how can i learn to drive
 

many adults that ride with me say i am a very good driver for a teenager, but that is the simple stuff, how can i learn to drive my car in a safe environment? My main issue is that the PCA has an age requirement of 18 years.

The SCCA and BMWCCA allow 16 years old with parents signing a minor waiver. That is what we did for my daughter to autocross, and now she regularly beats up on all the guys.

Go do SCCA or BMWCCA auto-x before you head to a track. You need the experience of pushing and losing it in as safe of an environment as you can find.

Good luck.

thank you very much

My first car I drove (and later owned) was a '76 Pinto Wagon.

Easy to learn in, no chance of speeding! A man trans was all I ever drove until my wife bought the Touareg. Windshield time is what you need now. Just regular traffic, with the typical surprises. Don't swerve for cats. You'll get your chance.

Put the cell phone down. Try doing an autocross with 1 hand on the wheel and the other by your ear.

Autoweek recently had an article about teen driving and accidents. Distracted driving is the #1 killer of teenage drivers, ahead of drunk driving. You'll have all kinds of things thrown at you in the upcoming years as you gain driving experience. It will be hard to concur them while you're multitasking. You only get 1 mistake and the game's over. There is no reset button in the game of life.

And it may not be a mistake that you make. I'm alive today because 25 yrs ago I had the ability to react to a drunk driver heading right at me (2 car lengths apart at 55mph!). I didn't have a lot of time to react. He still struck the right side of my car, but it wasn't head on. My girlfriend and I would not have survived a head on. It's very dangerous out there. Things happen in split seconds and you need split seconds to react.

Based on your posts, you seem like a very mature young man. Please take my post to heart.

thank you all, every bit of advice means alot. Luckily they drill the no cell phones thing into us these days besides, when your at the wheel of a Porsche is the phone really that important, the point of these cars is to escape, but yes thats something i learned very early with my driving instructor for drivers ed. Being able to drive for yourself is one thing, but predicting and avoiding the idiots of the world is what you really need to worry about. Replys much appreciated.

Take a defensive driving class, my dad made my sister and I take one when we started driving. It is well worth the money. A good one will teach you have to control and recover from a skid, make a high speed swerve/lane change, too be aware of your blind spots, to have an emergency/exit lane, to never get boxed in, etc, etc.

Don't over react. Small movements and light braking does a lot at speed. My wife's biggest problem backing down the driveway is simply over correction.

Observe conditions. Drive accordingly.

Use turn signals. Don't tailgate. No phone. Full stops (for now anyway).

All my kids go through the Street Survival driving school within a year of getting their drivers permits. One day long course that they loved doing, $75 is cheap admission for learning your car's limits:

http://www.tirerack.com/features/motorsports/street_survival.jsp

anticipate...Anticipate....ANTICIPATE....!!!

Always try to judge what can happen around you.
I had a motorcycle for 12 years. You learn to anticipate or you die.

^ This, Jake

and following recommended/legal speed limits have paid off for me for the last 20 years of driving. Never been in an accident or fried an engine/gearbox. Never actually had a flat tire. (touching wood now believe me)

I did however had to anticipate other freaks (unconscious street-racers?) to collide with me many times

Kids today learn mostly from their parents who in turn likely learned from their high school PE teacher (or worse). What kids need is professional driving instruction.

Street survival schools are barely a start in the right direction.

Find a track day organizer that allows under 18 yr old drivers (a few were mentioned above) and do a few track days with an instructor in the car. You'll learn how to do everything better (steer, brake, and accelerate) which will translate into being a much better driver on the street.

I'll give you a tip. A good driver mostly does so with his eyes. His/her hands and feets simply follow the band leader so to speak.

Lucky for you this is the YouTube era and XBox/Sim racing era. Go onto YouTube and search for autocross at all your local stadiums. Get in front of a desktop with a mouse (this doesn't work as well on a laptop) and pause the video at every gate/cone/corner. Learn the number of braking points. Count them in your head. Learn to look ahead of where the car is currently at that moment, just like a downhill skier who is looking left but may actually be physically in the process of turning right at that moment. This develops an intuition of what a 'perfectlap' feels like, just like a batter who knows exactly when he's hit the ball out of the park the second contact is made. The mechanics of shifting, braking, throttle and steering is learned with actual seat time, a very long process that can take a year or more to reach just the first phase that separates you from the average driver who has never turned a steering more than 90 degrees. But there's a ton of time in between events that you could use to your benefit by "co-piloting" all of those youTube videos or watching the replays on those sim racing game license tests, the ones where the computer shows you the exact line to take.

once you show up to the actual event this will all go out the window at first because you're fixated on the cockpit action. But the more comfortable you get the more you can put the emphasis back on the eyes, to the point where you aren't even paying attention to what's going on inside the car anymore. But the sharper your "eye game" the quicker the transition will be. People with poor eye game get themselves into positions where their hands and feet have to do a lot of correcting which eats away at their momentum and speed.

yes perfectlap, it is a blessing to have GranTurismo, lucky me i have had severall hours behind the virtual wheel before in real life, and yes some of it actually does cross over. (having a sim wheel with pedals and all that) It will not be the same as real life anytime soon, but being able to run a clean lap in the game with a good time and all the assists off is a good feat. Ive always been amazed by the GT Academy TV series.

Be aware of your thoughts as most people are seeing in their mind's eye instead of what's actually in front of them- they're on auto- pilot. So focus on the task at hand- driving.
Look further ahead then normal- most people look about a car length or so ahead. The further ahead you look, the more time you have to react. In racing, simply 'raising the eyes' will make your imputs smoother and smooth is fast- and is what makes a rain- driver, such.

NO DEEP THINKING

RAISE THE EYES

I know you've heard it many times but one of the most important things you can do is increase your following distances. It 'gives' you time to react and the scenery's better.

NEVER TAILGATE

You'll look at those sim racing games very differently once you've had proper driving instruction vs. the way you viewed them before having it. It's not really the game play but more so the visual cues that you didn't pick up on before.

And I don't think they help the way one would think. For instance a driver like Jann Mardenborough who went from GT Academy to "F2", or one step away from Formula One, in an astoudning blink of an eye was simply going to be fast the moment he got into the car even if he'd never picked up a game console. That was simply the lure to get a quick driver into an actual car for the first time. The game will not teach you drive, because driving is about execution after you've been told exactly what to do --which can only be proven in the car. When a driver's senses are being flooded and distracted with the things that a game can not recreate, many look ordinary very quickly.

Actually I think I spent more time sitting their watching the computer's replay of how the lap was supposed to be driven than actually playing the game. But that's partly due to my not having one of those $1k "rigs" and becoming bored quickly with the Logitech wheel and pedals which are nothing like real life.

haha i don't believe being good in game means you can be good in real life, but its helps you know how to hit an apex. Not how to execute such of course. I do find them beneficial, and at least a safe and affordable way to enjoy motoring on tracks most of us will likely never get to drive on.

but the best thing of all imho is to go karting. It's the most involved, the most seat time and something you can do as often as you like if the budget permits. Learning to drive with actual cars is the expensive way to learn the mechanics of minimizing errors.

+1. Not only does it give you more time to react, it gives you more cushion with the bozo behind you to stop.