The first time I approached the Vaswani Driving Academy on Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx, I wondered if I was in the right place.Was I here to get driving instructions or auditioning to be a clown?
The front window was plastered with advertisements for magicians, clowns, cotton candy, balloons, and snow cone machines. There was also a sign for a lawyer — but nothing about driving.
But then I looked up and saw the academy’s name above the window, alongside a sign advertising a five-hour pre-licensing certificate class. I felt reassured.
Still, I couldn’t get the clown idea out of my head as I opened the door to join the class, a requirement for a license in the state of New York.
Truth be told, I felt a bit clownish about becoming a student driver again as an adult. After all, I used to have a U.S. license, which I’d let lapse, and I still had a valid UK license, obtained while living in East Anglia as a graduate student.
My self-consciousness dissipated, however, the moment Nuresh Vaswani walked in the door. President of and teacher at the driving academy, he exuded the kind of confidence and sense of purpose that are infectious: Yes, you can do this, and no, you should not feel silly about it. He soon reassured the class that, far from being outlandish, it’s important for all adults to keep up to date on road safety — even if they’re already licensed.
“People think they know how to drive, but they’ve developed bad habits,” he said. “Like not bothering to look over their shoulders when changing lanes.”
Vaswani also had some strong beliefs about American drivers, noting that quite a lot has changed in recent years to make the streets more dangerous. Not only are there more cars on the road, but there are more high-tech toys that serve as potential distractions, like cell phones and navigation systems.
“They’d rather talk to their friend than drive safely,” Vaswani said, punctuating this remark with: “Wow!”
From Bombay to the Bronx
Vaswani likes telling stories that end in “Wow!”
For example: “I teach my students to wait three seconds after stopping at a stop sign. But the car behind them nearly always honks. Wow!”
Or: “I take my wife out for a hundred-dollar steak dinner, and she sits there texting her friends. Wow!”
It turns out his own life story is something of a “wow” as well. A first-generation American, he was born in 1966 to immigrant parents who’d come to the Bronx from Bombay, India.
While he was still a child, his parents invested in opening up their own restaurant, Indian Kitchen, which was on the Upper West Side at 78th Street and Broadway.
Put to work in the restaurant kitchen at the age of 7, Vaswani eventually rose to become a full-time chef.
Although he enjoyed cooking — he said he can still make a mean curry — once he reached adulthood, he harbored an ambition to get out from under his parents’ wing and start his own business.
While in his early 30s, he started teaching driving lessons to newly arrived immigrants in the Bronx so he could get a break from the kitchen. Pretty soon he discovered he had a knack for teaching. His clients appreciated his dedication to the principles of road safety and his entertaining, forthright style.
And then in 2000, his parents’ restaurant hit a turning point. The rent became unacceptably high, and they decided to sell the business.
Vaswani didn’t hesitate: “I took the opportunity to branch out on my own,” he said.
The Vaswani Driving Academy recently celebrated its 10th birthday, but Vaswani said he’s been celebrating from virtually the moment he began his business on Bainbridge Road. Customers began pouring in — more than he could possibly handle. He took care of all aspects of the business at the beginning, from teaching to sweeping the floors.
Now he has an assistant and employs about five driving instructors.
Another sign of his business’ progress is that, although initially he was subleasing his office space from a lawyer, that same lawyer is now subleasing from him. He also sublets space to a party planning business — hence the party and clown ads in the window.
Vaswani attributes his success to his honest approach. “I don’t sugarcoat anything,” he said. “If you stink, I’m going to tell you. If you’re not ready, I’m not going to take you to the test.”
The challenges of multicultural teaching
Vaswani prides himself at being adept at what he calls “multicultural teaching.” His students, who mainly live in the Bronx, come from all over the world. The majority are from Ireland, Eastern Europe (especially Albania and Bulgaria), Africa, and the Caribbean.
He said that the Irish are his star pupils. “Irish people find it so much easier to drive in America because we drive automatics instead of stick shifts,” he said.
But even they need a few lessons to prepare for the New York state road test: “I have to keep telling them ‘Two hands!’ when their right hand drops down out of habit to the stick shift. … And sometimes they drive too fast.”
Eastern Europeans, by contrast, tend to get rattled by the sight of so many pedestrians, bicyclists, joggers, and kids on roller blades and scooters, he said. And his African students struggle with the idea of rules that must be obeyed. “The idea of a state policeman writing a ticket is news to them,” Vaswani said.
But regardless of which country his students come from, they all have to be taught about speed bumps, he said with a smile.
Vaswani has seen nearly every kind of mistake in his more than 10 years of teaching. For instance, he recalls a student who’d been a driving instructor in his hometown in Montenegro.
“When he came here, he failed the test,” Vaswani said. “He thought a flashing red light was broken because in Montenegro they don’t have flashing red lights. Technically, of course, it’s a stop sign.”
He also had a student from the Cayman Islands who struggled to stay on the right-hand side of the road. She passed her test, but then got her license suspended when a state trooper caught her driving on the left.
Vaswani advised her to be apologetic in the court. “I told her to say she was sorry, [that] she’d taken a driver’s ed course, but had made a mistake because of her driving experience in another country,” he said. “She ended up getting six months’ probation, which is fair enough. She could have hurt someone.”
Success breeds success
“I’ve got so much lipstick on my face today, my wife is going to throw me out,” Vaswani told me the last time we met, just before I took my road test. He’d taken five students to the test that day, and all had passed.
That statistic is nothing unusual: The vast majority of Vaswani’s students are first-time passers. Yet he’s careful to assure his students that it’s okay to fail.
“I tell them it’s not how hard you fall. It’s how fast you get back up,” he said, adding, “I love everybody. My students are the best people in the world. I want to make their lives grow.”
Vaswani decided to pair me with Tony, an instructor who’d emigrated from the Philippines many years ago and is now semi-retired.
Under Tony’s tutelage, I became just as fanatical about adult driver’s education as everyone else at the Vaswani Academy. “All adults should do it, not just those who need licenses,” I tell my friends. “There are so many more things that make sense to me now than when I was young.”
And yes, I passed my road test on the first try. I didn’t feel like a clown, but rather like a virtuoso performer. I even finessed the parallel parking. Wow!
THE THREE STEPS TO GET A NEW YORK STATE DRIVING LICENSE
- Apply for a learner’s permit.
- Attend a five-hour course at a certified driving school for a Pre-licensing Course Completion Certificate (MV-278).
- Book a road test. This can be done online or through the driving school. Be sure to bring both your learner’s permit and certificate to the road test.
DRIVING SCHOOLS IN GREATER NEW YORK CITY
MANHATTAN:
Professional Driving School of the Americas40 East 23rd Street212-375-1111
Grand Prix Driving School797 Lexington Avenue646-395-3647
BRONX:
Vaswani Driving Academy3070 Bainbridge Avenue718-644-0003
BROOKLYN:
Left Turn Driving School1635 19 Street718-743-7761
QUEENS:
Ena’s Driving School189-17 Jamaica Avenue718-217-4444
POPULAR ROAD TEST SITES
- BRONX (Riverdale): North side of West 234th Street (between Bailey Avenue and Broadway)
- BROOKLYN (Kings county): Bay Street in Red Hook (between Hicks and Henry streets)
- QUEENS (Jamaica county): 115th Avenue (between Van Wyck Boulevard and 140th Street)
- STATEN ISLAND (Richmond county): Father Capodanno Road (north side at Lincoln Avenue)
- WESTCHESTER (Yonkers): Vredenburgh Avenue and Veltri Place (facing Kimball Avenue)
The complete list can be found on the New York Department of Motor Vehicles website. There are no road test sites in Manhattan.