Over the summer I attended a BMW driving event geared towards drivers who are just starting out in their quest not to have an accident, namely, teenage drivers. I don’t fit into this category anymore, but still got in some nice time throwing the X3 around at breakneck speeds and on slick pavement conditions.

Over the summer I attended a BMW driving event geared towards drivers who are just starting out in their quest not to have an accident, namely, teenage drivers. I don’t fit into this category anymore, but still got in some nice time throwing the X3 around at breakneck speeds and on slick pavement conditions. Photo credits: Heather Lawver.

In the parking lot outside of where the Washington Redskins pretend to play football, I attended a three-stage driving event that taught car n3wBs about skid control, tire traction, over- and understeer, and general physics principles like “driving your car into a tree really fast is a bad idea.”

There were three events:

Simulated Ice on the Skidpad
This was pretty cool. The event organizers had their peon volunteers through large amounts of Tide detergent (product placement, anyone?) onto a large vinyl mat already slick with douses of water in an effort to simulate slippery ice conditions. We pulled our X3 onto the mat, came to a stand still, then yanked the wheel left while flooring the gas. The goal was to teach us how to overcome a spin (something us Upstate New Yorkers deal with 8 months of the year with how much snow we get) but it ended up just showing dumb teenagers how to do 360s without any real sort of control. And yes, I came out of my spin perfectly the very first time.

Stomp ‘n Steer
This event showed off the braking capabilities of the mini-X5 at highway speeds. From a standstill I jumped on the gas pedal until I was going 60mph, then I braked hard while turning around a very sharp corner. I think the most fun was had by people sitting in my backseat as they got to know one another very well from all the sliding

Emergency Lane Change
This was my favorite event, for it let me drive the X3 like I stole it. We sped down a straightaway like the last event, but at the end there was a huge pile of cones stacked in the middle with two “departure lanes” on either side that we could use to avoid the obstacle. The trick was that our instructor in the passenger seat wouldn’t tell us which way to go, left or right, until we were right in front of the cones. My instructor could tell I was really into this exercise, so he waited until I was literally about the plow into the cones before yelling which way to go. Good stuff.