If you’ve been operating a motor vehicle for more than 10, 20 or even 50 years, do you think you could pass an on-road driving exam typically given to teenage students?
I wondered this while driving in the back seat of a student driver’s car as my finacee’s 16-year-old daughter took her on-road test last week. She did so under the vigilant eyes of Stu Summers, owner of Excel Driving Instruction, Inc. in Valparaiso, who just happened to give the same driving test to my son nearly 20 years ago.
Summers, whose driving school has been in operation since 1999, has given thousands of driving tests to young drivers.
During the test, which she passed, I wondered if I could also pass it without making too many critical mistakes.
I invited the mother of one of Summers’ students to take the driving skills test. It would be just for fun, not affecting her driver’s license status in any way.
Robyn Walsworth, the mother of Emily Walsworth, agreed to take the test without doing any last-minute review of a BMV manual. Watch a video and view more photos at www.post-trib.com/opinion.
“You’re being a good sport,” Summers told Walsworth, who received her driver’s license in 1989.
Summers instructed her to get inside his student driver car, a 2016 Toyota Camry, start it up, adjust the seat and mirrors, and he would be right there. He does this for all students for the same reason.
“Jerry, don’t buckle up when you get in the car,” Summers told me.
In the car, he asked Walsworth, “Are you ready to go?”
“Sure,” she replied.
He told her to stop in front of a bicycle rack in his parking lot.
“There’s a critical interior check you need to make that you haven’t done yet,” he told her. “What is it?”
Walsworth looked around at her dashboard, checked her mirrors and seatbelt, and looked back at Summers.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said.
A few seconds passed before she noticed Summers wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.
“It’s a $25 fine, you know,” he told her. “Who pays it? You do.”
Walsworth then immediately asked me if my seatbelt was fastened. Click.
Summers noticed that Walsworth waited to pull out until an aggressive driver passed.
“When in doubt, don’t turn out,” Summers said, echoing one of his trademark rhymes to students.
Summers told Walsworth to veer into the left lane, then into the right, watching to make sure she looked into her mirrors and used her turn signals.
“What’s the speed limit here?” he asked her.
“Thirty,” she replied.
“What’s your speed?” he asked.
“Thirty-one,” she said.
“Watch your speed,” he said. “If I have to tell you twice more, you’ll fail the test.”
Summers asked her to identify an upcoming five-sided traffic sign. She correctly said “school crossing.” He reminded her to check her rear-view mirror every time she touched her brake pedal. He gently scolded her for not stopping at a white line before a stop sign, for a pedestrian crossing.
Each minor violation costs student drivers one point. Ten points fails them.
“If you make the same mistake three times, I’ll fail you,” Summers told her. “If you break a big rule, like blowing a stop sign or passing a school bus with its arm extended, I fail you. Actually I don’t fail you. You fail yourself.”
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Summers gives all students his standard lecture on the importance of buckling up.
“You might be able to break the law on occasion, but you can’t break the laws of physics,” Summers tells students.
Car crashes, he noted, are the second leading cause of death for teenagers in this country. And 60 percent of those victims did not use their seatbelt, he said.
Summers instructed Walsworth to turn left, then right before finding a spot behind another vehicle to “show off” her parallel parking skills. She nailed it without a problem. Summers opened his door to make sure she was within 12 inches from the curb.
“Kids worry a lot about parallel parking, but I’ve never read in the Post-Tribune that teenagers were injured while doing it,” Summers said. “Instead, they should worry about not buckling up, or texting while driving, or speeding.”
For some overconfident teens, Summers has been known to have them parallel park in between two police cars at a courthouse or police station. (He teaches teens to remember the name Russell, for RSL – turn the steering wheel right, then straight, then left.)
“To avoid a rear end crunch, we check our mirrors a bunch,” Summers quipped.
He then guided Walsworth down a narrow street to see if she knew if it was a one-way or two-way street. She got that right, too, pointing out a directional sign.
“You’re a good student,” Summers told Walsworth.
Years ago, Summers gave similar driving tests to older drivers whose doctors referred them to him to see if they should continue to be on the road. After having to once inform a World War II chaplain that he could no longer drive, Summers stopped testing that population of drivers.
“It was tough to do even though some of them simply shouldn’t be driving anymore,” he said.
Walsworth’s final task was to back into a parking space, in between two yellow lines without parking over one of them. Summers recently added this final task to his driving test, noting increased safety when exiting a parking space.
“NIPSCO requires all of its employees to always do this,” Summers said.
“Yes, it’s a safety policy we started several years back, adopted across all of our NiSource companies,” said NIPSCO spokesman Nick Meyer.
NIPSCO employees are also not permitted to talk on their phones while driving (regardless if it’s a company or personal vehicle). And they’re required to conduct a walk-around check with their vehicles before they enter and drive away.
“All have been done to reduce our vehicle incident rates, which have proven to be successful,” Meyer said.
Walsworth backed in to her spot without a problem.
“OK, you passed,” Summers told Walsworth, giving her a congratulatory fist bump.
Twitter@jdavich