Driver Education

AS memorable adolescent experiences go, viewing one of the California Highway Patrol's "Red Asphalt" films ranks right up there with your first kiss or having your parents come home early to find a kegger in full swing. For generations, the lights have dimmed, the screen has flickered, and like young Alex in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," the state's youngest drivers have been compelled to watch this strange and enduring rite of passage.

Mazda's Rev It Up event in Irvine this weekend might be the best opportunity to embrace your inner Andretti -- without risking flashing lights in your rear-view mirror. The two-day event is free for those who just want to kick the tires of new-model Mazdas. But to lure those with a need for speed, the company is also staging an inexpensive performance-driving school and competition. Three skills clinics will be taught before it's time to face the track.

The last thing the Bammers wanted was litigation. They believed in forgiveness, they said, and had faith that it was God's job, not the courts', to balance the scales. But when the parents of the drunk driver who killed their daughter failed to express remorse, they got an attorney and sued. "We prayed a lot about it," Nancy Bammer said of the family's decision to sue the parents of one of their daughter's friends. "It really wasn't for economics; there was a need to get the word out."

Like most of her classmates at Laguna Hills High School, Kayte Greenfelder took driver's education at 16. She sat through the grainy old death-on-the-asphalt movies, memorized the handouts on rights-of-way and traffic signals, even went to the Department of Motor Vehicles and got a learner's permit. Somehow, though, she never got around to actually getting her license.

It was the final day of "Horror Week" in Gary Gunstream's health and safety class at Arroyo High School. For four days, the El Monte teacher had shown his teenage students a series of driver's education films, most intended to shock them into taking seriously the bloody consequences of unsafe driving habits.

Invite as many teenagers as you can, give them the keys to a couple of German sport sedans and encourage them to whip around at neck-snapping speeds. About 170 young drivers were more than glad to oblige Saturday, when they gathered for a safe-driving class in the parking lot of Wild Rivers water park in Irvine.

There's not a driver out there who wouldn't benefit from a bit of professional car handling instruction -- and few who can devote the time and money necessary to get some. Japanese automaker Mazda, pushing its "Zoom Zoom" theme for all it's worth, aims to change that with a local, one-day program that offers a sampling of performance driving instruction for a mere $39.

In this classroom of students, 55-year-old Renee Palmer is a relative youngster. The assistant principal of a Hollywood elementary school believes wholeheartedly in continuing education. So it feels natural, she said, to take a course to improve her driving skills. "I can no longer be in denial, the fact that I am aging," said Palmer, looking up from a workbook at a recent Santa Monica class for senior drivers. "The response time is not as quick as it was when you're younger."

Drunk drivers and safety defects are the issues the federal government and independent safety advocates almost always target when it comes to demanding better highway safety. That emphasis, though, all but ignores the much greater problem of drivers in perfectly safe cars who are perfectly sober but generally incompetent behind the wheel.

Major-accident investigators see the worst of what happens when drivers make mistakes. More than 3,400 people are killed in traffic accidents each year in California, and more than 250,000 are injured. Fatal and injury accidents have declined this decade--in part because of safer cars and better medical care--but room for improvement remains. Many accidents could be prevented if motorists had better skills, say California Highway Patrol officers, who are often the first at the scene.