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 Storrow Drive 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@phx.com