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By Benjamin Hunting
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October 18, 2011
MINI is following in the footsteps of corporate parent BMW and creating its own teen driving school program designed to help impart younger drivers with the skills that can help them stay safe on modern highways. The MINI initiative is being undertaken in partnership with Miles Ahead, which offers its own driving classes to teenagers, and which is headed by Indy alumnus Stephan Gregoire.
The classes will initially be offered at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and will be taught by a bevy of former racing drivers, including Alex Lloyd, Dan Clarke and Stefan Wilson. Although the instructors come from the world of motorsports, the skills that will be taught at the schools are oriented towards the type of real-world scenarios that are encountered on a daily basis by teenage drivers.
Statistically, drivers under the age of 20 are involved in a significant number of automobile accidents, with almost all teenagers being implicated in a crash during their first three years of driving. Although traditionally these elevated accident rates have been blamed on the impulsive and on occasion careless behavior of young people behind the wheel, both BMW and MINI are of the opinion that the inexperience of teenage drivers is more often the culprit.
Simply put, the basic driver education provided to teenagers prior to them being awarded a driver's license is at best rudimentary, and most often covers the rules of the road at the expense of teaching actual driving technique. This leaves many teenagers completely unprepared to deal with emergency situations, such as maintaining car control under hard braking, dealing with dangerous weather conditions or learning how to devote their full attention to the task of driving. The MINI / Miles Ahead partnership schools will teach all of the above skills over the course of a four and a half hour session, with teenagers piloting MINI Cooper Hardtops on a closed course under the watchful eye of the expert instructors.
While the BMW teenage driving school program, which is organized in partnership with Tire Rack, travels around the country in order offer a mobile classroom for interested teenagers and parents, so far it appears as though the MINI program will be centered exclusively at Indy Motor Speedway. The cost of the program is just under $400, with group rates available in order to bring the overall investment in safety down for organizations interested in putting together package deals for teenagers.