Students slide awkwardly like penguins on the sidewalk on their way to school, some even slip on the frozen puddle that’s right before the first door where a trailing line of late students are seen waiting to be checked in. Yet, somehow these students are supposed to be in their seats at 8:45. Sharp.
A ten minute drive from home to Summit High School now takes up to 45 minutes. This new style of driving, a.k.a. “don’t get into a crash but still somehow make it to class on time” is one that not many Summit students are necessarily good at during Bend’s winter season. With no delays or cancellation of school it really seems like the district is pushing anything for academics, even if some students don’t even make it to class until second period.
Young teen drivers have a reputation for inexperienced driving, some only get a month or two of having their license before the November snowstorm hits, and most don’t even complete the “required” 50-100 hours of supervised driving before getting their driver’s license. Even students who take driver’s education classes don’t always experience the icy road conditions while they are learning. Many don’t know that there are local resources in town that have some solutions to help the issue. This is where Bend’s SkidCar training classes can come in.
Since 1994, Micheal Johnston has been teaching skid driving training with the Department of Public Standards and Training. He learned some of his skills from being a sheriff for Deschutes County and teaching police driver training. Although he is now retired, he enjoys sharing his knowledge and skills for others’ safety and still has SkidCar training lessons seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. all year round. The class is $100 and can be taken by all ages of people from teens to adults as long as you have a driver’s permit or license. The classroom and driving track is located at the Deschutes Public works complex.
Skidding—which is common in snowy and icy conditions—can be scary and foreign, especially to the teen who’s only had their license for a year or two, but also to recent movers who haven’t experienced the treacherous roads that Bend has to offer. However, Johnston makes sure that his students feel safe and ready before driving in the skid car.
“When I teach my classes, we start with a classroom session about everything involved in skid prevention, recognition and correction,” said Johnston. “I try to make the students as comfortable as possible, reassuring them that my training environment is perfectly safe, that you can’t get hurt or hurt anything.”
Sometimes the anxiety of sliding or skidding out of control as a driver can just make the situation more stressful and even dangerous. But as Johnston teaches his lessons, he makes it clear that there is nothing about jerking, yanking, stomping or poking while skidding on icy roads.
“Driving, especially in inclement weather is all about smoothness and finesse,” Johnston said.
Students at Summit who have taken his class have found it helpful for their confidence while driving in the snow.
“We did so many skids in the class, that now when I skid on the road it doesn’t even phase me,” says an anonymous Summit sophomore. “He gave a lot of helpful information and the class definitely helped me and my stress on the roads.”
Although Johnston’s class is available throughout the week, the classes fill up rapidly. According to Johnston, the classes have overflowed increasingly faster in the last several years due to many of Bend’s newer residents who aren’t exactly used to the unplowed neighborhoods or even snow at all. With Summit students normally having after-school sports, academic activities or busy weekends, the $100, five hour class might not be the most realistic for some. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the art of icy driving isn’t available for them. Carl Decker was a Rally racer, competing in races such as the ‘X Games’ and had been racing for around 10 years before he retired from the Motorsport.
“One of the things to think about is knowing your car well, and what it does when you lose traction and knowing how to recover from that,” says Decker. “It’s best to test these things out, a lot of people don’t know what happens when you lose traction, so test out your breaks on the snow in an empty parking lot, just see what happens.”
Decker also highlights how it’s important to plan ahead and just think smarter not harder, such as driving on the snow and gravel part of a road instead of ice, not relying on just your break and leaving home a little earlier.
“Being in control of your car is the difference between enjoying driving in the snow and dreading driving in the snow,” said Decker.
So what is the point? Even with the resources we have, accidents still happen. Safety is important to know, but what if we didn’t even have to deal with the stress and anxiety about driving in the snow anyway? Although it is important to keep school hours in person and get the number of fulfilled hours that are academically required by the state, driving in the snow and ice can be harmful to students and staff members on their way to and from school. The number of car-related accidents in 2021 was a whopping 902 in the city of Bend. Most of which were during the winter season.
“We don’t want to risk our kids’ lives just to meet instructional hours only because they don’t want to add it on to the end of the year,” says Mendey Brandl, the Data and Curriculum Secretary at Summit High School. “I’m not interested in the hassle or the money spent on repairing a car for something that could have been avoided”.
In Oregon, the required amount of hours for high school students is 990 for the school year. There seems to be a pattern that if school is canceled for two or more days then the district adds those days on to the end of the school year. These added days in the summer (which many people don’t even attend anyway) are questionable to staff and students because their classes no longer have academic purpose or any more curriculum to review on those few days of the year.
There might not be any clear reasons behind schools’ cancelling policies or the badly plowed neighborhoods, but since we do have a lack of snow days this year, you might as well stay safe.
