By Connie Keane

Motor Matters

There are women who love speed as much as men do, and like men, women enjoy being in control. Controlling my speeding is one of the reasons I attended a one-day driving school over the summer.

Well, to be truthful, I don’t have a problem with speeding on the public roadways. As an automotive writer, I have had the good fortune to be invited to racetracks all around the country to drive cars as fast as I want. Any time an opportunity comes my way to hop into a car with a professional race driver, I’m like a little kid jumping up and down waiting for my turn on an amusement ride. So when BMW asked me to attend their Performance Center in Spartanburg, S.C. for the Women-Only Driving Clinic, I jumped at the chance to gain more control over the everyday driving situations I encounter on the “real roads.”

With three driving instructors and a class size limit to 12 students, the outcome at BMW’s Performance Center is an elite education. The women in my class, ages 18 to 66 years, were there for a wide range of reasons: Christy King, 18, of Charlotte, N.C. had received the course as a high school graduation gift from her parents; several of the women had received the course as Christmas or anniversary gifts. Linda Lindenmeyer, 36, of Jacksonville, Fla., confessed to “loving speed” and said her husband wants her to slow down and stop talking to sales clients on the cellphone. Megan Sadowski, 44, of Salem, Ore., flew in from the west to take this one-day course because she had been in a horrible car accident and wanted to feel confident on the freeway again.

Behind the wheel of a BMW 330i sedan, each woman was about to spend the day on the closed course going through hair-raising exercises that would change her driving habits. One of the best exercises was the “Accident Avoidance and Braking.” Traveling at a moderate speed, I had to avoid slamming into a cement truck that had entered the intersection. Of course, it was just an imaginary truck symbolized by orange cones. With the anti-lock braking system off, I got my speed up to 40 mph and had to brake hard to avoid slamming into the truck/cones. I hit the brakes hard, locking them up, screeching and sliding straight into the cones, sending them flying like struck bowling pins. The accident happened so fast I didn’t have time to pump the brakes to prevent them from locking. And the whole time I kept my eyes fixed on the object I didn’t want to hit: the truck.

The eyes are the most important part of driving, according to instructor Lea Croteau, a professional racer from Steamboat Springs, Colo. “Don’t look at what you don’t want to hit,” says Croteau, “Look for open spaces.” I tried the exercise again with the ABS activated. As I encountered the obstacle I stomped hard on the brakes, feeling the pulsing and pumping underfoot from the anti-lock braking, and looked for a way not to hit the truck. I found an opening to my left, kept my eyes focused on it, and steered in that direction, all the time holding my foot on the brake. This time I only clipped the truck as just a single cone went down. The third time out I was determined to come away from the accident clean. I anticipated the truck, I knew where the opening was, and I braked, looked, steered, coming away unscathed — textbook perfect. But in real life we only get one shot to get it right.

Throughout the day we also received instruction on selecting the proper seating position, which is critical to being in control of the car in the first place, as well as how to steer out of a slide on a slippery surface. Later in the day I asked Megan Sadowski if she was starting to overcome her driving fears from her accident. She beamed and confidently said, “I loved it.” Then she added, “This changed me. I was so scared at first, but they (the instructors) talked me through it.”

The best part of the day was a timed autocross competition where we put all the learned skills together through a 3/8-mile course of slalom, hairpin turns, and hard braking. We were extremely competitive against one another in trying to best our times in three attempts. Being in the driving business I had an unfair advantage over the other women. I finished with the best time of 29.44 seconds. But guess who finished behind me with the next best time of 31.56 seconds: The woman who said she loved speed, Linda Lindenmeyer.

For more information on classes offered at the BMW Performance Center, call 888/345-4BMW or visit www.bmwusa.com, and click on Joy of Driving.