FAQs ABOUT OUR BEHIND THE WHEEL DRIVER INSTRUCTION

What about behind the wheel instruction do you provide that makes your driver instruction program in Ashburn Farm and Loudoun County so different from the rest?

The Ashburn Driving School provides its students with professional defensive-driver skills and maneuvers that cover real-life driving situations. Our purpose is to provide a fully rounded, complete instructional experience for each of our students, and so we take nothing for granted as we cover the skills, maneuvers, and details that we believe are essential for all drivers--and especially new ones--who are navigating the roadways of Northern Virginia.

To us, these skills and the knowledge of these maneuvers are non-negotiable. We live in Loudoun County where there are countless two-lane highways that are frequented constantly by gravel and recycling trucks, construction vehicles, delivery trucks, flatbed trucks, and high-speed rescue vehicles.

We want our students to be as comfortable and successful negotiating the roadways skillfully whether they are encountering ordinary day-to-day traffic patterns or these immense vehicles. 

Here are some examples of what we teach in detail:

--Off-road recovery: when a student is driving on a two-lane road and may veer closer to the right side of the lane and suddenly find his two passenger-side tires caught off the road in the gravel, the grass, or a ditch. 

Now he has to pull the car back up and over the ledge of the road by turning the steering wheel to the left, but the danger is in over-correcting--pulling the vehicle too far to the left--and entering the lane of oncoming traffic.

Therefore, we teach off-road recovery so that our students have the knowledge and experience to calmly and effectively bring their vehicle back up onto the roadway and, holding the steering wheel firmly, proceed steadily forward.

--Another major skill we provide--and exclusively as far as we know--

is our driver obstacle course. By swerving and skidding through strategically-placed cones, our students are taught how to handle an unforeseen event, such as hitting a patch of ice, without losing control.

--We also cover emergency braking, also called stopping on a dime, which is an essential skill for every driver but often taken for granted when instructors assume a student will know how to stop in an instant. Many students are apprehensive about pressing firmly on the brake at a split-second's notice--for example if a cyclist were to suddenly enter the roadway--so this skill should be taught as we teach it, purposefully and directly.

--There are innumerable further maneuvers and skills that we teach, and many of them are listed on this website under the Lessons tab.

--We also have instructors who consider it their honor and duty to be comprehensive, focused, and detailed in their professional instruction.  To them, providing professional driver education is not only a rewarding civic duty, it is above all a mission and a passion to see a student gain skills that can reward him or her with safety and success on the road for a lifetime.

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