Driving student Myles Bui pressed the accelerator gingerly as he turned onto a wide, but mostly empty, thoroughfare in Hicksville one recent morning.

"Pick it up, pick it up! It’s all clear in front of you," his instructor, Manni Bhira, urged in a kind, firm tone. Then she laughed, adding that if it were rush hour, "people are gonna honk [at] you!"

Bui, a 23-year-old MBA student at Hofstra University, has driven all across his native Vietnam and is an experienced driver — just not on American roadways.

"The drivers in Long Island, they drive crazy fast! If they are going straight, they just, pew pew," Bui said, gesturing like a car weaving through traffic. "I feel safer in Vietnam. Like, it's heavy traffic, but we go pretty slow."

Bui is a typical student for Bhira, whose Hicksville Driving School offers classes to around 30 students a week. Though open to people from any background, 80% of her clients are international — coming from Asia and Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean — said Bhira, who is Indian American and offers lessons in Hindi and Punjabi as well as English. Hers is one of more than a half-dozen driving schools on Long Island that offer classes in foreign languages, including Spanish and Hebrew.

Some students have driving experience elsewhere but need help adjusting. American roadways have their own written rules, as well as driving culture: horn etiquette in Nassau County is different from, say, Kingston, Jamaica. Dodging deer in Suffolk is different from navigating around street dogs or cows in South Asia.

From her Toyota Corolla — often with Bollywood music playing softly in the background — and in her classroom on Duffy Avenue, Bhira said she and her colleagues take pride in helping newcomers get on the road safely.

"I welcome everybody, and I teach them, with lots of passion. I really want to make sure that they are a safe driver on the road," Bhira told Newsday, adding that her devotion borders on the religious. "This work, for me, it's a [type of] worship."

Nearly a quarter of Long Island commuters foreign born

Ensconced behind metal and glass on crowded roadways, Long Island's drivers are as diverse as the community itself. About one in five Nassau and Suffolk County residents is foreign-born and immigrants make up about 23% of Long Islanders who commute to work by car, van or truck, according to the Census Bureau.

Those with a foreign driver’s license can use it temporarily in New York, but after becoming a resident — intending to stay here — one must take a five-hour course and pass a road test to get a state driver’s license. Separately, New York’s law makes it one of 19 states that allow people in the country illegally as well as documented immigrants to get driver’s licenses, although the Trump administration has vowed to challenge it.

Nick Klein, a city planning professor at Cornell University, told Newsday that while patterns vary among different immigrant communities, on average, immigrants wait a few years before acquiring a car — but then quickly adapt to America's driving culture.

"When people [first] arrive, they are much more likely than their U.S.-born peers to walk places, to carpool, to bike, to take transit," Klein said. But after about five years, immigrants' travel behavior generally mirrors the population at large. 

"It's hard to get around Long Island without a car," he added.

The freedom of the road

Bhira grew up in Punjab, a state in northern India. Her father’s side of the family is Sikh, a minority religious community known across India for its professional drivers and mechanics.

When she was in high school the family moved to Flushing, Queens, where her father worked at a gas station, though they did not own a car at first.

Eventually, she learned to drive using a relative's car and, after getting licensed, got a job delivering electronics around New York City. Driving gave her a sense of freedom and she enjoyed teaching others — including her brother, aunt and father — how to drive.

Eventually she became a driving instructor at another school in Nassau County nearly a decade ago before opening her own in 2021.

She has since taught thousands of students.

Bhira said immigrants often seek her out because of her background. In addition to English, Hindi and Punjabi speakers, Bhira said she has even worked with students who don't share a common language — using a combination of hand signals and Google Translate.

From steering side to horns, new challenges

Changing the behavior of experienced drivers — who make up about half her students — is perhaps Bhira's greatest challenge.

Unlike teaching new drivers, unlearning something can be more difficult than learning it in the first place.

"I have to repeat one thing, like, hundreds of times," Bhira said.

Many students learned to drive on the left side of the road abroad, and need to be reminded to stay to the right — or not to confuse the windshield wipers with the turn signal, which are opposite when steering wheels are on the right-hand side.

Tamla Robins, 49, who was born in Jamaica and lives in Westbury, said she also had to make another type of adjustment: laying off her horn.

"In Jamaica, we just live by honking horns. You do it to say hi, to get out of the way, just to complain," said Robins, a former student of Bhira’s. "Here, when I hear a horn honking, I get actually scared."

Others have to get used to driving at highway speeds that are much faster than in some other countries, Bhira said.

Ravishankar Sitharaman, 43, of Hicksville, learned to drive in India, where manual transmissions are more common. When he started diving an automatic on Long Island, Bhira taught him to stop braking with his left foot, which he was used to keeping active on the clutch, he said.

International driving experience can also be an advantage, according to Bhira's former student Nuntcharah Richard. She said her native Haiti's streets, crowded with pedestrians and bicycles, taught her to be precise in her maneuvers.

"Driving is like [being] a doctor," she said. "You need to be very careful. Every little movement can cause an accident."

‘A big thing in your hand’

Not a lot of research has been done about the crash risks of immigrants compared to native-born Americans, in part because relevant data is difficult to obtain. However, a 2013 study funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found recent immigrants in Florida and Tennessee were less likely to be cited for speeding violations or DWIs than U.S. citizens, although they were more likely to be cited for failure to obey traffic signals.

But Bhira said she thinks overall, immigrants are careful drivers, in part because of how important driving is to their new lives.

"They strongly believe this is the first step to move on — once they get the license — to get a better life in the future," she said.

Sitharaman said getting a license gave him a great sense of accomplishment. "It is a transition from nowhere to having a big thing in your hand."

Other students said Bhira helped them get over their anxieties about driving on Long Island.

"She’s calm; she prepares you," Robins said. "Every time I drive, I remember her. She's in my head."

After finishing his MBA at Hofstra, Bui said he plans to return to Vietnam — where he hopes to create an app for parking. He'll have to get used to going slowly again, he said.

"I cannot keep my American driving habit in Vietnam," he said. "I will be the one who will start the road rage!"

By Peter Gill

peter.gill@newsday.com