An overwhelming majority of Americans do not know how to drive.
  I admit this is a broad statement, but my personal experience, which has been direct and not anecdotal, bears this out.
  The first, but not the primary source of information comes from the thousands of people that I, as a docent at the world famous Petersen Automotive Museum take on tours.
 These tours are very interactive and many of the conversations about cars in traffic, cars at speed, car safety, etc.
typically draw a response along the lines of "Really, I didn't know that".
  Many of the young, (barely) driving age, people on these tours admit to knowing or having participated in street racing.
  These drivers have virtually no experience, are driving cars that, in many cases, have ever increasing amounts of horsepower, may be turbo charged, and have handling characteristics that change dramatically at speed and are winding up in ever increasing numbers as statistics,  By the way, adults are as guilty.
Even more so as they have some road experience and should have more sense.
  This is anecdotal, but it seems that the belief is that  if you can afford a fast toy with high performance characteristics (Shelby Mustang, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Porsche, BMW, etc.
) you should be able to drive it fast.
  Look at the accident stats.
  Go to a real "Performance" driving school - more than once.
  As I repeat over and over, "What is your life worth",  The depth of ignorance and/ or driving incompetence becomes very obvious during the opening minutes of the first classroom session at the track side driving school that I have attended biannually for 10 years.
  This 2 day school, run by a non profit performance car club, uses licensed Race Drivers, many with National and International experience, as instructors,.
  They limit class size to 26 people and has classes for 3 levels of competence.
  This will be the first in a series of articles that will take you through the basics of the 3 competence levels - Street Performance, Time Trial Competition and Wheel to Wheel Road Racing.
Unlike the licensing requirements in most "developed" nations, where extensive seat time with highly trained drivers is required, in this country the primary requirement is learning enough of  the rules of the road to pass a simple written test and some basic driving skills.
Around 45,000 people a year die on the road, a substantial percentage are under 21 years.
  The reported, and worse, unreported accident number is staggering.
Remember a car is designed to go in a straight line.
  Anytime that your start to turn off of that straight line your vehicle starts to experience some degree of instability and loss of speed.
  The next article in the series will be about the first things you should have learned - proper seat position, how to correctly set mirrors to avoid ALL blind spots, correct breaking, turning and the effect of speed changes on the balance of your car.