At 15, Brad Coleman arrived at SafeWay Driving with what he called "a little bit of cockiness." He had started karting at 13, entered Formula Renault 1600 racing at 14, and spent well over 10,000 hours focused on one job: making a vehicle go as fast as possible. He could feel the limit of the tires, judge the chassis, manage engine performance, and downshift for speed rather than passenger comfort. He expected an ordinary parking lot lesson to be easy.
Then the instructor raised problems that a racetrack had never required him to solve. How do we position a car so we do not get rear-ended? What do we do when approaching a traffic light that has already been green for a long time? Coleman knew how to work at the edge of grip, but that did not prepare him for the uncertainty of ordinary traffic. The first parking lot lesson exposed the gap.
The first parking lot lesson exposed the gap.
Performance driving and street safety are often treated as though one naturally produces the other. Coleman's experience says otherwise. Racing gave him exceptional control at speed. SafeWay Driving taught him to account for traffic lights, other drivers, and collisions he could prevent without causing them. Years later, after driving the #18 car for Joe Gibbs Racing, he returned to buy the school that had corrected his teenage confidence.
The parking lot lesson that humbled a 15-year-old racer
Formal driver education came late in Coleman's development as a driver, even though it arrived as early as Texas law allowed. On the day he turned 15, he entered the SafeWay Driving classroom. On the first day he could obtain his learner license, he went to the Texas DPS and got it. By then, however, he was already racing Formula Renault 1600 cars. He had learned to extract speed from a small open-wheel car before learning the procedures required to drive legally on a public road.
That training was real, but narrow. On a racetrack, Coleman worked on the limit of the tires and chassis, the output of the engine, and the quickest way to downshift. Comfort did not matter. Traffic lights did not matter. Preventing another driver from striking the rear of his car was not the main task. He was trained to reduce lap time on a controlled course, and well over 10,000 hours of that work made him highly capable at precisely what he had practiced.
The parking lot lesson forced him to start over in specific areas. A light that has been green for a long time requires a street strategy because it may change before we reach it. Preventing a rear-end collision requires us to consider the vehicle behind us, not merely the open space ahead. These are not lesser skills because they are used at lower speeds. They are different skills, built around drivers whose intentions and attention we cannot control.
Coleman later said he has crashed more in a car than most people ever will, but never on the street. The crashes happened in racing, where contact and mistakes were part of the job. That record does not mean a race driver is automatically safe in traffic. Coleman instead respected the distinction early enough to learn both disciplines rather than assume mastery of one covered the other.
Joe Gibbs Racing called, and college could wait
Coleman did not move directly from Formula Renault 1600 into NASCAR. He progressed into larger formula cars and the Pro Mazda series, then raced sports cars in Grand Am and entered the 24 Hours of Daytona. Because his background was in road racing, he added late models and short tracks. The cross-training was deliberate. NASCAR was enormous in the late nineties and early 2000s, and road-course ability alone would not prepare him for the work he wanted.
The decision between racing and college ended with a phone call. Joe Gibbs Racing had seen Coleman in the ARCA series and offered him the #18 car in the Busch Series. His answer was straightforward: "College can wait." He started in NASCAR in 2006 and named 2011 as his final season, estimating the career at five, six years. He was teammates with Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, and Joey Logano. In his last year, Coleman and his teammate shared the #18 car and won the owner's championship.
He reached that level without generations of family racing knowledge behind him. Coleman contrasted his route with those of racing families. His grandfather had spent more than 30 years as a basketball coach at Memorial High School in Houston. His father played tennis and basketball. Cars in the Coleman household extended mainly to Matchbox and Hot Wheels until Brad pushed the family into motorsports.
His father did bring a skill racing badly needs: advertising and marketing. He helped find sponsors and taught Coleman how to activate this sponsorship rather than stop at putting a sticker on the car. That meant deciding how to use the driver, what to do at the races, and which special events would make the arrangement useful to the sponsor. Coleman still needed competitive equipment and driving ability, but his father understood the commercial work required to keep a car on the track.
Talent alone does not guarantee visibility. Coleman's assessment is blunt: a gifted driver in the worst car may run in the middle or at the back, where nobody notices. Racing demands ability and equipment at the same time. A driver cannot demonstrate much without a competitive seat. The Joe Gibbs Racing call provided the opportunity that Coleman's years of cross-training had prepared him to use.
Talent alone does not guarantee visibility.
One simulator crash changed the purpose of the school visits
Nationwide Insurance created the assignment that eventually drew Coleman back to driver education. As the NASCAR circuit moved to a different city each week, drivers visited local high schools with a simulator. Students would begin driving, receive a cell phone, and then crash while distracted. Many laughed in front of their friends and treated the wreck as part of the demonstration.
Coleman initially viewed those visits as obligations attached to racing. He was fresh out of high school himself, and spending more time around high school students was about the last thing he wanted. He made the appearances because they were part of the job. Then one student tried to look cool, took the phone, crashed the simulator, and reacted differently. Coleman saw the realization in his eyes: using the phone was harder, and his control was worse, than he had assumed.
A simulator crash cannot reproduce every consequence of a real collision, but it can dismantle a bad assumption in seconds. The student had believed he could manage the phone and the vehicle together. The simulator gave him immediate evidence that he could not. Coleman began taking the appearances more seriously after that, rather than treating them as sponsor work to finish before returning to the track.
A simulator crash cannot reproduce every consequence of a real collision, but it can dismantle a bad assumption in seconds.
He told his father that this might be something he could do after racing. His father directed him to Coach Walker, the founder of SafeWay Driving and the man who owned the school where Coleman had received his first street instruction. Coach Walker and his wife were looking to retire. Coleman proposed buying the company, turning an unwanted high school obligation into his next full-time line of work.
The connection was direct. At 15, SafeWay had shown Coleman that speed training left holes in his street knowledge. As a NASCAR driver, he watched a teenager discover a similar gap through distracted driving in a simulator. Purchasing SafeWay gave him a place to address those errors before students made them in traffic, where a crash has no reset button.
A Hemi, a Houston flood, and terror in a Ford Taurus
Coleman's first street vehicle was a white 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 Hemi owned by a neighbor. At 14, before he had a learner license, the neighbor offered to let him drive it. Coleman initially refused because he was a rule follower, but eventually got behind the wheel and drove around the local streets with the owner beside him. Coming from 1600 cc race cars and go-karts, he was fascinated by a heavy pickup that could spin its rear tires with little effort.
When Coleman turned 16, the neighbor gave his father a "smoking deal," and the Ram became his birthday present. He learned how quickly a pickup's lightly loaded rear end could step out. His modifications were limited but specific: a cold air intake that added induction sound as well as performance, and XM radio. The radio mattered because he lived in Danville, Virginia, attended high school about 30 minutes away in Martinsville, and traveled roughly an hour and a half to Cary, North Carolina, for late-model racing. Local stations did not reliably cover those drives.
The Ram eventually gave way to a Dodge Charger SRT8 with a six point one liter V8 producing four hundred twenty five horsepower. Later came the car Coleman would most readily have back: a 2013 Audi S4. Houston's Memorial Day flood took that choice from him. A truck traveling in the opposite direction sent a wave over the Audi's hood, the engine seized, and the car began floating.
Coleman remained inside for 4 hours before someone towed him out. The air conditioning was gone, Houston was humid, and water lapped against the body like the side of a boat. Every few minutes, he pressed the start button and hoped the engine might crank. It never did. The Audi S4 remains memorable partly because he did not choose when to sell it. The flood ended its service before he was ready.
His most dangerous memory, however, involves an ordinary rental Ford Taurus or Crown Vic rather than a race car or high-powered street vehicle. At Buttonwillow Raceway in California, his teenage driving coach Michael McDowell used the rental to demonstrate the track. McDowell was 16, with bleach-tipped hair, years before becoming a Daytona 500 winner. He struck curbs, sent all four tires off the ground over hills, and returned rental cars with bubbles in the tire sidewalls. Coleman remembers thinking he might die in a Ford Taurus.
The Ford was not the problem. The circumstances were. Someone was driving an ordinary rental car as though it were track equipment, and Coleman was a passenger with no control over the demonstration. His SafeWay training had introduced the same distinction: capability, environment, and driver behavior require separate judgments. A modest car used badly can be more frightening than a purpose-built race car used where it belongs.
Why an M-car devotee chose a Tesla Model Y Performance
Coleman never stopped wanting performance. After the Charger SRT8, his street-car history included a yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser, the Audi S4, a Volkswagen Golf R, an Audi Q5, a second-generation Ford Raptor, a BMW X3 M, an Audi SQ5, another BMW X3 M, a Tesla Model 3 Performance, and finally a Tesla Model Y Performance. The sequence records repeated tradeoffs among power, handling, ride quality, and daily use rather than loyalty to one badge or engine layout.
The Volkswagen Golf R made around 330 horsepower in Coleman's description and delivered the kind of all-wheel-drive pace that quickly changed passengers' opinions. The BMW X3 M went further. Its M3 engine and stiff chassis made it an exceptional-handling SUV, but the ride was severe. Turning into a driveway could leave the left rear wheel in the air because the chassis resisted flex. Coleman briefly moved to an Audi SQ5 for more comfort, found it too slow, and returned to another X3 M because he missed the BMW's handling.
A rental Tesla Model 3 broke that cycle. It was not even the Performance version, yet it persuaded a driver who expected to keep owning M cars that an electric vehicle could satisfy him. He later bought the Tesla Model 3 Performance and found its freeway ride surprisingly compliant after the X3 M. It handled undulations and ordinary bumps with a float he considered close to air suspension, although its low-profile tires still transmitted potholes and sharp cracks into the cabin.
Coleman also used track mode when snow reached Houston. In an empty parking lot owned by his family's volleyball club, he selected full rear wheel power and drifted the Model 3 Performance with his children in the car. The setting matters: he used track mode in an empty lot, not as an excuse to experiment in traffic. Performance remained part of the car's appeal, but the environment determined when he used it.
Performance remained part of the car's appeal, but the environment determined when he used it.
His Model Y Performance retained the speed and utility he wanted but did not duplicate the Model 3's near-air-suspension float. Coleman described it as firmer, recognizably a performance SUV, though nowhere near as harsh as the BMW X3 M. That comparison says more than acceleration figures alone. A vehicle can be fast and still earn its place through ride quality, predictable range, and the way it handles hours of ordinary driving.
SafeWay Driving now brings the same practical approach to street safety to 24 locations across Texas. Founded in 1973, the company has trained more than 275,000 students. Its graduates have a stated 3.28% first-year crash rate, compared with 5.27% for graduates of other Texas driving schools. Those figures measure the work racing could not teach Coleman at 15: reading routine traffic, anticipating other drivers, and completing the first year without a crash.
