“Did any of you guys know those kids who died?”

Gabe Saker, 49, was standing in front of 38 teenagers in a warm and cramped room at his driving school on Brambleton Avenue. It was late September, the first night of a new class.

The driving instructor was talking about Victoria Phillips, a 16-year-old Roanoke County girl who was killed in a car wreck in August and the four Bedford County teenagers killed in a single-car wreck in 2005.

A few of the students in Saker’s class raised their hands.

“I don’t want someone in my next class to raise their hand about you,” he said.

Saker’s job is to teach teenagers the activity that kills more of them than anything else — more than AIDS, drugs or suicide.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two out of every five teen deaths are caused by motor vehicle crashes. In 2005, 155 people in Virginia were killed in automobile accidents involving 15- to 20-year-olds, more than any other age group.

Saker has taught driver education for 21 years.

“I see myself as a Marine Corps sergeant,” he told the students. “If I don’t train you right, you’re going to get killed.”

A key to freedom

Two friends, Dani Van Kerkhove and Olivia Ferguson, both 16, sat on the far side of the long narrow table in the classroom.

The Cave Spring students had already driven for months on learner’s permits. Saker’s class was the final step before getting their licenses.

Neither teen thought much about the danger. They thought about freedom, about joining friends who already had licenses and cars.

Olivia’s parents usually drive her to school. Sometimes friends pick her up. The school bus is out of the question.

“That’s the most exciting thing, having your own ride to school,” Olivia said.

Olivia is not sure if she will have a car when she gets her license. Dani will drive her parent’s white 2000 Ford Explorer. They wanted her to drive their green 1996 Volvo sedan, but she made a deal with them. If she kept her grades up, she could drive the Explorer.

Dani knows the Volvo is safer, but she likes how she rides up high above traffic in the Explorer.

“I’m not a crazy driver,” she said.

Olivia and Dani are both athletes. They don’t drink. They avoid parties for fear of getting kicked off their sports teams.

Both girls know teens who have been seriously injured while drinking and driving. They also know teens who drink and drive but so far have been lucky.

“You would think they would get a hint, but they don’t. It kind of irritates me,” Olivia said. “It’s common sense.”

‘The X-factor’

Driver’s training is required for all drivers under 19.

The classroom portion is still taught in public schools, but many teens attend private school like Saker’s.

At Saker’s Driving School, a session lasts six weeks. Classes meet at 6 p.m. twice a week for two hours. Students also drive with an instructor for seven 50-minute sessions. They must pass a final exam and a road test.

In the classroom, instructors focus on the nuts and bolts of driving, like how to check a blind spot before changing lanes, how to park on a hill and how to merge into traffic on the interstate.

Teachers also describe the dangers of drunken driving, distractions such as cellphones and loud radios and aggressive driving, often with the help of a gory film.

One evening two weeks into the session, another Saker instructor, Matt Kesler, turned down the lights and showed a film called “Red Asphalt.”

Over dark electronic background music, the film showed demolished cars and blood. In one scene, a young woman described being trapped in a wreck with her older sister who died.

In tears, she recalled the crash and the blood that covered the interior and the windows.

“I couldn’t hear my sister breathing,” she said.

“I might throw up,” Dani said after the movie.

She said she can’t stand the sight of blood but doubts the movies make teens drive more carefully.

Kesler, who is also a teacher and wrestling coach at William Fleming High School, thinks the movies and the classroom instruction work.

But Kesler said the best way to determine how responsibly teens will drive is to talk to their parents.

Each student is supposed to drive 40 hours on the permit, 10 of them after sunset. Some parents take it seriously, Kesler said. Many do not.

“Parents play the largest part in a good driver’s education program. It’s the X-factor,” he said.

When Dani first got her permit, her mother, Bertie Van Kerkhove, was afraid to take her driving. Dani is the oldest of three sisters, her mother’s first experience with teenage driving. She has her best friend drive with Dani first.

Dani’s mother slowly got over her fear. They began taking short trips with Dani at the wheel. She let Dani drive to swimming practices a few miles from home. After a few months, Dani drove to North Carolina for a swim meet.

Dani is a cautious driver, but Bertie Van Kerkhove still worries.

The family lives off twisting narrow roads in Roanoke County. One morning, when Dani was too tired to drive to swim practice, a car crossed the center lane into her mother’s lane. She swerved out of the car’s way.

She wonders how Dani would have responded.

“Any parent that cares about their child would be worried,” she said. “But I’m not going to make myself crazy.”

Building experience

In late October, Olivia was behind the wheel of Gabe Saker’s silver Kia driver education car. Dani sat in the back seat, waiting for her turn to drive.

Olivia gripped the wheel in the rigid, extra careful manner of a new driver. As she drove down empty country roads and through downtown Roanoke, Saker corrected her mistakes. She made few.

Then, as she headed down Brambleton Avenue, a red Ford pickup pulled from a side street into Olivia’s lane. She slowed down fast enough that Saker did not have to use his passenger-side brake.

It wasn’t close, but Saker had seen the pickup long before Olivia had.

“You have to anticipate danger, anticipate problems,” Saker said.

Olivia kept driving, soaking in the lesson.

That’s what’s scary about driving with teens, Saker said. “Defensive skills take experience. That’s what the elderly have that they don’t.”

Aside from drunken driving, Saker said overcorrecting causes most fatal crashes among inexperienced drivers.

When teens drive off the pavement onto the shoulder, they often panic and jerk the wheel back toward to road. The vehicle crosses into the opposite lane, strikes a car or a tree or flips.

Some teachers who work for him practice recovery by having the students pull onto a shoulder at a slow speed.

Saker does not.

“It’s kind of dangerous to do it with kids in the car,” he said.

Ready

By early November, Dani and Olivia each had driven more than 40 hours with their parents. They scored high on their written exams. Both easily passed Saker’s driving test.

Olivia will get her license in April.

On Dec. 8, Dani got her license.

The night before, Dani’s father filled up the Explorer’s gas tank.

Before school the next morning, Dani drove alone to meet her friends for breakfast at Famous Anthony’s. When she got there she called her mom. After school, she called again to say she was leaving.

That way, Bertie Van Kerkhove would know when to expect her daughter to pull into the driveway.