HYRUM, Utah — Is sliding around in a car in an empty church parking lot good practice for handling Utah’s icy roads? Or is it trespassing or possibly reckless driving?
It depends who you ask.
“It's real life experience practice for them to go out and learn how to control their car when it gets a little out of hand,” according to Jonny Argyle.
With the roads snow packed and slick, he thinks an empty parking lot is an ideal place to practice.
Kristi, who doesn’t want her last name used, says her son’s anxiety kicked in after a slippery drive through Sardine Canyon.
“I had suggested him and his brother go practice driving in the snow,” she said.
So her sons, ages 17 and 20, went to a church parking lot to get some practice sliding and reacting to how the car moves.
But then, the law showed up.
“They don't believe the police officer even saw them doing any sliding,” Kristi said. “But they were open and honest with the police officer and cooperative.”
And both were ticketed for reckless driving.
“You can receive a ticket for what's called reckless driving and that's basically you're driving your vehicle in a willful and wanton disregard for people's safety or the property,” said Captain Curtis Hooley with the Logan Police Department.
It wasn’t Logan police that cited the brothers, but Hooley says there’s also a trespassing issue.
“As a citizen we don't have the right to go utilize people's parking lots for things such as you know doing donuts and those types of things,” the captain said.
Hooley also says doing donuts in a parking lot doesn’t create a real world simulation.
Argyle, who practices slides in his vintage VW disagrees.
“More of these people on the freeway is that as soon as the snow flies, if they'd have done that in the parking lots they probably wouldn't have gotten into accidents,” he said.
Kristi says she’s not sure how else kids are going to learn.
In the meantime, she hopes to get the Class B misdemeanor citations reduced.
