Top tips from a race car driver
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Expert Timothy Smith uses a race car driver as a teaching method for student drivers, by using the skills of a race car driver as important concepts for teen drivers.
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Both teens and parents can learn a lot from what keep professional drivers alive at high speed. The first is that drivers look way down the track. And the reason is they're going at high speed. They need to anticipate what's coming up and react correctly. And you can do the same thing with your teen. Increase the distance down the road that they look so they can react to that situation better. Use their eyes better. What you'll find is they make fewer steering corrections, they'll also widen their peripheral vision, and they're going to react much more quickly and appropriately to what comes to them in driving situations. Another tip we can learn from professional racers is look where you want to go, not at what you want to avoid. In racing lingo, this is called target fixation. So I'll give you an example. You're into a turn. You start to lose traction, and you're heading toward the guard rail. Now racers know that if you look at that guard rail you're more likely to steer into it. So teach your teen, where their eyes move, their hands and the steering follows. So look where you want to go, not at what you want to avoid. One of the other things that you can observe with professional racers is how they brake. They go into and approach a turn at high speed. But they get all their braking done before they actually turn the tires. Your teen needs to do the same thing too. Don't ask your tires to turn and brake at the same time. Scrub off all that speed. So coast into the turn, accelerate out of the turn just like racers do. so if you incorporate some of these tricks that professional racers do at high speed, your teen will be much safer on the road at the lower speeds that we all drive at.
Expert Timothy Smith uses a race car driver as a teaching method for student drivers, by using the skills of a race car driver as important concepts for teen drivers.
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Timothy SmithAuthor & Teen Driving Expert
Timothy Smith is a healthcare executive living in the Chicago area with his wife and three children. He got involved with teen driving several years ago when a number of teenagers were killed in multiple crashes near his home, virtually all due to driver error. His search for information to help his teens avoid car crashes yielded little of value, so he became a certified driving instructor, got trained and licensed to race cars, took defensive driving courses and ended up writing Crashproof Your Kids: Make Your Teen A Safer, Smarter Driver. He is also Chairman of Aegis Mobility, a software company which has developed technology to manage and reduce cell phone use while driving.
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