Life Lessons

"Ever since then, I'm terrified in the rain," Staver said.

As Staver recounted her terror, Espinosa clenched a cigar in this teeth and dumped two industrial-size containers of laundry detergent on the parking lot as a fire hydrant hose flooded the area to replicate a slick, rainy roadway.

"I'm scared to do this!" Staver said with a laugh, as students prepared to take turns maneuvering around a circle of cones at high speeds.

The combination of these hands-on lessons, the classroom lecture and video examples offered "a confidence booster," Staver said. She and her fellow students realized how limited their instruction was in high school driving courses.

"We're all talking about how [inferior] driving school is compared to this," she said.

Joanne Rouse and her daughter Jillian, 18, of Burke, attended a clinic last year at Lake Braddock High School, where Joanne Rouse jumped behind the wheel herself, learning to accelerate into curves and testing abilities she may never need.

"I found I had skills I didn't know I had -- I can drive backward through an obstacle course," Rouse said. "It was really weird to hear them say 'go faster through the curves.' "

The family's two older daughters finished only basic driving instruction, but because Jillian would face heavier traffic, particularly on the Beltway, her parents decided to bolster her training, especially as she heads off to Mary Washington University. The behind-the-wheel experience in a closed setting offered confidence to daughter and mother.

"What made us nervous was the whole idea of the Beltway," Joanne Rouse said. "I think it just gave the kids a little more idea of what could happen."

For more information about the course, go tohttp://www.drive2survive.org.