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| by Pete Olson Membership Chair |
Each year the winter season in Central Oregon can provide for lots of variable road conditions, including rain, snow, ice and black ice. Let’s say you are motoring along nicely and suddenly your car goes into a skid. What to do! The most common reaction is YIKES! PANIC!
Enter Mike Johnston of Risk Management SkidCar Training. Mike spends his time training Law Enforcement Officers, and also the general public, regarding the smart way to react in these adverse conditions.
Now enter the High Desert Region Porsche Club, with a 167 members, interested in giving back to the community. In 2012 they donated $2,000 for student scholarships, sending 22 teenagers to this class, and have sponsored 56 students over the past 4 years. This training includes a one hour classroom session and three hours in a specially equipped “skid car” with outriggers, allowing Mike to place the car into a variety of skid/control situations. This track time teaches the students the consequences of the right and wrong reactions in various adverse situations.
Feedback and thank you letters, from numerous students who have taken this class, prove to be very rewarding. These students will definitely become safer and more confident drivers, and hopefully pass the knowledge from this experience on to their peers.
The High Desert Porsche Club thanks Mike Johnston and the Education Services District who have helped coordinate the selection of students from various High School Drivers Training Classes. We wish our teenage students and all drivers years of safe motoring and hope you enjoy the photo of several of our Porsche Club board members, and their Porsches, posing on the skid pad with the specially equipped "Skid Car."