Originally published at: Driving techniques for escape and evasion | Boing Boing
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It has always been my dream to take an evasive/defensive driving course like they give cops and .gov people. The slight hiccup with that is that I drive a stick-shift RWD Miata, and those courses generally use giant heavy automatic sedans. I really badly want to learn with a similar car to my own (but not my own, because it’s 19 years old). 
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thanks but i already drive like this.
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I did this on my commute daily, on a motorcycle no less. Hung up my freeway spurs for the easy life now that the retirement is on me.
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Your Miata would be fun on a slalom/autocross/gymkhana course. Regular cars can compete. Some performance driving courses use similar cars to the Miata.
I’m still gonna call the Moonshiner’s Turn “The Rockford”.
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Try that with modern tyres and suspension, and I reckon you’d just reverse into the nearest wall. Now I wanna watch the Rockford Files tho. And then maybe Marlowe for good measure.
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Of course, big American RWD automatics are mostly gone at this point, but if you can control a big RWD car, a Miata will be that much more controllable, especially with a manual.
My first out-of-college car was a first-generation RX-7, and while I don’t miss the manual choke, exotic spark plugs and ignition parts, or my particular engine’s propensity to eat starter motors, the rest of the car was a blast to drive. I miss that kind of handling, but a Miata isn’t practical for me.
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Awww, that was on my LIST as a younger person. I ended up with a '77 Datsun 200SX, which was still FAR more car than I should have had at 17. It took a flogging. I replaced that with an '88 CRX, and have still never owned a car with more than two doors.
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From the annals of too much personal information, I have the questionable honor of having witnessed an actual demolition derby staged at the former Air Force base on Nantucket some time in the 90s. The obvious clash of perceived cultures was enhanced by the fistful of mushrooms I was enjoying at the time. It being an island, there were a lot of remarkable old cars that had been kept running well past any reasonable expectation of safety, and plenty of folks who could weld and wrench the beasts into submission despite the salt air. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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Excerpt from page 11…
Use right turn signal but then turn LEFT.
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Gotta love the rotary Wankle
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Ol’ James Garner used to do the driving stunts too
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The now-long-gone Santa Fe Speedway in Chicago’s southwest suburbs had demolition derbies on a regular basis, with teams. Another good one was the Figure-8 race.
♫Only one speedway, with a track of clay…♫
Eventually, the track was history, with the last races run in 1995 and the track demolished in 1998. Before-and-after can be seen in Google Earth Pro at 41.723512°, -87.906136° with the time slider. The official excuse was fear of litigation, but I suspect the owners wanted to get into the real estate business.
Route 66 Raceway is much further out, but they built a clay track to bring back the tradition.
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Then I assume you have an emergency brake lever that allows you to do handbrake turns.
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We actually learned that one in Drivers Ed when I was in high school in the midwest. It was hard on the school’s instruction cars, but great with my mom’s tricked-out Plymouth Barricuda.
Decades later I failed the UK driving test the first time I took it because I didn’t put the hand brake on at every point in a three-point turn. Very different driving culture.
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This guy is my spirit animal.
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In Car Wars (Steve Jackson Games), it’s immortalised as the Bootleg Reverse. Yes, I still have a box full of my old Car Wars maps, counters, and so on.
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