Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Require Driving School? Yes or No?

[Rick Lindsay (rolindsay]

Hey Steve.  

As you know, I now live in south Texas - but I used to live back up in America. 
 :-P  Standard procedure then was to go to an open mall parking lot when the 
first snow came, and practice recovery from oversteer and understeer.  And 
that's exactly what I did with both my kids when they learned to drive.  Step 
one was to have them do a panic stop from 5mph.  And as you know, even at 5mph, 
it will jar your fillings loose!  I then reminded them that the speed limit was 
12 times that violent!  We then worked on car control leading up to and 
including skid recovery.  My kids got the kind of driving school you recommend. 
 They also got great marks when they went to 'driver's ed'.

rick


--- On Thu, 2/12/09, Steve Cook <stevec [at] cheatcodes.com> wrote:

> From: Steve Cook <stevec [at] cheatcodes.com>
> Subject: [Ferrari] Require Driving School?  Yes or No?
> To: "rolindsay" <rolindsay [at] yahoo.com>
> Cc: "The FerrariList" <ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com>
> Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 2:52 PM
> Here's a rhetorical question I thought of after my first
> _unintentional_
> power oversteer in the 355.
> 
>  
> 
> Yesterday afternoon, midway through a left hand turn, I put
> on a bit too
> much power and the backend broke loose. I caught it easily
> and corrected
> without a problem (even with a grin on my face). But
> that's because I've
> gone through numerous Driving Schools, auto-crossed for
> many years and
> did a couple SCCA open-wheel races. 
> 
>  
> 
> I thought, gee, I hope that doesn't happen to my wife
> if she's midway
> through a corner, she would have lost it and spun.  It
> doesn't take much
> to get the back end loose without traction control.
> 
>  
> 
> That's where my question came from - what about all the
> inexperienced
> drivers buying super/high-performance vehicles with little
> or no
> experience driving them - (like pro-footballers in the UK
> ;).  Cars are
> getting more and more powerful, and there's only so
> much a computer can
> do to control your traction at 100+mph.
> 
>  
> 
> So now, the question: Should Ferrari _REQUIRE_ new buyers
> to take high
> performance driving lessons before selling them a supercar?
> 
>  
> 
> I think yes, unless the buyer can show necessary skills,
> they should
> require buyers to take performance driving lessons.
> Although they would
> legally need to say it's not responsible for giving
> them
> over-confidence...
> 
>  
> 
> Discuss...
> 
> -steve
> 
>  
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> To unsubscribe or modify your subscription options, please
> visit:
> http://lists.ferrarilist.com/mailman/options/ferrari/rolindsay%40yahoo.com
> 
> Sponsored by BooyahMedia.com 
> and F1 Headlines
> http://www.F1Headlines.com/