The two owners of the Dutchess School of Driving beamed proudly upon learning that the most elderly client in their history passed her driving test with flying colors.
“She was an 82-year-old woman who had never driven before,” Isa Marinaro says. “She was newly widowed and needed to drive to the grocery store, church and cemetery.”
Marinaro and her sister, Maria Dominijanni, run a large operation involving passenger cars, school buses, trucks and tractor-trailers. They also conduct five-hour prelicensing and defensive driving classes and evaluate the elderly and incapacitated for driving. The sisters have one vehicle with special controls for the disabled who have perhaps suffered a stroke or lost a limb. Two instructors specialize in that training.
In regard to senior drivers, the sisters have observed that skills depend on ability, not age. ”A 25-year-old might have poor reaction time, and a 90-year-old could be perfectly capable,” Marinaro says.
Teen drivers present instructors with special challenges.
“Teens are involved in so many things,” Dominijanni says. “It”™s difficult to keep them focused. They are always in a rush. We warn them they cannot drive with music so loud that they can”™t hear an emergency vehicle”™s siren.”
The sisters”™ worst mishap happened early in the partnership. Marinaro was riding as a passenger behind a motorcycle student. “I instructed him to change lanes,” she recalls. “We teach the students to be aware of what is in front of them before turning their heads for a split second to check the blind spot in the next lane not picked up by the mirror. He turned without checking first in front and panicked when he turned back and saw the light change to red. We both fell and suffered bruises. It”™s hard for a new driver to judge time and distance.”
Right now the business is kept busy with aspiring bus and tractor-trailer drivers seeking work in the current economy.
Twelve to 15 full and part-time instructors and five office personnel are employed at the facility on Route 82 in Hopewell Junction, where its 10th anniversary is being marked.
The sisters have been in business much longer, however. The two were born in Italy and came with their parents from Matera, south of Bari, in 1980, when Maria was 18 and Isa 12. Maria was attending Mount Vernon High School when she landed a part-time job at a local driving school. “I loved it. I kept working in the office when I went to Westchester Community College.”
Marriage and a baby changed that. “The boss trained my sister to take my place while I was home with the baby,” she recounts. “My sister came up with the idea of opening our own school.”
Formula One Driving was born in Mamaroneck in l988, Marinaro says. “Maria tended the office and baby, and I was in the car,” she says. They started with one car having dual controls and one motorcycle and also offered a five-hour defensive driving course. “We continued in that business until two years ago. My nephew, Daniel Dominijanni, the little baby when we went into business, grew up to join us in the operation. He and I continued to run the school while Maria established the new Dutchess school. We sold the Mamaroneck operation two years ago. Now all three of us are at Hopewell Junction.”
Make that four. Daniel”™s brother, Giulano, a sophomore at St. John”™s University in Queens, pitches in on school holidays.
Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be emailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.
