The trouble with driver’s ed
Posted on December 6th, 2006 – 6:05 AMBy Roadguy
Roadguy went to the doctor for a routine physical the other day, and in the exam room, next to a rack of medical brochures about numerous ways to die, was a copy of the Sept. 4 issue of AutoWeek. Intrigued, I reached for the magazine, only to find that it also was about doom and gloom: it contained a 15-page special report on driver education.
With headlines like “Death at the Wheel,” the report pulls no punches. It notes that 5,000 teenagers meet a “violent, bloody and gruesome” death on America’s roads every year, and that that figure is about double the U.S. military’s cumulative death toll in Iraq. The writers make their case for more thorough driver training and criticize adults for accepting things as they are: “No parent would pay for only six piano lessons … So why is it, when it counts the most, when it becomes a matter of life and death … Why do they settle for only six hours of driver training behind the wheel?”
The magazine seemed to be raising my blood pressure, but my doctor allowed me to take it home anyway, and I’ve tracked down some of the links for your consideration:
- Main story
- Parental responsibility, with tips for Mom and Dad
- A critique of traditional driver education
- Deeper training: Performance exercises and programs run by automakers.
- Ways to keep tabs on teen drivers
If you have any thoughts on the ways young drivers are trained, please share them below; just don’t text-message me from behind the wheel.
10 Responses to "The trouble with driver’s ed"
I took Drivers Ed before the new “provisional” license structure was initiated for teens. But by the time I did my behind-the-wheel sessions, I had already been driving a lot when I was younger. This sounds silly, but we had a golf cart on our wooded, private property that I would drive through trails in for fun. This helped my transition to vehicles go much smoother, as my parents also helped me practice all the time. Both my sister and I had no problems passing our tests the first time around, however nervous we were. Those behind-the-wheel training sessions aren’t pointless, but they also aren’t as productive as they should be. I got more out of the written classes and tests than I did with the driving ‘instruction’ received from those sessions. Six, one-hour behind-the-wheel classes are not sufficient when dealing with the day-to-day driving drama experiences one needs.
At first, I thought the provisional license idea was horrible, as I would have been quite upset if I wasn’t given my full license at 16. I was a good driver and had passed all my tests, therefore I should be rewarded to the fullest. But now that I’m older, I feel it is a good idea. The provisional period would help teens practice driving more, who otherwise didn’t receive proper training (either by choice or from lack of parental/guardian support).
Roadguy,
In the past four years I have had 3 sons go through drivers training. Very scary. I am the truck driver of 18 years who is afraid of teenage girls in their small cars.
The problem I seen with the drivers training is the kids are taught how to pass the written and road test. Not how to survive and drive defensive.
The instructors expect the parents to teach their kids how to drive. At all three mandatory parent meetings I asked “who is teaching these parents how to drive”? I told them what I do and what I see everday. A comment was made everytime by a guest Sheriff Deputy that “now is the time to pay attention to your driving, parents”.
The thought that I got was that as soon as your child has a permit they notice our driving habits. Wrong. Kids have been learning to drive since they started riding in a car. If you run stop signs, speed, tailgate, change lanes 3 to 4 at a time, etc, so will your kids.
You simply cannot just erase 15 years of bad driving habits from a childs memory. My father was a Firefighter in Minneapolis and drove both engines and ladders. I was expected to drive like him at all times. My dad drove his own vehicles like a fire truck. Defensively.
His driving habits have made me quite alert for the dangers I see everyday. This is something that I hope I have taught my kids. I do get pretty confused at people and there actions. Some of the chances I see people take with their kids with them is just amazing. Something as simple as waiting for me to get through an intersection before taking their left, but, they go in front of me putting their child in the passenger seat right in front of me. Now, I would never put a loaded gun to my kids head, but at least a gun has a safety on it. They are assuming that I am watching for them and I will stop so I do not hit them. That is a lot to ask of someone you don’t know.
A disturbing example is one time a guy in his mini-van must of thought I was just taking way to much time getting through an intersection. At the last second he turned left, I swerved to miss him putting a car on my right side onto a sidewalk and all Mr. Mini-van did was laugh as his son’s eyes were about the size of golf balls. Luckily no one was on the sidewalk, and the car was not damaged, but, how is that going to shape his son and his driving habits?
Maybe he will be reminded of it when he is looking down at him in a casket. Pretty morbid, but I have pounded this into my kids, do not be stupid, you don’t have to be in the front of the line. All three of my sons have been involved in car wrecks since they have stared driving. Not at their fault, but I look at the situation, what I would have been looking for, they did not see. That is where years of experience helps.
Sorry to rant but I feel much better now. This good therapy. If you really want an eye opener on the road, get in a semi. People have no respect for them, for they view them as slow and bothersome, not deadly.
Happy Trails, Dale
I am appalled at some of the driving habits I see on the roads these days — and its not just young drivers, either. But teaching people correct and proper road etiquette and, yes, defensive driving should be among the top priorities of driver education.
Among the more grievous violations I experience most everyday:
1. Lack of turn signal use. Turn signals are not there to flip on for 1 second before merging or turning. Worse, still, are the drivers who never use their turn signals.
2. Crossing multiple lanes on the freeway at one fell swoop. Corrollary: turning left from the righthand lane, or vice-versa, on a city street. Drivers should be taught from the get-go to plan ahead; to plan where they need to be, or want to be, down the road. Don’t flip me off, when I have the right-of-way, just because you never learned to plan ahead.
3. Teach that an automobile is a 2-ton weapon even in the hands of a good driver. The very first lesson I teach someone learning to drive is control: in a car with automatic transmission, releasing your foot from the brake with the transmission in drive will cause the car to move forward even without your foot on the accelerator.
Dale, great post. Hall of fame quality.
My take on the drivers ed thing is that its going to take more than the citizens are willing to give to make it right. As outlined above, the training is atrocious. Drivers’ ed instructors think parents are training their own kids to drive; parents are thinking they’re paying good money for lessons, so let the experts do the training. The test itself is a joke, though apparently people do fail. Even then, the failures primarily seem to be from not knowing how to parallel park.
Anyway, I’m getting off-target here. The point is, we have a car culture. It is difficult in the vast majority of America to survive, as an adult, without a car. Because we’ve created an infrastructure in which life is most convenient if you have a car, we’ve lowered our standards for driving so just about everyone qualifies. There is essentially zero effort to take unsafe drivers off the roads, with the exception of drunks, and even that effort hasn’t been much, until recently. Meanwhile, drivers’ habits get worse, not better (e.g. cell phones). Until we’re willing to take unsafe drivers off the road, the situation will not change.
Thank you bsimon. I forgot to mention the Safe and Sober stings. So much attention is paid to drunk and impaired driving and not enough attention to aggressive driving. On any given weekend or holiday the police are out in full force cracking down on drunk driving, as they should be, of course the federal government pays for most of the costs. Why don’t we ever see a crackdown on aggressive drivers during the work week? Not enough money? Too few cops. Sadly, during my travels I see some cops driving much like the rest of drivers I like to call “front of the liners”. You know who they are, always first to the light, end of a closed or merging lane, etc. Has anybody noticed all the skid marks on the freeways around town in the last few years? Another thing to look for is guard rails or cement barriers banged up of painted by the vehicles that are constantly running into them. My favorite guard rail is the one on the right side heading west on 94 into the Lowry tunnel. I don’t think that rail has a life span of a month, it is always damaged shortly after being replaced. And these people are teaching their kids to drive, and I get to share the road with them everyday.
My mom learned to drive in Switzerland…and failed her driver’s exam several times. In the early 60’s, she came to the U.S. with my dad on home leave and passed the Kansas test easily, then applied for an ‘international’ license.
She turned out to be a fine driver, but the point is, in Europe driving is seen as a privelidge to be earned — here it seems it is a right that might be taken away.
I lived briefly in England in the mid-80’s and several of my friends in their mid-20’s did not have licenses…easy to understand living in a country with great public transport, expensive road tax on cars, and a notoriously difficult exam. bsimon is right that until non-car options are improved here, it would be a very difficult cultural shift to tighten up much on adult drivers.
But I think we can do more with kids…it really is a privelidge to drive before 18!!
Men are maybe the more aggressive drivers, but women scare me. They seem to have no clue as to the forces involved as they drive, that if they are two inches off your bumper and you stop suddenly, they will not be able to react (and thus stop) in time. Young women seem to be the worst speeders, tailgaters and by far the worst offenders at inattentive driving.
Whether it be eating, texting, applying makeup, reading, women take the cake. And I’m not saying that to be biased. It’s just been my experience. They drive as if they’re sitting in a chair in their living room, and the world zooming by around them is their t.v. or some other periphery. The act of driving is secondary to whatever else they’re doing.
As far as getting bad drivers off the road, it is wishful thinking. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed people run red lights right in front of cops. I just don’t understand what the cops are thinking. Late for coffee and donuts?
In my opinion, funding for police shouldn’t be a problem. Whether it be inattentive driving, speeding, red-light running, tailgating, carpool lane violators, whatever, one has to spend only a few moments on the road to witness an infraction. As such, the police should never be more than a couple minutes from writing their next ticket, and therefor if they were doing their job, one would think the funds from these tickets would make funding all the police it took a non-issue. They would be self-sufficient if they actually bothered to pull these people over. IT’S THEIR JOB TO NOTICE AND STOP THESE THINGS. IF I CAN NOTICE THESE THINGS, TRAINED PROFESSIONALS SHOULD BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT!!!!! IF THEY ARE NOT WILLING TO DO THIS THEY SHOULD CHANGE PROFESSIONS!!!!!!
P.S. speaking of inattentive driving, I saw an ad in a Harriet Carter-type magazine advertising a mounting plate for a laptop that strapped to your steering wheel. That this is the epitome of stupid aside, how can it be legally marketed?
Morg, I don’t doubt that you’ve seen quite a few questionable female drivers, but to head off a war between the sexes, let me offer this fact from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: “Males accounted for 70 percent of all traffic fatalities, 70 percent of all pedestrian fatalities, and 87 percent of all pedalcyclist fatalities in 2005.” So, even without makeup, we’re still causing most of the problems.
I don’t doubt those numbers a bit. Like I said, males are the more aggressive drivers. I’m curious as to the age breakdown of those males. I would bet that most of those instances are in the 16-25 age group, and it wouldn’t surprise me if alcohol was also a major factor.
I didn’t mean to ignite a war of the sexes, just pointing out what I observe in my many miles of driving. Thanks for putting some facts out there to offer some balance. Maybe women are just luckier bad drivers?! 
Perhaps your figures are the exception that proves the old axiom that women don’t get in accidents, they just cause them?
