I wasn't saying you were inexperienced or didn't know how to drive, but you sound like I did when I was 15 and I don't want you to learn the hard way... like I did.

I've been driving since I was 10, and I started racing dirt track and jr. drags at 13. I won close to 75% of the races I entered, and there's a closet full of trophies at my parents house that told me I knew what I was doing. I truly believed I knew how to drive by the time I was 15, but life will almost always kick you in the nuts and make sure you understand that you should never be comfortable in your own abilities, or your knowledge of something.

When you get comfortable, you get complacent. When you get complacent, you let yourself make little mistakes because you trust your own ability to deal with the situation. Those little mistakes always add up, and they will always come back to bite you when you don't expect it.

I got that lesson at 19 years old, when I rolled my first car that I bought on my own 2 1/2 times. I was going the speed limit, I had good tires, good brakes, good suspension and steering, and none of that mattered when a fox darted out in front of the car while I was going around a corner. I saw it in time to hit the brakes and slow down enough for the damn thing to make it across the road, but that didn't happen. The fox decided to turn around right before I hit it. It managed to bend the driver's side tie rod in and I couldn't countersteer when the tail end of the car started swinging around. I went off the road and the back driver's side tire caught the outside of the ditch, and all of this happened in a fraction of a second. I tore my left rotator cuff, and my passenger ended up with a couple of fractured vertebra in his neck.

It wasn't until I took those racing classes that I figured out why I had that accident. I realized that even the best driver in the world can make no mistakes and still wreck, because there is no way to control what happens outside of the vehicle, or someone else's actions.

That's why I suggested taking driving lessons, because they can teach you how to react to something you've never encountered before AND have you physically experience it in a controlled, safe environment. It doesn't matter how long you've been driving or how much you know, because as soon as an accident happens your brain gets flooded with adrenaline and you can't think about what you should do, you just react by muscle memory.

Those driving courses will help you teach your body how to react before your brain can react by forcing you to make split second decisions and avoid moving obstacles while going 60+ mph in heavy rain, or by having you hydroplane at 100+ mph twenty times in a row, or by having you roll a cage car until you throw up. The most important part of these classes is when they teach you the little details and techniques that have taken every professional racer decades of failure to figure out.

My point is, you don't ever want to think that you have enough knowledge or experience. That is how you end up learning this particular life lesson the hard way, and the hard way could cost you your life...or someone else's life. That's a risk I sincerely hope you are not willing to take.