Ed,
        The construction "Him driving..." is obviously incorrect. "Him" is an
object pronoun. But in the sentence, "Him driving our car would scare me to
death," "Him" is being used as part of the subject of the sentence. That, in my
opinion, is grammatically incorrect.
        The construct "His driving..." is obviously correct and acceptable. It
may be awkward, in the sense that it is not a common contruction, but it is
correct from a grammatical viewpoint, for we have many examples of similar
usage in our language. For example, "His house is on the corner." But you might
reward the student with a blue star for a nice try. S/he has certainly kept
this group humming for awhile--not an easy task, judging from the amount of
messages I receive. :-)
 
:-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)8^] JIMBO [^8(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-:
:-)  James V. Buddell,  English/Senate Pres./Dept. Chair/Limbaugh Fan       (-:
:-)   Email/Inet: [log in to unmask]            @Work: (805) 763-4282   (-:
:-)   Taft Community College, Taft, California      @Home: (805) 763-5614   (-:
:-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)*(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-:
:-)                     Denial is not a river in Egypt!                     (-:
:-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)*(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-::-)(-: