“On one drive, I was with a girl going from 405 on I-90. Typically, I try to get people to accelerate during lane changes for obvious reasons; if they don’t, then the person behind them will rear-end them.
Once she completed the lane change, I said, “You’d better hurry up; you better do a lane change,” but she didn’t. I had to reach over with the wheel.

I yelled, “ACCELERATE.” Eventually, she accelerated, but I had to help her with turn the wheel because she was going to run into somebody. She was gradually speeding up, getting faster and faster. Now, she was going way too fast.

Calmly, I said, “Okay you need to slow down.” She responded, in panic, “I can’t! I can’t! Nothing’s working!”

Apparently, I had touched the cruise control setting of the car. This was on an old car, where the button was on the steering wheel, and I’d set it.

She started screaming, “OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH!” I told her to touch the brake to turn it off. She turned off cruise control; we slowed down and pulled off the road. The kid in the back said that she just about peed her pants during the drive.”

“I taught one foreign exchange student about ten years ago, and the amount of English he spoke was minimal. When I’d ask him what the word “Yield” was, he’d take out his translator and say, “Oh ya, yield!”

While on the freeway, he was in the center lane. I was trying to get him to move over and switch lanes with pretty heavy traffic.

He got really confused and stopped in the middle of the freeway. As I looked back in the mirror, I whispered, “Oh my God. I’m gonna die.” Out loud, I said, “Get your foot off the brake!” and I reached over and pulled his foot off of the brake, nearly forcing his foot on the gas pedal.

Fortunately, everyone around us just basically stopped and proceeded around us because of the “Student Driver” sticker, but it was so scary. This was one of the only times that I remember wanting to quit teaching Drivers Ed.”