Larry Caron still remembers one of the most terrifying moments of his life in vivid detail.

He was in a car on Route 196 in Lisbon, travelling at 45 miles per hour – the legal speed limit – when the driver of a Greyhound Bus who had been tailgating his vehicle decided to pass. In a no-passing zone. On a hill. Into oncoming traffic.

“We had to slam on the brakes to let them back over, or there would have been a serious collision,” he recalled.

“That bus had to have been going about 60 miles per hour, and the traffic in the opposite lane was going at least 45. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened.”

Pete Martin’s heart-pounding memory occured when he was in a car travelling 65 miles an hour and the young driver slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a turkey. The vehicle spun out of control, coming just inches from hitting a guardrail.

It’s all in a day’s work for Lewiston-Auburn’s professional driving instructors, who say the job has plenty of challenges — more often than not created by other drivers, not their students.

While those two incidents stand out as the most dangerous situations they’ve ever been involved in, area instructors say being tailgated by aggressive drivers and being passed on a double yellow line are daily occurrences in their line of work, as are people screaming, swearing or honking at their student drivers.

“It’s never the students who get on our nerves. It’s always the other drivers,” said Caron, who has been a driving instructor at Roy’s Driving Academy in Lewiston, his family’s business, for a little over a decade.

Martin agrees. He started teaching more than a decade ago at Karen’s Driving School before starting his own business, Martin Driving Academy in Lewiston, with colleague Paul Martin (no relation) after Karen’s went out of business three years ago.  

“We get flipped off all the time, yelled at, honked at. People drive more aggressively around us, and 90 percent of the time the student isn’t doing anything wrong. People just don’t want to be around us. They’re impatient,” said Martin.

“We try to tell the kids not to take it personally.”

Martin was once sitting in a line of traffic with a student when a local business owner came out and got into his pickup truck, slamming the door. The man revved his engine and began spinning his wheels. He clearly wanted to enter the roadway, but traffic was lined up, and there was nowhere for anyone to go.

The guy screamed at Martin, “Why don’t you teach your (expletive) students to (expletive) drive. You’re blocking the road, you (expletive)!”

Finally, when the traffic ahead started to move, the man peeled out in front of Martin’s car, sending gravel flying everywhere, and flew off down the road, far above the posted speed limit.

By far, though, tailgating is the most common problem area driving instructors encounter.

“If we are driving below the speed limit, I will instruct the student to pull over and let people pass, but I won’t have students feeling bad for going the speed limit. People think they’ll get us to go faster by tailgating. It won’t work. We have to go the speed limit, and people hate it. It’s not my fault you didn’t leave yourself enough time to get to work,” said Caron.

“It’s exhausting because we try to teach these kids the right way, and they see everyone else doing it wrong. I try to use it as a teaching opportunity.”

Pete Martin once had a driver tailgating him so closely that he couldn’t even see the car’s front plate. He eventually picked up his cell phone and called the police to report the driver, who backed off and turned down a side road when he saw Martin on the phone.

As dangerous as the tailgaters are, they’ve got nothing on the people – usually relatively new drivers themselves – who have tried to play chicken with student drivers. While not a daily occurrence, this frightening behavior has happened frequently enough to convince Caron to remove the large student driver signs from the tops of his cars and opt for less conspicuous magnetic ones.

Distracted to the point of dangerous

Then there are the distracted drivers. Caron and a student driver were recently sitting at a red light next to a young woman who was obviously texting behind the wheel. The woman glanced up when traffic started to move, then went right back to texting. When the driver of a vehicle two cars ahead of her had to stop for a pedestrian, she wasn’t looking, and plowed right into the car in front of her.

Another time, he and a student driver were stopped on Campus Avenue to let a pedestrian cross.

“I looked in my rearview mirror and told my student to hold on, because I could see what was about to happen. He said, ‘Why,’ and I just said, ‘Hold on!’ We were sitting ducks. There was a pedestrian in front of us, and we couldn’t go anywhere,” Caron recalled.

A driver from Massachusetts, distracted by looking at the Bates campus, never saw Caron’s vehicle. He slammed right into it, hard. Everyone was OK, but the accident landed Caron’s car in the shop for a week.

Ironically, Caron was rear-ended by another driver the very day he got his car back, this time while sitting at a red light. Luckily, that accident didn’t leave a mark.

Paul Martin remembers one of the times he was rear-ended at a red light by a distracted driver.

“He told me he saw the light turn yellow, then he looked down to change his radio station, and when he looked up, the light was red and we were right there. I asked him why he would look down when the light was yellow, and he said he thought he had more time,” said Martin.

Distracted driving isn’t limited to other drivers. Though driving students can’t text or eat or drink while learning, they are still prone to distraction, the driving instructors said.

Students will often sit at a red light and not notice it’s turned green, or forget to check their mirrors and have no idea someone is behind them. Or they stare down at their speedometer while trying to correct their speed, instead of just glancing. The only cure for these kinds of mistakes is lots of practice, instructors said, which is why road experience is so important.

Top tasks: staying steady and centered

By far, the most common issues for new drivers are learning how to maintain a constant speed and staying in the center of the travel lane.

Over the years, Caron has developed some quips that put students at ease while pointing out these issues.

“I’ll tell them they’re making my speedometer look like a windshield wiper, or I’ll say ‘I never wanted to be a mailman. Let’s get away from these mailboxes,’” he said.

“We never yell. You wouldn’t last long in this business if you yelled.”

Paul Martin agrees.

“I’m pretty relaxed. I tell them they’re going to make mistakes, just like people who have been driving for years. I try to think how I would want to be treated or how I would want my own kids to be treated,” he said.

Even so, instructors occasionally have to deal with a crier – a student who bursts into tears at every correction, no matter how gentle.

Caron remembers one particular girl who spent nearly all of her instruction time crying. Though he tried to be as kind and soft-spoken as possible, every correction he gave made the sensitive young driver’s eyes tear up.

Even if the student isn’t generally a crier, stressful situations can bring it out. Paul Martin once watched in horror as a student took her hands off the steering wheel, covered her face and began bawling because she’d hit a squirrel. He had to use his wheel to get out of the roadway until she could calm down.  

Fear is also a common response that new drivers have to learn to work through. Pete Martin worked with a girl who was so afraid of tractor-trailers that she would close her eyes every time she saw one.

Sleeping students: Preparing for the unexpected

After so many years on the road with new drivers, most student mistakes become predictable for instructors, such as confusing the gas and brake pedals. Every so often, though, a student will throw a curve ball.

Like the student who puts their turn signal on to go in one direction and turns the opposite way. No matter how many times this has happened to him, Caron never sees it coming.

In situations like that, driving instructors usually have to use the wheel on their side of the car to take control of the vehicle.

Once, Caron instructed a student driver to bear right while maintaining her speed. She misunderstood and tried to make a sharp righthand turn at 30 miles per hour. If Caron hadn’t taken control of the vehicle, they would have ended up on someone’s lawn, or worse.

“She immediately started shaking and crying and apologizing. I was shaken, too, but I told her ‘It’s OK. You’re still learning,’” he said.  

“I would never do this if I didn’t have controls on my side of the car.”

Pete Martin is also grateful for his instructor controls.

“If we don’t want our cars to crash, we can’t let them crash. We have to be on the ball,” he said.

Paul Martin always tells nervous students, “Remember, whatever happens to you happens to me too. I won’t let us get hurt.”

Occasionally a student will do something that makes no sense at all. Paul Martin was once driving with a girl when she slammed on the brakes for no apparent reason. The car spun sideways, leaving skid marks on the road.

“I asked her, ‘What did you do that for,’ and she said, ‘I have no idea.’”

Martin also had a student fall asleep while driving once.

“He’d started to drift to the side, and when I looked over to tell him to straighten out, he was nodding off,” he said.

Martin pulled the car over using his instructor controls and woke the student up. The kid said he had always fallen asleep in the car, ever since he was a baby. After that, Martin made sure to give that particular student frequent breaks for fresh air.

Trying to reduce the deadly possibilities

Of course, no matter how much time an instructor spends with a student – the standard is 10 hours of road time with a professional, plus six months with their learner’s permit – the student will eventually be on his or her own. Instructors can only hope the lessons they taught will stick.

Caron still remembers one girl who argued with him during classroom time about the need to wear a safety belt. A few years later, that girl was in an accident, along with some friends. She was the only one not wearing a seat belt, and the only one who didn’t survive the crash.

Pete Martin has also lost former students. One girl committed suicide by vehicle, endangering other drivers around her in the process, and another rolled his car while driving too fast.

“That’s the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night, wondering what you could have done to get through to them better,” reflected Caron.

Pete Martin wonders that too, but said he knows there’s nothing he could do differently.

“We can only teach them the right way. It’s their choice whether to follow that or not,” he said.

Ultimately, driving instructors know their students will make mistakes, but they hope they can instill in them a respect for the power of a vehicle and the seriousness of being behind the wheel.  

“It takes five years of driving to become an average driver. That’s not even a good driver. Just average. I tell these kids to think of a car as an empty gun. When you get behind the wheel, you’re loading that weapon. You’re the bullet,” said Caron.

Despite the challenges of working daily with inexperienced new drivers — as well as the many “experienced” drivers on the road — Pete Martin said his job is incredibly fulfilling.

“We’re teaching them a valuable skill, and it’s a skill they’re going to have for the rest of their lives. It allows them to have employment. It opens up their horizons.”

Driving tips from the pros

So you’ve been driving for years and you think you’re a pretty good driver? Area driving instructors have been watching you, and they beg to differ. Here are some expert driving tips they say most of us could use a little refresher on:

* Don’t tailgate. “Everyone does it,” said Larry Caron of Roy’s Driving Academy in Lewiston. “And it’s pointless. If the person in front of you is going 25 miles per hour, what’s the fastest you can go? That’s right, 25 miles per hour. That’s true whether you’re tailgating or following at a safe distance. Tailgating doesn’t get you anywhere. All it does is increase your chances of getting into an accident.” Regardless of the speed you’re traveling, you need to leave a four-second space between your car and the one you are following in order to stop safely without causing a collision. That space will naturally be smaller at low speeds and larger at faster speeds, but it should always take you four seconds to get to a spot the car in front of you just left behind.

* Eliminate distractions. Talking on the phone, texting, eating, drinking, yelling at the kids, petting a dog on your lap, finding a song on your mp3 player . . . whatever you’re doing instead of driving, cut it out! Roy’s Driving Academy students used to attempt to drive through a course wearing “drunk goggles,” to experience impaired driving. Later, Caron had them text while driving the course. In most cases, students hit more cones while texting than while wearing the drunk goggles.

* Turn your head. Even undistracted drivers can cause accidents if they aren’t aware of what’s around them. Every car has blind spots. Using your mirrors isn’t enough. Be sure to turn your head and look before changing lanes.

* Use your signals. “There’s a reason they’re are on your car,” said Pete Martin of Martin Driving Academy of Lewiston. “To let other people know what you’re about to do.” Nobody around you is psychic. You may know where you’re going, but other drivers don’t.

* Adjust your driving to the conditions, including weather, time of day, traffic, pedestrians and other factors. It may be safe to drive the speed limit on a given road under most conditions, but not others. “For instance, the first snowstorm of the year,” said Caron, “People always forget how to drive in the snow. They drive as though the conditions are normal.”

* Make sure you and your vehicle are both in sound condition. “Often, I’ll be sitting at a red light and notice that the person next to me has bald tires. Or they’re tired and yawning. Either of those conditions can cause an accident,” noted Caron. Prescription drugs are one common factor that can make people unfit to drive. “People only think of alcohol. It’s OUI – operating under the influence – not OUIA – operating under the influence of alcohol. If any substance, legal or not, impairs your responses, you shouldn’t be driving.”

* Leave yourself enough time to get where you are going. A driver who feels impatient or rushed is a driver who is more likely to make poor judgment calls. If you’re not in a hurry, you’ll be less likely to gun it at that yellow light or cut off that old lady.

* Be considerate. Don’t insist that you have the right of way when you might not. “People these days are more likely to use their horns than their brakes,” said Pete Martin.