and you get your G, the general driver’s license. Unless you’re under 19, the other restrictions are lifted.
 The Teen Driving Chronicles, Part 3. Click image to enlarge |
What’s next!
Originally, the intent of this third part of the story was to give J and Ian a voice. It would show how the wisdom’s been passed down from one generation to the next. “With the rules freshly beaten into you, what bad habits do you notice other drivers doing that they shouldn’t?” I asked, expecting a treatise.
“They don’t stop at stop signs. And shouldn’t enter an intersection to turn left once the light’s gone amber.” That would have left over 550 words to fill.
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J will take her G1 road test in June and we expect her to pass. If she does, it means that come September she can drive herself to school in our second car, a beat up Kia Rio that smells like the morning after Mardi Gras. That is, provided she isn’t drunk or going to school between midnight and 5 AM.
First she simply needs to complete the online exercises that are part of the curriculum with the accompanying video magic.
