The following is a letter written by Carl Kircher of Xtreme Measures

Dear Brian,

    Thanks for taking my call the other day. I’m sorry it’s taken awhile to get back to you, but a lot is happening right now. The last 10 months my partner and I have been working double time on
applying for and getting final approval on our 501-c not for profit status with the IRS, which was finalized this week, so we are just now able to actively seek our corporate partners. I am also sure that you get a lot of requests about contacting the Petty Organization for this or that. Hopefully you will feel it is an important enough issue that it warrants a look, and that it is a "natural" enough fit to forward me to them and at least get an opportunity to discuss what we do. This response is going to be a bit long winded, but I may only get one shot with you and I think where we started, where we are, and where we want to go is all
important stuff!!..so put your feet up, get something to drink, and here we go.

    First of all my name is Carl Kircher, and I am based in Atlanta. For the past 20 years I have been involved with motor racing and professional driving instruction at various levels and venues on the eastern seaboard. Most recently for the last 3-1/2 years I was Chief Instructor for the Peachtree Chapter of the BMW Car Club here at Road Atlanta. BMWCCA is a national organization with almost 70,000 members dedicated primarily to BMW owners and their cars. Part of what we do as Club’s, is host events several
times a year at our local home track’s, and instruct people in any car they own, how to drive quickly, efficiently, and safely. Although my tenure as Chief is over now, I am still actively involved as an instructor, and donate my experience and time in trade for free track time! Can you relate? During my tenure I
developed a relationship with a large group of Instructors all over that have the same thought process...learn your vehicle, learn yourself, what can I do, what can’t I do...and trade for more free track time! So I began to think that what we do could be modified slightly to benefit those that needed it most...beginning drivers.

    My whole concept was sort of a "convergence of the planets" for me personally, meaning there was a lot of timing and skills that came together to push me to think more about something like this. Most important to me, was my 2 daughters were coming of age to drive, all of their friends parents that knew what I did on the weekends were asking me to teach their kids, and then....one of my oldest daughters friends was killed in a 2 wheels off the side of the road and overcorrecting crash that didn’t have to happen. That was it!!there had to be something or some way that I could help.

So I began to develop a program that I thought could accomplish my 2 main goals, 1) build automatic responses to given situations, and 2) have fun while we were doing it, which in my mind was the only way to keep their attention, both of which traditional drivers ed has failed to do. It hasn’t kept up with the times and doesn’t go far enough.

    The way we do this is start on Saturday morning with wet, soapy skid pads, go to wet soapy figure 8’s, emergency lane change exercises, threshold braking, 2 wheels off the road and proper re-entry into traffic, and end with an autocross on Sunday afternoon with more in between. For example, we get all the kids to put their spare tire on with an Instructor’s assistance to learn how to do it safely and properly. There are as many as 10 exercises going at once, to reduce wait time and increase the learning curve, and maximize the automatic response so critical to survival. I would be happy to get further into details at some point if you’d like, but I think you can see there is a lot going on and kids go home tired! I also thought some classroom could be designed to not only discuss the obvious such as car control technique, grip management, escape paths, situational awareness, etc, but subtley walk them across the threshold of teenager’s into young adults dealing with the responsibility that comes with freedom and the privilege of making their own decisions at this juncture in life. The response from teenagers and parents alike was overwhelming. If you get to the website to the section where we have posted emails, this school is truly an event in their life!. To date I have received 2 about lives saved because of this school and I don’t need to tell you how great that feels...
    There were 3 reasons to try to do this as a 501c. The first reason was to try to have the cost remain as low as possible to the student, and offer a corporate partner the tax benefit, the image building experience with giving back to the community as well as financial opportunity in that teen market segment and the
obvious publicity benefit, secondly, have access to the school district and the kids directly which as a for-profit you would not have, and most importantly reaching as many kids as possible without red or black ink being the deciding factor and instead focus on saving lives. So I have this idea...

    What if we could generate an alliance within all forms of Motorsport.A Winston CupPersonality such as a Kyle Petty, a Gary Densham in Drag Racing who is actively involved with teens, and a Sports Car or IRL-Cart guy who has an interest. In other words a bi-partisan coalition trying to make difference. I think you could make a point for celebrities in the Music business to step up and get involved also since teens are the reason they are where they are, and any combination thereof...we have all kinds of ideas for marketing, programming, spots, are you interested?

    Our next School is slated for August 17-18 at AMS as I said, and I know that you know about the airport there if anyone wants to fly in to take a look at what we do, even though it is a race weekend, is anyone interested? For more info, take a look at the website....http://www.xtrememeasures.org.

• 62% of all fatal motor vehicle accidents are 16-18 year olds according to NHTSA.
• "Imagine a machine made of metal that weighs 3,000 pounds, has the power of 200 horses,
  and can move through space at triple digit speeds. Now imagine showing someone how to
  start this machine and letting them go. It occurs on a daily basis because this is the
  average 16 year old getting into the average automobile with the average driver education."
• "What if someone offered a teenage driving school that could save your child’s life?
    Would anyone come?"

I have seen with my own eyes that they will come. It’s time to change this scenario and give our young drivers the training they need. It is time for Xtreme Measures!

    Thanks again for your help. There are a few ways to contact us. Email through the website is always good. If someone wants to call and talk, cell numbers are probably the best way. Mine is 678-300-3903, or my partner, whose name is Tim Hannon, is 404-886-8028. We would love for someone to come and spend a day with us to really get the scope of what we do at this school. Hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Carl Kircher
President
Xtreme Measures

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