DRIVING 101: WHITE KNUCKLES, SWEATY PALMS
Instructors stay cool during road classes as nervous teenagers learn to navigate area's risky highways
Jeffry Scott - Staff
Friday, October 20, 2000

Metro Atlanta's streets this year have been more deadly for high schoolers than the Columbine massacre. Even in a culture that accepts auto fatalities as inevitable, this has gotten our attention; the governor, for example, wants to raise the driving age. In this occasional series, we'll look at some of the realities of driving in Atlanta.

Kelly Cherry's nerves are steely under conditions perfect for a nervous breakdown.

On the average rush-hour afternoon, of course, that could be said of about half the drivers sweating the crazed interstates of Atlanta.

But Cherry is a driving instructor. The driver is a 15-year-old. And the left front wheel of their 1998 Pontiac Grand Am has just veered off the road.

They are in the left lane of I-575, headed north, doing about 65 mph, and the wheel is spitting gravel as the car lurches toward the grass median.

In an eyeblink, Cherry's left arm snakes out, he grabs the wheel and gently but firmly steers the car back into the lane.

"Some of these kids have scared their parents to death by almost hitting mailboxes," he says dryly, nodding at student driver Jamie Smith, who is surprisingly cool herself.

"So they tend to overcorrect left."

Cherry, an instructor with Marietta/ Cobb Driver's Education Program, is doing what, strictly speaking, is impossible: Teaching a teenager to drive safely in Atlanta during rush hour, when side streets are snarled, expressways are bumper-to-bumper, speed is excessive and patience is in short supply.

"Can you drive safely in Atlanta?" says Cherry, 52, responding to a question from a reporter in the back seat. "Short of being in a tank? I don't know."

Still, it is worth the effort, says the instructor. Cars driven by metro Atlanta teenagers have claimed the lives of at least 22 teens this year, prompting calls for required driver's education classes and raising the driving age.

"The more experience they get," says Cherry, "the less likely it is they'll have a wreck."

After a fatal car accident involving a teenage driver "there's always increase in interest in kids taking driving lessons," says Sharon Maloney, coordinator of the Marietta/Cobb Driver's Education Program, which graduated about 2,200 student drivers last year.

Drivers' ed isn't required to get a license, but it can help cut insurance rates.

By Georgia law, insurance companies are required to give as much as a 10 percent discount on car insurance to graduates of driver's ed. To qualify, the class must have 30 hours of classroom training and six hours of driving.

Some question whether six hours of road time is enough.

"I think 18 hours is more like it," says Barry Schrenk, president of Taggart's Driving School, which has offered private driving lessons in Atlanta since 1957. "But most parents aren't willing to pay for those extra hours. Ninety percent of parents enroll their kids in driver's education for the sole reason that it reduces their insurance rates."

For the course with six hours of road time, Marietta/Cobb charges $220. Taggart's charges $379. One difference is that Taggart's fleet of cars has dual brakes, steering wheels and accelerators, which Schrenk says "give instructors more control of the situation."

At Cobb, instructors have a passenger's-side brake only. "I try not to use it," says Cherry, as he and Jamie pull out of the parking lot of Marietta Middle School.

"But sometimes you have to. One of the things students have the most difficulty with is judging speed and distance, especially in turns."

Jamie moves easily through downtown Marietta, asking questions ("Do I have to stop because a school bus is behind me?") and feeling --- though not showing --- apprehension as she approaches the freeway.

"I've driven on the expressway one time before," she says, checking her rear-view mirrors, keeping both hands firmly on the wheel, at the classic "10-2" position. "It was really scary. Two 18-wheelers came beside me, like a sandwich."

Unlike the typical Atlantan navigating the daily snarl, Jamie's car has a large "Student Driver" sign. Maybe such a sign will elicit courtesy --- or at least additional caution. Maybe not.

"You pull into the intersection at Johnson Ferry Road and Riverside Drive . . . and watch them get out of the way," fellow driving instructor Richard Edgeworth said before Jamie left the parking lot.

"That does not, however, apply to Barrett Parkway," he added, chuckling. "That's a free-kill zone."

Jamie merges uneventfully onto I-575 North into traffic not yet at its rush-hour peak. "All right, Jamie," Cherry says, "your speed limit is 65 miles an hour, but that doesn't mean you have to go 65 miles an hour."

Cherry says that some of his students have "formed bad habits" by the time they get to him, by learning from parents out there now, flying by at 85 mph, dodging haphazardly from lane to lane without signaling.

"They tell their kids to keep up with the flow of traffic," he says. "But I teach them to drive the speed limit."

It's only when Jamie tries to pass a pickup truck pulling a trailer that things get harrowing and Cherry has to grab the wheel. As cars continue to zoom past, the instructor wonders aloud: "I haven't figured out yet why the speed limit is 55 on I-285," he says. "If the police pulled over everybody going 60 miles an hour, there wouldn't be anybody left on the road."

At the Waleska Highway junction, Jamie exits the expressway smoothly, not hitting the brakes until she's on the exit ramp, then making a left onto the two-lane.

"I teach the kids to use their brakes on the expressway as little as possible," Cherry says. "Try to control your speed by taking your foot off the accelerator."

As we head toward Waleska, Jamie says the impressions she's gotten in her six months of practice driving with her parents aren't always encouraging.

"The other day I saw a guy driving, and he had his laptop computer, he was on the phone, and reading the newspaper," she says.

In Canton, Jamie zooms up too fast on a Camaro turning left. Cherry uses his brake to stop the car.

"That was a little close for comfort," he says.

"I know," Jamie says. "This car doesn't slow down as easily as the one we drove last time."

Returning to school without incident, Jamie has completed the class. In April she turns 16, and her mom and dad have promised she can get a license and a car if she maintains a 3.5 grade-point average.

"I'm a good student," she says. "Don't worry."

She says she'll drive for the usual reasons: to go to friends, the mall, concerts. She probably won't drive to school because there are too few parking spaces: "Juniors and seniors get them."

Her vehicle of choice would be a 1996 pink Mustang convertible. What she'll get, says her mother, Wendy Smith, won't be quite that flashy.

"My husband wants to buy her a Ford F-150 pickup truck," she says. "It sits higher, and if she bumps into something, he thinks she'll be safer."

Jamie scrunches up her face at the thought of that. "He's right," she says. But she has a spiffier, Toyota model on her mind. "Maybe I could get a nice SUV, like a 4Runner."

CLASSES: GOING PRIVATE
Before the passage of the Quality Basic Education Act in 1985, Georgia funded driver's education classes in 187 school systems.
Today, without state funding, only 57 school systems have driver's ed programs. In places where the program has been dropped, teens may resort to private courses, which are often more expensive.
It's hard to know what impact driver's ed has on the safety of Georgia streets, in part because there aren't good records on how many teens take the classes. The state doesn't keep them, the Governor's Office of Highway Safety says.
Here are several Web sites for more information on driver's education and driving safety.
The American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety: www.aaafts.org.
Safe Young Drivers: www.safeyoungdrivers.com.
Taggart's Driving School, which offers classes in Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties: www.taggartsdrivingschool.com.
--- Jeffry Scott