Maverick Driving Academy opens Granbury location

After a one-year hiatus, Granbury High School students can now start attending driver’s education classes in Hood County.

Maverick Driving Academy — a Burleson-based driving school with a second location in Aledo — has recently opened a third location in Granbury. It’s at 403 Temple Hall Highway in Suite 6 (next to the old Hank FM location).

With the previous GHS driving instructor, Donny Wiley, resigning last year, many students were unable to finish driver’s ed.

“I was doing a road test at our Burleson location in November, and I was testing a girl from Granbury and she was telling me how the driver’s ed instructor at Granbury High School had quit,” said Adam Legler, owner of Maverick Driving Academy. “She was lucky enough to finish everything, but she had a lot of friends who needed drive times to finish their driver's ed, and so that got the wheels turning for us. We started looking around December and January, found the location we were at now, and I just decided to go ahead and go for it.”

The first class started on April 11 and ended on May 6, with a total of 13 students attending the class.

STUDENT’S VIEW OF CLASS

One of the students, 15-year-old Atticus Taylor, said his biggest takeaway from the course is, “don’t drink and drive, stay safe and worry about yourself instead of having fun.”

Taylor, a sophomore at Granbury High School, said students in the class practiced a field sobriety test. More specifically, it included a walk-and-turn test, where they had to take nine steps, heel to toe in a straight line, turn on one foot, and then walk nine steps in the opposite direction.

“They've tried to teach us more about drinking and driving, how we shouldn't do that and we should prioritize our own safety over anything else,” he said.

The best part about the course, he said, was getting to experience the “drunk goggles.”

Used in many driver’s education courses, simulation goggles are used to demonstrate the impairment of alcohol consumption on a person’s vision and coordination.

“It was super fun,” Taylor said. “It just gave me double vision and made me super dizzy.”

PARENT’S VIEW ON CLASS

Taylor’s mother, Ivie, said she was happy Maverick Driving Academy was recommended to her, explaining that she would “much rather leave driving to the professionals.”

“I feel like kids are more nervous to drive with their parents, and I have a pretty new car, and so he's next to me like, ‘OK, can I go over 30?’ and I'm like, ‘You have to, son; it's 45. You got to drive. You got to get up there,’” she said, with a laugh. “Kids are more nervous with their parents, so I think having a true driving instructor kind of takes some of the stress away, for them and for us.”

One of Ivie’s biggest fears is the worry that Atticus would text and drive, but she said the course has covered that topic repeatedly.

“Back when I did driver’s ed, it wasn't even something that was mentioned, you know, that was back in like the Nokia brick phone era. People didn't really text and drive, whereas now kids are Snapchatting while they're driving, like they're actively using their phones on the road,” Ivie said. “I worried about him doing that, but he said that they did go over that multiple times, about how dangerous it is and how those things can wait.”

Overall, Ivie said the new driving school has taken a lot of the pressures off of her, and she hopes the program will stay for many years to come.

“I think we've been without a driving school for several years now, so I'm glad to see that we have one back and hopefully with us supporting them, they'll be able to stick around,” she added.

COURSE INFORMATION

The next course starts on Monday, May 9, and will end on Friday, June 3. Classes will be held on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 6-8 p.m. This class will be discounted at $325, as long as payment is made over the phone. Registration for the course will be open until 6 p.m. on Monday.

Drive times will be limited until the summer as more instructors are brought on.

“We are currently training new Granbury instructors, so we will not really be offering a lot of drive times until summertime because it takes a while for the approval process with the state,” Legler said. “It doesn't affect anybody who's taking classes with us because there's a backup at DPS to even get a permit, so a lot of them won't have their permits until the summer.”

Once certification is complete, the Granbury location will have five part-time instructors.

June classes will be held from June 6-30, at the regular price of $350. Classes will be held from 4-6 p.m. or 6-8 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

July classes will be held from July 5-28 from 9-11 a.m. or 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday through Thursday at the regular price of $350.

Maverick Driving Academy also offers the Texas Department of Public Safety driving test along with a practice road test. DPS road tests are $60 for minors and $75 for adults while practice tests are $40.

“We're hoping people take advantage of our practice road DPS test because there's a 90% fail rate at some of the DPS locations,” Legler said. “A lot of times people take the practice test and turn around and take the actual road test. We have like a 99% passing rate on that for obvious reasons. When they take the real test, we don't say anything, but we tell them everything on the practice tests.”

Legler encourages students to sign up for the course as “most insurance companies give a bigger insurance discount versus doing a parent-taught program.”

“There's also a Texas A&M study that your kid is 50% less likely to be in a serious wreck their first year of driving if they go to a driving school instead of parent-taught,” he added.

For more information or to sign up for a class, visit maverickdrivingacademy.com.