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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 6:05 am and is filed under Links, Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.