Recommendations for places for Student drivers to practice in Saint Mary's
- Thread starter zar
- Start date
sunshine98
Active Member
Any of the larger subdivisions that have thru roads, not all cut-de-sacs. Leonards Grant/Clarks Rest, Town Creek, etc. I still can't go into Wildewood and not get lost....
glhs837
Power with Control
Back when mine were learning, we would head south on 235 from Gate 2 about 630am on a Sunday morning. All the way to Ridge, discussing things like bubble of awareness and picking the best crash if one is unavoidable. Running dog/deer/kid drills. Full ABS stops, with and without obstacle avoidance. All of these when there were no other cars in sight, of course.
Then we would come back up 5, taking the roads between back and forth, discussing blind drives and roadside ditches, cornering, vehicle dynamics. Finally taking South Snow Hill around to North Snow Hill. Great place to teach blind corners and the dangers of sand that has drifted/washed across the road.
To the larger topic asked in the OP
Parking lot skills to include parallel parking were done in GMHS on other Sunday AMs. Big plastic trash can make great stand ins for "opposing" cars.
Rule 1 - NEVER STOP TRYING NOT TO CRASH.
Rule 2. - NEVER STOP DRIVING UNTIL THE CRASH IS OVER!!!!!!!
SOOO many crashes happen or are made worse because when shi$ goes south, people just blindly stab the brakes and ride it in. It pays to teach them, safely, exactly how much traction and braking the average car has. Far more than people ever imagine.
If you have base access, the perimeter road is a good practice course. I had Monellino visualize the white lines by the stop sign as the rear of a car. The aim was to stop about a half a car length away. First brake attempt would have landed us in someone's back seat. But that is how you learn about your vehicle and its' capabilities.
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
Wanna ensure those students are really really focused giving their full attention to the road? Plop them right onto an interstate. They'll either fly from the nest, or fall to the forest floor. Did that once, twice, maybe more, with my "student", who was about 14 at the time. First time was a little hair raising coming off the merge ramp onto four lane traffic with my hand close to the steering wheel at first and lots of voice instruction. Then he came into his own and drove about 30 miles before I took back over. Now, prior to this, in the beginning, starting around 10 years old, he was given the opportunity to drive local low speed limit roads, and housing subdivisions to cut his teeth, so to speak, with me in the passenger seat. Have always believed starting them young gets them into the best practice mindset. And gives them something to look forward to later. An added plus, not behaving was a good enough reason not to answer with an affirmative when asked if he could drive. Kept him on his toes. Getting to drive was a huge motivator for being good.
Was the above risky? Very. But so is life in general, and also is letting them drive off in the family car by themselves at 16 years old after being coddled for so long without the benefit of learning very young with a strong responsible no nonsense parent. Kids are very resilient and very adaptable when placed in certain high stress learning situations. They start to understand immediately the huge responsibility from the beginning that driving is not a game, and act accordingly; a mindset which also carries into adulthood.
Pretty sure there are farmers kids around here, or the farmers themselves, that learned how to use farm implements at very young ages that could run circles around city, or non-farm, folk, when it came to such things. In addition to many farms having tag-less cars and/or trucks used only on the farm that kids were allowed to drive; before the advent of gators, 4-wheelers and the like. What say you @TPD? Any good young driving learning, farm use equipment, farm car/truck stories?
Wanna ensure those students are really really focused giving their full attention to the road? Plop them right onto an interstate. They'll either fly from the nest, or fall to the forest floor. Did that once, twice, maybe more, with my "student", who was about 14 at the time. First time was a little hair raising coming off the merge ramp onto four lane traffic with my hand close to the steering wheel at first and lots of voice instruction. Then he came into his own and drove about 30 miles before I took back over. Now, prior to this, in the beginning, starting around 10 years old, he was given the opportunity to drive local low speed limit roads, and housing subdivisions to cut his teeth, so to speak, with me in the passenger seat. Have always believed starting them young gets them into the best practice mindset. And gives them something to look forward to later. An added plus, not behaving was a good enough reason not to answer with an affirmative when asked if he could drive. Kept him on his toes. Getting to drive was a huge motivator for being good.
Was the above risky? Very. But so is life in general, and also is letting them drive off in the family car by themselves at 16 years old after being coddled for so long without the benefit of learning very young with a strong responsible no nonsense parent. Kids are very resilient and very adaptable when placed in certain high stress learning situations. They start to understand immediately the huge responsibility from the beginning that driving is not a game, and act accordingly; a mindset which also carries into adulthood.
Pretty sure there are farmers kids around here, or the farmers themselves, that learned how to use farm implements at very young ages that could run circles around city, or non-farm, folk, when it came to such things. In addition to many farms having tag-less cars and/or trucks used only on the farm that kids were allowed to drive; before the advent of gators, 4-wheelers and the like. What say you @TPD? Any good young driving learning, farm use equipment, farm car/truck stories?
Best place I took the boys was on Saturday chores.
Down 235, up 5, stop at the transfer station, up to and stop at the Leonardtown Library, back down 5, stop at Weis, then down 5 and across Park Hall Road to home.
A little bit of everything they needed to learn every Sat.
Sunday's were spent in a school parking lot, learning to park. Left turn space, right turn space, parallel, TURN SIGNALS.
We used orange cones with brooms stuck out of the tops as other cars.
And I had them drive every where we went.
Down 235, up 5, stop at the transfer station, up to and stop at the Leonardtown Library, back down 5, stop at Weis, then down 5 and across Park Hall Road to home.
A little bit of everything they needed to learn every Sat.
Sunday's were spent in a school parking lot, learning to park. Left turn space, right turn space, parallel, TURN SIGNALS.
We used orange cones with brooms stuck out of the tops as other cars.
And I had them drive every where we went.
TPD
the poor dad
My daughter was riding on the combine with me when she was only a month old. At 4 years old, she was sitting in my lap steering the truck down the farm lane. By 10 years old, she was driving 4 wheelers and cutting the grass on the riding mower. At 12, I was letting her drive the pickup down the county road to the farm, and at about 14 years old, she was driving the truck from Lexington Park to Scotland, following behind me while I was moving tractors & combines. By the time she got her license, we were comfortable with her taking any vehicle we owned and hitting the road.
I was about 8 years old when I started driving tractors. We grew up with dirt bikes & 4 wheelers. Probably by 12 or 13, we were driving trucks on the state highway between farms we leased. When we raised tobacco, all farm kids and their non-farm cousins learned how to drive something by the time they were 10 or 12. I will never forget my younger cousin driving a pickup truck thru the rows of tobacco that had just been cut. It was her 1st time driving anything - 10 to 12 years old. When she turned around to see what was happening behind her, the steering wheel turned in the same direction of her head and she ran over some tobacco. We were all yelling to stop. When she did, all she could do was turn around and call out my father's name - Uncle George! My father never raised his voice, hardly looked up from spearing tobacco. We all had a good laugh. She probably ran to the house crying after that, but that is how we learned. No one ever got hurt on the farm from a new kid learning to drive. It was a right of passage.
Today's parents are doing a disservice to everyone by coddling their kids and letting them keep their noses buried in their phones and not making them at least cut the grass. I'm always amazed at the kids who can't find their way home from WalMart or Chipotle because they don't pay attention to their surroundings. When my kid was 2 years old, as we were in the truck going to the farm or to the bank or to daycare, I was always reading road signs to her, telling her what they meant. I pointed out landmarks and businesses to her so she always knew where we were going or when we were almost home. At 8 or 10, I was teaching her how to read a map as we would drive to out-of-state places, a lost art these days because of dumb phones. Oh the good ole days!
3CATSAILOR
Well-Known Member
From what Country?
LightRoasted
If I may ...
I have a daughter who is usually smart, but when she cuts the grass on the riding mower, she just has no real sense of what the hell she is doing. When she is "done", there's patches of unmowed grass all over, and when her mother and I try to explain that, there's no trick to it, you just go in passes or circles until you get all of it - she just doesn't grasp it.
OTHER daughter does get it - but she does it in the most inefficient way possible.
No one taught this to me - I just "got it". Mainly from using a push mower and learning I didn't want to BE there all day long.
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
Well, to be fair, men think logically, women think emotionally. Most of the time men/boys don't need much instruction when it comes to such things. This is not a dig against women/girls. Just factual.
Well, to be fair, men think logically, women think emotionally. Most of the time men/boys don't need much instruction when it comes to such things. This is not a dig against women/girls. Just factual.
gemma_rae
Well-Known Member
At about 12 years old and in the Safeway parking lot with my Gramma in Marlow Heights, I said Gramma, one day I'm going to drive your car! Gramma said okay and pulled into a space far out in the parking lot.
"Gramma. What the heck are you doing?!"
"Well, are you gonna drive or what?"
---> Me.
Gramma's car:
"Gramma. What the heck are you doing?!"
"Well, are you gonna drive or what?"
---> Me.
Gramma's car: