Students Take Top 4 Spots In Safe Driving Competition
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 8, 2005
Beyond the world where teenage driving fatalities dominate police blotters and headlines, an alternative universe exists, one where high school students are checking their car mirrors every 10 seconds, nimbly maneuvering through orange-cone obstacle courses and always, every single time, flipping the turn signal before making a lane change.
In this realm, four teenagers from Prince William County reign supreme. Last weekend, three sophomores from Osbourn Park High School in Manassas and one from Brentsville District High School in Nokesville took the top four spots in the little-known but very competitive Virginia Association of Driver Education and Traffic Safety (VADETS) safe driving contest, held in Newport News.
With a 150-question written exam, a course with six obstacles and a half-hour road test through city streets and on an interstate highway, the contest can be a grueling mental exercise. Aside from garnering an added measure of respect from their elders, the winners of the 21st annual contest took home hundreds of dollars' worth of savings bonds.
Charles "C.J." Gehin-Scott, 16, is the safe driving king. The Osbourn Park sophomore won first place in two of the three categories -- he lost the road test by a few points -- and first place overall. Nicky Rushin, 16, also a sophomore at Osbourn Park, won second; Joe Kinchen, 16, from Brentsville, won third place; and Jeffrey L. Holbrook, 16, another student at Osbourn Park, took fourth place.
"My friends think [the contest] is a joke, but when I say I won a . . . savings bond, they say, 'Wow, I should have done that,' " Gehin-Scott said in an interview. "They think it's not as big as regular sports. But the contest involves a lot of vision and decision making."
Gehin-Scott elaborated and talked about a near accident in which he needed to keep moving to avoid hitting a car. "I was going to the tournament and my mom and I were going into a parking lot, and out of nowhere, this lady in a silver Dodge station wagon flew out of her space and wasn't even looking. I had to weave around her. A lot of people would just freeze and slam on the brakes."
The safe driving contest lures only the most skilled students in various school divisions' driver education courses. Instructors typically pick the talent, and those students compete in a school-division-wide contest to see who advances to the VADETS contest -- the Daytona 500 of safe driving contests (minus, of course, the high speeds).
When the contest began 21 years ago, as many as 15 school divisions participated, but now it gets only about eight, said Dick Tyson, the association's executive director.
Tyson said he doesn't know why interest has waned, but he speculated that many driving instructors are less passionate about their jobs. He pointed to Jo Ellen Suter, Osbourn Park's instructor, as a model teacher, whose dedication is proved with results.
Suter, who said she likes the job because she believes she is helping save lives, said one of her most important tasks is breaking students of their parents' bad habits. She spends a lot of time showing students new safe driving techniques that were not taught to older generations.
For instance, she said, if the steering wheel is seen as a clock, "you want your hands at 8 and 4. Most of us have been taught 9 and 3 or 10 and 2."
Why the change? Because new air bags explode so fast that if your hands are not low enough on the steering wheel, the deploying bag will knock your hands into your face, breaking all kinds of bones.
The secret to being a good young driver, she said, is driving as much as possible with parent supervision. Her students say they are willing to go on any errand -- no matter how mundane -- at any time with their folks, as long as they can drive.
For some students, being among the best in the state didn't come with a squeaky clean record. Rushin remembers when she got her learner's permit at 15 1/2 .
"I was driving with my dad and going around a cul-de-sac, and he told me to go backwards. And I hit my neighbor's mailbox," Rushin said. "We went and gave her money to get it fixed, and I made her brownies."