Teacher Gives Students A Brake
Since 1970, Harrison Flats resident Don Heikkila has logged an estimated 150,000 miles in the right hand seat of a car without an accident.
“I have gone from semi-boredom to sheer panic in seconds and there are times, besides my foot brake, that I could use a steering wheel and accelerator pedal,” says Heikkila, Kootenai High School Driver’s Education instructor.
Not that there haven’t been some thrilling moments.
He remembers one of them on U.S. Highway 3 near the Coeur d’Alene River bridge.
“I glanced down to check the driving log in my lap and when I looked up we were headed toward the concrete railroad abutment where the highway runs under the Union Pacific underpass. I grabbed the steering wheel and thus broke the cardinal rule of one of my college teachers about never touching the steering wheel. I can tell you, I ‘touch’ the steering wheel whenever necessary.”
He says that the only fatality involving a driver training vehicle in Idaho occurred when a student pulled onto a highway in front of an oncoming car. The instructor had done as he had done - looked down at the log in his lap and was killed when the other car struck the passenger side.
Heikkila started his career in 1970, after graduating from the University of Idaho. He taught summer driver’s ed courses for Coeur d’Alene High School and the Worley School District and became a full-time instructor for Kootenai the following year.
The 30 participating students spend 30 hours in the classroom and six hours behind the wheel. They also get hands-on experience changing a tire.
At least 1,000 students have sat behind the wheel of Heikkila’s driver training cars and to his knowledge there have been few accidents among his graduates and he recalled just one death.
“It involved speed and alcohol. I had warned this particular student about the dangers of both,” Heikkila said. “But he said his father did it so he figured he could too.”
Heikkila gets a lot of satisfaction when former students tell him he has influenced their lives because they felt he was concerned about what happened to them.
He says he never yells at students but he constantly lectures them and reminds them.
“I particularly caution them about railroad crossings. I remember I mentioned this just as we were approaching a seldom-used track. The girl stopped and just as she did, the locomotive thundered by just in front of us. I will never know whether she would have stopped before driving onto the track if I hadn’t reminded her.”
Heikkila has a lot of memories about his years with his foot at ready above the ‘chicken brake’ as his students call the foot brake on the instructor’s side. He says that he likes to make the class a fun experience so there’s a certain amount of levity.
Once a boy put a party bomb - the kind that whistles and smokes - under the hood of the car. Heikkila got even by convincing the student that the State Police would be down to check up.
“I also arrange a drive through a cemetery. I tell the kids, ‘You’re a longtime dead.’ Things get pretty quiet.”