Student drivers learn to negotiate slippery conditions

Fifteen-year-old Lisa Miller is learning how to drive. She'll get her license in June, but before then, she has to log 40 supervised hours on the road.

Miller's nerves are a little shaky because some the first driving she'll ever do will be on snowy highways and icy side streets this winter.

"You really have to learn to trust yourself, and every bit of knowledge helps," she said.

The Miller Performance Training Center on Tuesday provided a "Skid Car" for a couple dozen Hillcrest High students to simulate changes in tire traction while driving on dry roads.

"The car has what some people call training wheels, but they're not really training wheels, that raise and lower the front and back of the car to create different traction levels," said Dan McKeever, director at the Miller facility, which built the Skid Car's operating system. He said the purpose is to help drivers understand where their traction limits are without having to suffer the consequences.

"They need to recognize the dangers of driving too fast to begin with," he said.

High schoolers were taught how to counteract slippage on the road, "which is something we can't teach them in a regular drivers ed class and on the range," said Hillcrest driver education instructor Gary Daniels.

"It made me realize that the trick my mom uses when she is sliding on the ice really works," Miller said. The "eye-opening experience" helped her to know what to expect when she starts driving on the roads later this month.

Loss of traction contributes to hundreds of crashes during winter months and being prepared to handle such situations could alleviate some of the trouble, according to Utah Highway Patrol trooper Mary Kaye Lucas. The two major causes are following too close and driving too fast for conditions, she added.

"Each type of surface is hazardous, and your car will not function the same in all of them," she said. Every little bit of practice and experience driving that teens can get, Lucas said, "makes them so much more of an educated driver."

The experience was part of the UHP's push for zero fatalities, specifically focused on teen drivers, the main targets of the Don't Drive Stupid campaign.

According to the UHP, a teen driver crashes every 35 minutes in Utah. New drivers cause three times as many wrecks as the average driver, putting them in the highest risk category for potential accidents.