Tony Scotti / Photo by Mike Mergen

Tony Scotti may not be the only teacher in America whose students have shot at him, but he may be the only one to have given them an A for doing so. After all, Scotti says, the guys were just doing what they'd been taught to do. And it wasn't him they were trying to kill -- they thought he was someone else. These things happen. Also, for the most part, his bulletproof windshield withstood the attack. A few cuts and bruises. Slight whiplash. A case of the heebie-jeebies. No big deal.

As it happens, Scotti isn't a teacher in the Providence Public School system. Strictly speaking, he isn't a teacher at all. Scotti is a driving instructor. You could go so far as to say he teaches driver safety. His approach to the subject, though, is a little unorthodox. Indeed, under normal circumstances, the driving techniques Scotti teaches -- the so-called Scotti Method -- would not only violate the rules of the road, but probably a few federal statutes as well. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the stuff of your average drivers'-ed course.

"We teach the basics: three-point turns, looking over your shoulder when backing up, parallel parking, how to put the car in park and shut off the engine," says Jim Slowey, an instructor at Central Auto School in East Boston, Massachusetts. "We show you how to change a flat tire, how to fill out an accident report."

The curriculum devised by Scotti, on the other hand, includes surveillance detection; high-speed braking and turning; skidding; spinning; slamming; smashing; using your car as a weapon; reversing at top speed; and shooting from a moving vehicle.

In a recent newsletter put out by the Tony Scotti Training Network (TSTN) -- a consortium of schools located in Rhode Island, California, Michigan, and Nevada -- there is an article titled "Escaping the Kill Zone (Ramming)." "Put your foot on the pedal and do not let up," the article advises. "Your vehicle will make contact [and] then push the barricade out of the path of travel." In the course of his 30-year career, Scotti says, he has consigned hundreds of cars to the scrap heap teaching people to do stuff like this.

For those whose careers are dedicated to advising people how not to crash into things, the idea of a bunch of wheel-jerking, fishtailing Tony Scotti grads taking to the streets is an unsettling prospect. "I don't think that we would want to teach someone how to do that," says Jim Slowey. "I think it would be very foolish to have an auto school that teaches you to drive that way."

Slowey has a point. But those who sign up with TSTN are not jittery first-timers or adrenaline-drenched teens. They are, for the most part, security professionals: bodyguards, soldiers, chauffeurs, police officers, and Secret Service agents. And they are less interested in the rules of the road than they are in steering clear of assassins, kidnappers, and terrorists. When there are bullets shattering your windshield and grenades clattering across your hood, there's little time to check your mirrors, put on your turn signal, and pull smoothly away from the curb. For Scotti and his associates, "car trouble" has a very specific meaning.

"We don't teach civilians how to do security work," says Anthony Ricci, owner of Advanced Driving & Security Inc. (ADSI), a Scotti driving school in Rhode Island. "We do car-control clinics for civilians. We concentrate on some security elements, but we don't teach them how to get out of kill zones. We don't teach them how to deploy from a vehicle using a weapon. We're not going to teach them how to shoot through glass. There's no need for them to do that. They are not going to know how to do that stuff."

Not yet, anyway.

"Let's be honest," says Scotti. "There's a huge market for people who have no need for this." Meaning, the kinds of people who enjoy leaping out of airplanes, rummaging around at the bottom of the sea, and zipping down the sides of mountains may be equally inclined to get their kicks on TSTN's driving strips. After all, there can be few activities more, er, bracing than losing control of a car going 70 miles per hour. As Scotti puts it, "I still can't believe I got paid for doing that."

AT FIRST glance, Tony Scotti, 66, doesn't look much like an action figure. Balding and bespectacled, he would not seem out of place at a local Dunkin' Donuts, a Boston Herald under his arm, ordering his sixth small regular of the day. Indeed, since he went into "semi-retirement" a few years back, Scotti has spent his days quietly, pottering around his Medford, Massachusetts, neighborhood. Time was, though, Scotti enjoyed a lifestyle that would have done Indiana Jones proud.

Since the early '70s, when he founded his school, Scotti has taught in some of the world's most volatile regions -- Haiti, Iran, Colombia, Pakistan, El Salvador, the Philippines. He has trained the bodyguards of Will Smith and the emir of Kuwait. He has barked orders at cigar-chewing soldiers of fortune and found himself caught up in a violent Islamic revolution. On more than one occasion, he has been shot at, most famously in Venezuela, when a group of his own trainees mistook him for an enemy infiltrator and let loose with a cannonade of gunfire.

"There aren't too many people who have actually done this stuff," Scotti says, referring to the defensive-driving institutes that have cropped up in the 30 years since he founded his own. "In this business, there are an awful lot of people teaching who have never done anything. I've been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. When I talk about being ambushed, I've been ambushed."

But Scotti hasn't been ambushed in a long time. In 1997, he sold his original school, the Scotti School of Defensive Driving, to a businessman in Florida, a move he describes as "the biggest mistake of my life." Shortly afterwards, some of Scotti's former instructors and admirers formed TSTN -- hiring Scotti as a consultant. Then, last year, Scotti's wife of 34 years died unexpectedly, and Scotti fell off the map. "I've got the image of a tough guy who does all kinds of crazy-ass things, and I've been all over the world and all that other shit," he says. "But if you told me anything, anything, would affect me like that, I'd have said no way. It just brought me to my knees." For a moment, it seems this hard-bitten antiterrorism expert may start crying.

Following his wife's death, Scotti became a "recluse," he says, hardly ever venturing out, refusing to speak to any of his old friends and colleagues. Some people began to worry about his mental state. But Scotti's a tough old bird. He's also something of a patron saint to those in the defensive-driving game. "Scotti's the expert, the guru," says Anthony Ricci. "He's written the books. He was there at the beginning. When it comes to security driving, he's the best in the business. He's the guy." For those who know him, it seemed unthinkable that Scotti would remove himself completely from the industry that he pretty much invented. They were right.

"I'm getting back into it now," Scotti says. "I'm trying to get my act together. It's not been easy, but I've been trying." He adds, sounding decidedly more chirpy, "There's been a huge demand lately for what we do, the way we do it."

Recently, Scotti was asked to review some Al Qaeda training videos -- though he won't reveal by whom. "I'd go to jail," he says, "and I don't look good in stripes." With this, he lets out one of his frequent, throaty chuckles. What Scotti saw in those tapes, though, is no laughing matter. "It was absolutely incredible driving and shooting," he says. "Standing up on the pegs of a motorcycle with an AK-47, shooting at a car, and hitting it." There is more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "I don't know where they're learning that stuff, but that person had practiced. It was very impressive. As a matter of fact, I'd like to go to their schools." He laughs again, a head-back, attention-grabbing guffaw.

SPEAK TO Scotti for long enough, and it becomes clear that he's never more alive than when he's immersed in his business. And, given the current state of the world, it seems likely that Scotti will be lively for quite a while. In late November, in a classic Scotti scenario, a car carrying Saparmurat Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan, was ambushed by gunmen. Niyazov survived, presumably because his driver had received some form of Scotti-type training. And while it seems that Niyazov's attackers were not Al Qaeda-affiliated, Scotti insists that the terror network will almost certainly conduct similar hits in the future.

"The Al Qaeda videos show they are planning to attack vehicles," he says, a twinkle in his eye. "They clearly show that."

Of course, most of us don't have to worry about bin Laden devotees pouncing on us on the way to our local Stop & Shop. Even so, ordinary people are showing increasing interest in Scotti's schools. The reason for this can be summed up in a single word: carjacking. Though not the hot-button issue it once was, carjacking is still a source of anxiety for many Americans, and rightly so. A report put out by the National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that the US saw an average of 49,000 "attempted or completed" carjackings a year between 1992 and 1996. And it's not only soccer moms who are at risk. A day after the Niyazov incident, burly New York Giants wide receiver Tim Carter was carjacked by a couple of gun-toting thugs.

"People," says Scotti, "are scared."

Add a few snipers, drunk drivers, and road ragers to the mix, and defensive driving starts to seem like a very sensible option indeed. "As our world changes, people are getting more security-conscious, and they are going to want to learn how to do these things," says Ricci. "I had one lady into real estate, someone who has the potential to be attacked. We did teach her to do J-turns, even ramming. She was very good, very aggressive. But she wasn't there to have fun. She said there was a need. This has to be done in a responsible manner."

(For the record: a J-turn is a maneuver that involves driving backwards as fast as you can, yanking the steering wheel around so the car goes into a spin, and then, mid-spin, slamming the car into drive, so that when facing in the opposite direction you can accelerate and, tires screeching, go speeding away. The technique is meant to be used when faced with a roadblock-type ambush. I've tried it. It is an awful lot of fun.)

"Let's be honest," Scotti says, "when it comes to people like you, is it people afraid for their safety or is it people who want a thrill? There's a whole market out there, what I call the Super Galactic Ninja market. One of the things about our school was that you were always in a class of your peers. They were all people who did what you did. We prided ourselves on that. I don't mean this in an insulting tone, but wanna-bes -- people who want to learn to do J-turns, ramming, shooting -- there's a huge market for that. We made a big mistake in not going after that market."

Scotti first came to this realization while attending a Soldier of Fortune -- or "Soldier of Fiction" -- convention in Las Vegas a few years ago. "I'm walking around, bored to death," he recalls. "Everyone's dressed like a tree. I walk past this booth, and I see a knife. I ask the guy, `Is that price for real? A thousand bucks for a freakin' knife?' See, all these guys dressed as trees, if you talk to them, they're all doctors, lawyers. This is a fantasy camp."

If Scotti gets his way, then these knife-buying fantasists will soon be shelling out similar amounts to go barreling around in TSTN's fleet of old Crown Victorias. "I say to the guys, go for it," Scotti says. "But it's not up to me, it's up to them."

Officially, Scotti will indeed have little say over whether to allow thrill seekers into TSTN's driving courses. After all, he is, as he puts it, little more than a "figurehead" these days. And yet it's clear that Scotti still commands a great deal of respect in the industry. Ricci, for instance, responds to news of his mentor's enthusiasm for the fantasy market with such an abrupt U-turn you can practically hear his mental tires screeching. "I'm not saying I won't teach that stuff if Tony's saying I will," Ricci says. "He may be looking at a new market. Maybe he's thinking ahead of me."

But not everyone is so easily swayed.

"I believe the requirement [to obtain a driver's license] is to be able to back up 50 feet," says David Shaw, a spokesman for the Registry of Motor Vehicles, "but not at 50 miles an hour. Certainly, knowing what to do in dangerous situations is important. But driving like a maniac because you know how is an awful idea. We urge drivers to take courses to heighten their skills, but if this is going to make people fearless, and therefore reckless, that we don't want. If someone takes this class, thinks he's an expert, and decides to go down [the street] backwards, that would be a disaster.

"It does sound like fun, though," he adds. "How much is it?"

Not cheap. A one-day ASDI course, complete with an afternoon on the driving strip, will set you back about a grand, though the price goes up to $2000-plus for more elaborate training. "For the rubber alone it's worth it," says Ricci. "I guarantee to give you a set of tires. You just have to scrape them off the pavement to get them."

THE SCOTTI Method isn't all fun and games, however. Before they go out on the driving strip, TSTN students must spend a considerable amount of time in the classroom, learning about lateral acceleration, turning radiuses, and weight transference. There's an old Scotti quote that Ricci is fond of repeating: if you're not doing the science, you're not educating, you're entertaining. "It's not just driving through cones," Ricci says. "We're measuring a student's ability to use the capabilities of the vehicle. This is backed by math, not the instructor's opinion. What we teach can be scientifically proven."

Indeed, Scotti -- an engineer by training -- founded his method on the premise that one can understand, and so prevent, ambushes by applying the delineations and calculations usually associated with accident reconstruction (hence another well-worn Scotti quote: an ambush is just an accident with guns). "I don't care if you're walking through Medford Square or driving in Bogotá," Scotti says. "An ambush is a time-distance relationship. How much time do I have? How close are they? How fast am I moving? Well, all that can be put into an equation."

He returns to Al Qaeda. "You've heard this many times, that they answer only to Allah," Scotti says. "Well, no offense to Allah, but that's bullshit. They live by the laws of physics, the same laws we all live by, the laws of the universe. When someone pulls a trigger, a bullet comes out at a certain velocity and at a certain angle. Allah, I think, cannot make a bullet go around corners. Allah can't, when you put the brakes on at 60 miles an hour, make the car stop any quicker. There is a science to what they're doing. People have called my training the `Scotti Method' -- well, I didn't get hit on the head with the apple, it wasn't me. It's the laws of physics."

This may be so, but there's no getting away from the fact that the truly compelling things about the Tony Scotti driving experience are the ramming, the slamming, the screeching, the swishing, the speed. After all, equations like LA = V ² / R (32.2) don't mean much until you've felt the dynamics they describe, the irresistible forces that send you sliding across your car seat, the car itself juddering across the surface of the road, its tires howling, leaving a trail of acrid smoke. That's what the thrill seekers will be willing to shell out a thousand bucks or more for. That's living.

Scotti, for all his previous enthusiasm, does not really approve of such a devil-may-care approach to the art of defensive driving. After all, he says, the roads are already dangerous enough. "Someone once asked me what incident scared me the most," he continues, leaning in, solemn again. "I can tell you, and I'm sincere, it was when my beautiful little girl drove a car for the first time. Lives are wiped out every day. Nothing I've ever done has scared me more than that."

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: January 10 - 16, 2003