Nerves of Steel and Lots of Patience Take Driving Instructors Far

Anyone who has ever taught a relative or friend to drive on the streets of Los Angeles knows what a nerve-racking experience that can be.

Just imagine doing it all day, five days a week.

“Not everyone is right for this job,” said Sean Moussavi, who operates the All Safe Driving School in Reseda. “You can’t get too nervous, you can’t yell at the student, no matter what you are feeling.

“If something happens, you have to calmly explain what went wrong. Maybe you even laugh about it. Later.”

Much later.

Sometimes, after you stop shaking.

Driving instructors say most of the time they spend in cars with students is occupied by routine tasks. And in most cases, the cars that instructors use are outfitted with dual controls to allow them to take over to get a student driver out of a potentially dangerous situation.

Most instructors have had to face at least one harrowing incident.

“A couple of years ago I was teaching a young lady, about 16 years old,” said Bob Shuster, owner of Bob’s Driving School in Northridge. They were in Woodland Hills, moving down a residential street toward Ventura Boulevard.

“We were getting close to the intersection and instead of stepping on the brake, she stepped on the gas,” Shuster said. “And then she froze there. We were suddenly going 50 miles an hour toward Ventura Boulevard.”

Shuster had a brake on his side, but it didn’t do much good with her foot flooring the accelerator.

“I was yelling at her, but she would not let up. I tried grabbing her leg, but this 90-pound woman was pressing so hard it was like she was a 300-pounder.”

He grabbed at the wheel. “We swerved into a gas station on the corner and started to do figure-eights around the pumps. It was unbelievably lucky there was no one there at the time.”

Finally, the bumper of the car snagged a gas pump hose, pulling part of the pump from its moorings and jolting the car. “It woke her up, and I got her foot off the pedal,” Shuster said.

“It was wild--the kind of thing that if it had happened in a movie, I would have laughed.”

Tom Aguilera, an instructor for California Driving School, which has several local offices, had to handle a similar situation, but on a freeway.

“I had a student who was a muscle builder,” Aguilera said.

Strong as this woman was, she had a deadly fear of freeway driving.

“We pulled onto a freeway for the first time and she just froze at the wheel. I had a second wheel on my side, but she was so strong and holding on so tight, I couldn’t turn mine.”

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Traffic was light, but the car was heading on a dangerous diagonal course across the lanes.

“Finally, I yelled ‘Breathe!’ at her, and she let loose,” Aguilera said.

Other situations were more mysterious. George Mason, who also teaches for California Driving School, recalled a student who was doing fine until she was told to make a right turn at a corner where a red car was parked.

“She never had a problem, until we came to that car, and then she couldn’t make the turn,” Mason said. “We made some more turns, came back to that intersection and it happened again.

“She couldn’t explain it, it was just something about a red car that distracted her and she couldn’t pay attention to what she should be doing.”

A driving mistake is especially embarrassing when it happens during the course of a Department of Motor Vehicles driving test. The instructors are often present for these incidents because many driving schools have their teachers escort a student, when ready, to the DMV for the big test.

Instructor Manny Goitia said the shortest time he spent at the DMV was when one of his students got confused and continued to grind the starter after the engine had already turned over. “She just kept grinding it and grinding it,” Goitia said.

“She was only about 45 seconds into her test and she failed.”

In contrast, there was a time when he was waiting for a student to return from the DMV test, which usually takes about 20 minutes.

“I looked at my watch, and they had been gone 25 minutes,” Goitia said. “That’s usually a good sign, because if they come back early, it means they failed. But then it was a half-hour, then 40 minutes. Finally they got back.”

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It seems the student, near the end of the test, was leaving a freeway on the offramp when he panicked and made a U-turn onto the onramp. Now they were barreling down the freeway again, and the student was so upset, he couldn’t exit for several miles.

“They started in Hollywood and ended up somewhere in Burbank,” Goitia said. “The guy didn’t pass.”

Even though the instructor is not in the car during the DMV test, the wait for a student to return can be stressful.

“Every time I’m there with a student, I think I’m as nervous as they are although I keep it inside,” said James Yates, who teaches in Compton and South-Central Los Angeles for California Driving School.

“It’s like I’m there to take the test myself. I want them to get it as bad as they want it themselves. I just pace around like I’m their dad, waiting for them to come back.”