Instructor Jack Neff had just steered the former police cruiser to a tire-smoking stop in front of a row of traffic cones when student Shannon McCreary asked the pertinent question.

"We're going to do this?" she asked with a hint of disbelief.

"Yes, you are."

	Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette Frances Poindexter, a student at Ellwood City High School, reacts after putting on the Fatal Vision goggles, which simulate vision impairment when drunk. Click photo for larger image.

Mr. Neff then launched into a little speech on smoothness, on looking where you're going rather than where you are, on getting the car's weight moving.

Dante DeChellis, 17, listened intently from the passenger seat. Shannon, 18, chuckled quietly in the back seat.

"I am so going to hit all those cones," she said.

Dante and Shannon, both of Monaca, were among hundreds of high school students to descend on BeaveRun Raceway on Friday to learn from raceway instructors such as Mr. Neff about the dangers of drinking and driving. The best part for the teens was behind-the-wheel time to experience extreme driving situations.

The program was put together by the Pennsylvania DUI Association and BeaveRun, which offers driver training to police and federal law enforcement, to the military, to race drivers and to teenagers and other new drivers.

The kids spent some classroom time with BeaveRun Director Tim Silbaugh, state police Trooper Randy McPherson and others, talking about defensive driving and the impact of alcohol on driving skills.

But kids are used to being talked to in classrooms. They're not used to racetracks.

Head on, the cones looked so close together that it seemed the car wouldn't fit between them, but Mr. Neff gunned the engine anyway. He kept right on talking and pointing, even as he heaved the mammoth sedan through tire-squalling turns.

"Look there!" he said, pointing to the right as the car keeled over to the left. "Look there!" he said, pointing to the left as the car keeled over to the right, with a laughing Shannon flopping back and forth in the rear seat.

Then Mr. Neff planted the gas pedal, roaring through a turn and accelerating hard up the back straight of BeaveRun's north circuit. "And brake!" he called, toeing into another blood-flow-altering stop.

And how did Dante feel about driving next? "I think I'm going to throw up," he said.

Along with classroom time and track time, the students each did a field sobriety test while wearing Fatal Vision goggles, which distort vision to simulate drunkenness.

The first kids attempting to walk a straight line staggered and nearly fell; others learned by watching and staggered only a little. But about the only way to actually walk a line is to not look.

"And the thing about this is that you're not drunk," Mr. McPherson said. "You still have control of your mind, have some judgment. You just can't see right."

That wasn't all for the goggles. The kids also donned them and attempted to weave through a slalom in two BeaveRun cars. It was a parade of squashed cones, or "babies," as instructor Jeff Schindel labeled them.

"I hit three babies," said Battista Montgomery, 17, of New Castle. "I will never try to drive under the influence."

Justin Steffler, 16, of Ellwood City, drove the slalom slowly and made it unscathed. But since he was the last to go, Mr. Schindel had him try it again but, this time, faster.

Two attempted turns wiped out about four cones before Justin ended up helplessly off-course.

"Driving like a granny is great," he said, "but drive like a speed demon and you're going to hit people."

Behind the wheel, Dante nosed the sedan cautiously down the front straight.

"Come on, give it some gas," Mr. Neff ordered.

He did, and the big car boomed down the black-streaked pavement, which got four more black streaks when Dante got on the brakes a bit too hard and locked up the wheels.

"You want to be just on the verge of skidding," Mr. Neff said.

Then came the cones, and another cautious success: Only one cone down, though the speed was a bit less than when Mr. Neff drove it.

"Good job!" the instructor praised, and a more confident Dante roared down the back straight and nailed two more braking tests.

"It was interesting," Dante, a quiet type, would say later. "The braking helped."

BeaveRun offers a one-day private training course for young drivers, teaching them some track driving, how to handle cars in extreme situations and how to drive out of danger.

Friday's program offered just the smallest taste of that, but Mr. Silbaugh thinks the hands-on lessons are worthwhile.

It was the first of what he hopes will be an ongoing program, and was open to all the schools in Beaver and Lawrence counties.

It was Shannon's turn to pilot the sedan. Mr. Neff said he mixed boys and girls in the cars on purpose.

"Girls are going to be better almost every time," he said. For one thing, he said, "they listen." For another, "this is far more like dancing or skiing than it is like wrestling or football. It's about being smooth, and girls are inherently smoother."

Indeed, Shannon negotiated the slalom without hitting a cone, though she got yelled at for inverting her hand and holding the steering wheel from the inside.

Her reaction afterward? "It was fun!" That seemed to be the general reaction: Most students said the track time was their favorite part of the day.

"I got to go fast," Daresse Henderson, 18, of New Castle, said with a grin, asked why he liked that part best. "And I learned something about braking and control."

"I learned how to brake under pressure," said Tasia White, 17, of New Castle. "It'll make me a better driver, maybe."

Organizers hope she's right, and hope she's not alone.