Life Lessons

"He's demanding the car nowadays. We try to let him know the dangers on the road," Darrell Dickerson said.

"Don't you think he has too much confidence?" Stretch asked his father. "Yeah, he's a little cocky. He needs a reality check," the father said.

A few weeks ago, Dickerson, who lives in Forestville with his mother, had "a minor incident" while driving the family's 1996 Saturn "a little too fast" into a sharp corner. He said the Saturn had a mind of its own after he jerked the wheel hard.

"It wasn't too hard, but it was hard enough that the car didn't like me," Darrius Dickerson said. "The car said, 'Forget this. Let's see what that grass feels like over there.' "

The family Saturn rolled off the road, up a hill, over a sewer pipe and through a "No Parking" sign.

"Yeah. That sign got cut in half," Darrius Dickerson said. "That was my second day with the car."

His mother remembered a television newscast highlighting Drive2Survive, and after investigating the group's Web site, she made this clinic mandatory for driving, even the old Saturn.

"He didn't resist coming," she said. "He knows that was a requirement in order to drive. If that was going to help him get the keys, he was all for that."

Like most parents who enroll their children, they stayed through the classroom session. Instructors encourage them to participate so they can reinforce the lessons learned, Espinosa said.

The clinics can handle up to 30 students, making the instructor-student ratio about 3 to 1, Espinosa said. But the program operates far below capacity, and Espinosa said he hopes more parents see the wisdom in investing some money to keep their children safer behind the wheel.

"We have dates twice a month, and we're not getting classes filled," Espinosa said. "We're probably the cheapest in the country for what we're doing. We're not trying to get rich."

Victoria Staver, 21, of Bethesda is still haunted by her first accident as a 16-year-old driver on a rainy afternoon on MacArthur Boulevard in the District. With three friends in the car, she hydroplaned across the center lane before the car crashed into a ditch. No one was injured, but the experience keeps her off the roads in inclement weather.