[QUOTE]Originally posted by waybrig
[B]Carmen,

I think it would be helpful to hear from John Wiseman here.

 

Brad, I didn't take any offense to your comments, but we will respectfully agree to disagree. I don't think (IMHO) a teenager can distinguish between "weeeeeeeeeeee I get to go fast on the the track" and "oh, I'm on the road now with some Rustang next to me revving his engine so I should be a responsible teen now". I'm sorry, but I don't think that works. Getting track time to learn the limits of the car? I can buy into that. Of course, Mid-Ohio is like $1,000 for one of those classes. Already looked into it. I also recognize that kids are all different. One of my sons friends down the street just graduated and he JUST GOT his license. He really had no interest in driving. Maybe it's just my kid. Ask Hartopguy. He had to do $1,000 worth of repairs to his car for one of his bone-head moves.

 

I agree that every situation is different and every person is different. From my own experience I used to drive way too fast on public roads because I felt there wasn't really any alternative. This resulted in me totaling a car and sending myself to the hospital. Fortunately nobody else was hurt.

After that I forced myself to look into alternatives and discovered go-kart racing and auto-cross. I opted for kart racing at that time and it was a great outlet for my aggressive driving nature. I now see that auto-cross would have been even better. Less expensive, less time required, etc... I'm just very lucky I was given a second chance to discover other outlets for fast driving. If I had discovered them earlier I'm sure I would have saved a car and saved putting a lot of other people at risk.