A West Virginia driving instructor was arrested last week for allegedly telling a student to 'do donuts' in a field. Apparently teaching car control is a crime now.
At the end of March, well known South Charleston driving instructor Edwin "Bud" Anderson was instructing one teenage girl and told her to drive onto a field owned by the University of Charleston. Anderson stated that the girl is going into the military, and she should have experience driving offroad, like she would in a Humvee.
WCHS-TV reports that Anderson instructed her to take "quick turns between several power poles." For this, Anderson was charged with misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a minor and destruction of property.
The Charleston Daily Mail reports that South Charleston Police Officer B.A. Paschall saw the girl doing "doughnuts" in the field and called for backup before approaching the vehicle. When Anderson explained what was going on, Paschall argued that the car was unsafe for off road driving, in that it lacked a roll cage or five-point harness. The Daily Mail also reports that the University of Charleston indicated it wanted Anderson charged.
While in handcuffs, Anderson told reporters, "at 20 miles an hour, there was no problem."
A second student, James Caraballo, was in the back seat during the whole lesson and backed up his teacher. He told WCHS-TV, "I don't see what the problem is, really. “They are trying to say he was contributing to delinquency, but he was trying to teach them how to survive in case of danger."
It's not even clear to me that Anderson did have his student do donuts. I don't exactly trust these police officers to know what a 'donut' even is. These people arrested a driving instructor for teaching a student how to drive, after all. It sounds to me more like he was just trying to give her a sense of how a car feels off road. These lessons could well be applied to driving in the snow or heavy rain, something Americans could certainly use more instruction for, not less.