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Regarding my roll at Bridgehampton and response to Betty Lou

Charles Harman wrote:

>Afterwards, there was a "Novice Parade Lap" where the beginners were taken
>around with an instructor at slow speed for a few laps and shown the track
>for the first time. After that, a Black run group (instructors-very fast)
>went out with students as passengers. This was my first lesson at speed as a
>passenger. 

As an instructor in the BMWCCA Hoosier Chapter, I have to say that I really
disilke this kind of schedule.  There is nothing wrong with letting the
instructors go out on the track at speed first, since some of them need the
time to warm up and get back into the swing of the particular track.  But
whoever is running the school should NOT let students ride with instructors
during the first instructor session.  This is particulary a problem with
novice students.  The last thing we want a novice to think is that he or she
should be trying to match an instructor's speed on the track.  A novice's
first track session should be at low speed with a VERY gradual increase in
speed over the course of the weekend, depending on the abilities of the
particular student.  For the novice group, we also set up cone exercises on
the track to teach trailing throttle oversteer, threshold braking, etc. With
these exercises, you can teach car control in a slide at low speed without
having to run a skidpad as part of the school.  

I agree with the previous comments about most novices wanting to drive too
fast to start out and then getting into trouble when they can't control the
car properly.  Our schools emphasize car control and smoothness first, and
speed second, in the novice group.  Save the late braking, trailbraking, and
full-throttle-at-the-apex for the intermediate and advanced groups.  If a
particular student is picking up the basics very quickly (and this usually
happens with one or two novices each school), we sometimes will move them
into a higher group on the second day.

In the end, the true responsibility for driver school safety is in the hands
of the instructor. The instructor is the only one in the car with the student
and is the only one who can tell 
before its too late if the student needs to back down their speed.  From my
experience, the BMWCCA schools have excellent instructors and the national
CCA office is working on standardizing all local chapter formats, with
standard instructor training.  For the money, you can't beat a local CCA
driver school.  I've had several students who had already been to some of the
"professional" schools who told me that they learned more in our local
school.

As for the "investigation" of driver school incidents,  I agree that whatever
followup needs to be done after an incident should be done by the local
chapter.  After ANY off-track excursion, we black-flag the car and pull both
the instructor and student into the pits for a talk on what happened, what
caused it to happen, how it can be avoided again, etc.  We also have our tech
guy go over the car during the talk session to make sure that nothing
happened to the car in the incident that would make it unsafe to continue to
drive.  

In almost every one of our schools, there are at least a handful of students
(and sometimes instructors) who go off the track.  The students are usually
in the intermediate and advanced groups.  But fortunately, we are blessed
with instructors who pay as much attention to making sure the student doesn't
exceed his or her limit as they do in teaching driving at "speed."  In nine
years, we have never had a "roll" or a personal injury. 

Let's all keep up the good work and not let Charles Harman's unfortunate
incident deter the local CCA chapters from continuing to run some of the best
driver schools in the country.

Regards,
Bob Stommel
Hoosier BMW Car Club
Indianapolis, Indiana
78 320iS
88 M3