Miriam and Her Mission

Miriam Schottland knows cars—how they accelerate, how they corner, how to react when they spin out. But two decades ago she did not even know how to drive a stick shift. That’s when Schottland, now 74, began her encore career as a driving expert. Since then she has taught counter-terrorism driving tactics, accident avoidance and high-speed turns to hundreds of students, many of them men.

As a driving instructor based at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia, Schottland spends most of her time in the passenger seat. But she’s in the driver’s seat when it comes to running her own business, DriveLab, which allows her to indulge her passion: teaching veteran and beginning drivers alike lessons in the forces that govern a vehicle in motion.

 
Schottland is something of a physics lesson herself: This perpetual-motion machine shows no signs of slowing down.