My kid is currently taking driver’s ed classes, in the hopes that soon he can contribute to traffic congestion, like all good Americans. The written/classroom part of driver’s ed is now done online, unsurprisingly, and takes advantage of this modern age of multimedia by combining text, images, and, yes, moving images, complete with sound, into a form known as “motion-enhanced pictures,” or “motile pictures” which is shortened to “moties,” if I understand correctly.
Anyway, as you may suspect if you were part of the American educational system over the past few decades, you probably won’t be shocked to hear that the quality of these materials isn’t, um, great. The still images mostly look like they were taken from a clip art CD found wedged between an unused fax machine and a wall, and the videos appear to be 3D simulations rendered on a Sega Dreamcast.
It’s clear that the quality of these images and videos wasn’t especially important to the makers of these materials, likely the lowest bidder, and some of the automotive choices made are quite strange. For example, the car used to show how braking/accelerating affects the pitch or weight balance of the car is a 1998 Saturn SC2:
That’s a peculiar choice, but at least those were around here in North Carolina. More exciting and strange is this car, which shows up in multiple videos in the course:
Yep, that’s a Skoda. I think it’s supposed to be a second-gen Skoda Octavia, which was on the same platform as the Mark 5 Volkswagen Golf. The company that makes these videos seems to be based in Montréal, though they have a US office in Raleigh, NC. Did Canada get these Skodas? I’m not sure. I think they most likely just used whatever free car models they had around.
There’s also this car in one of the videos that I can’t identify at all:
It feels like a cross between a mid-’70s Ford LTD and maybe an Australian Holden, but that tailight/bumper setup is all kinds of strange, and a rear wiper on a sedan like that? This is madness.
Okay, but let’s get to the real madness here, which is something I saw on the school bus model used in the videos:
As you can see, this bus is very clearly labeled “School Bus” and is an appropriate yellow color. The model itself seems more like a city bus than what is usually used as a school bus, but in the context of these videos, it works. But there’s something odd here. Let’s look closer at that panel just aft of the rear axle. Computer! Zoom and enhance!
The hell? That looks familiar. Very familiar. There’s one on the rear of the bus, too, and on the other side of the bus, it’s not reversed:
That’s the Cutty Sark logo. You know Cutty Sark, right? It’s that whisky (I was just reminded that it’s not a whiskey, with an ‘e’ because there’s a difference) that I always think of in terms of cases you give to your union shop steward when you want to grease the palms a bit. My dad had a rarely-touched bottle of the stuff in the laundry room cabinet where our liquor was stored when I was growing up.
Point is, it’s booze, and as such, may be one of the last things I’d expect to see printed on the side of a school bus!
The question here is, of course, why. Why the hell is there a Cutty Sark logo on a school bus in these school-system-provided driver’s ed videos? I’m not scandalized or anything – I’d suspect that the vast majority of students using this system have no idea what Cutty Sark is, and, even if they did, I bet they’d find it pretty gross. Kids are a lot more likely to start their booze journey with almost anything other than Cutty Sark, like one of those hard lemonades or a White Claw or something.
No, I just want to know how the hell it ended up there in the first place. Was this a re-skinned city bus model that had ads on it, and Cutty Sark was one of those ads? If so, why was it still there after the rest of the skin had been changed to be yellow and read “School Bus” on the side? If the whole texture had been recolored, how would just that one ad be spared?
It seems an improbable oversight, really. Could it have been a joke? Maybe whoever had to make the school bus texture to re-skin the bus left it in there deliberately? Just to see if anyone would notice?
If so, then mazel tov, friend. I noticed. Thanks for making the driver’s ed journey a little weirder.
At first glance I thought it was a Gadsden flag, which might be on brand for parts of NC.
I’m just impressed that their teaching the youts about weight balance. My circa 1980 driver’s ed class never, ever went that deep about anything.
Why is it “SCOTS Whisky” on the bus?
Those images, particularly the Ford LTD-ish one, are the epitome of AI-slop images.
I think these pre-date AI slop. I think this is human-made slop!
This is “AUTOCAD Is My Passion”
Pour one out for Clive Cussler and his literary alter ego Dirk Pitt.
The name Cussler always made me think of Custard. Custard pies, custard doughnuts, custard tarts, frozen custard…
Was gonna say – any AI trained on Clive Cussler’s novels is gonna produce some pretty wild content, like an abundance of Deusenbergs and flying boats and bathtubs with engines mounted.
I’d add, too, that if you’re targeting schookids, Old Crow would probably be the drink of choice in that part of the country for low budget types, not Cutty Sark.
I remember getting rather perturbed at the driver’s ed material in my class confusing oversteer and understeer. And my teacher defending this error as truth, because I was a snot nosed autistic kid who didn’t know nothing.
Honestly, this unexpected booze advert doesn’t surprise me. And probably resulted from a Unity Store asset flip.
What you’re seeing is actually a trippy glimpse into the future, wherein the US public school system continues to lose funding and must rely on advertising dollars. The other buses are brought to you by [wish I knew a vape brand to insert].
Juul. I have never smoked and yet I somehow have that floating around in my grey matter.
I have to admit, my first taste of alcohol was some Pinch Scotch back in my high school days, at a friends house while the parents were out. I think we even put a little water back in the bottle to lessen the look of some being missing. It did not taste particularly good. I drank scotch for a while in college, but I’ve found that only the really good single malt is what I like the taste of, and I’ve moved on.
I took driver’s ed in the early 90s. We had “simulators” from the 60s or 70s. About 10 booths with car controls and gauges in them, the steering wheels were from malaise era American sedans.
A filmstrip was projected on the wall showing a first person view of a driving car. You had to do the appropriate things in your simulator based on what was going on in the film – if the film shows the car about to turn right, you had to put your turn signal on, brake, etc.
The sim was linked to a control track on the film so a central processor knew both what you did and what you were supposed to have done, and if those mismatched a red light came on in your sim and the teacher docked you points.
It was actually pretty amazingly sophisticated for having been designed in an era when wall-mounted retractable toasters were considered peak-tech but overall, shitty graphics or not, your kid has better drivers ed tech than I did. 😉
Yep – I remember “Drivers Ed” simulators like that.
“Blood Flows Red On The Highway” was a big hit back then….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BrTu3P5ILE
In the early 2000s, they were still showing 1970s and 1980s videos, mostly produced by GM as a public service, on topics such as how to safely drive today’s smaller cars on the highways (drivers of normal, large cars might not be aware of how much slower imported subcompacts are, and you have to worry about crosswinds from trucks blowing you out of the lane), and how to use an antilock braking system (they took like 15 minutes to explain just keeping your foot down and not pumping)
“…and a rear wiper on a sedan like that? This is madness.”
Have you ever been to Japan?
Rear windscreen wipers were quite common on coupes and sedans there before the advent of backup cameras.
Nash had them here in the States too – and Porsche still offers them on 911s
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/saloon-with-a-view-an-incompleat-history-of-the-rear-window-wiper/
“That’s the Cutty Sark logo”
And here I was thinking it would be dildos or something…
Oh yeah, I know about sedans with rear wipers. They’re just not common here! https://web.archive.org/web/20170801141204/https://www.jalopnik.com/i-think-i-finally-found-out-why-sedans-almost-never-hav-1797183039/ and then there’s this Beetle with a rear wiper: https://www.theautopian.com/tomorrow-is-our-big-member-only-track-day-but-i-keep-thinking-about-this-vw-beetle-mystery/
I mean who hasn’t ridden on a school bus where you suspect the driver was on their third breakfast Scotch?
I don’t think most school bus drivers can’t afford Scotch for breakfast.
Cheap Scotch still exists
I did not know that. I thought ‘cheap Scotch’ and ‘cheap used cars’ were both myths.
It’s their second job because teaching doesn’t pay enough for the bills either.
Hey Torch! Graphic artist working in the simulator industry here. What you’re seeing is probably the result of a bored graphic artist.
I’m in the aircraft training area, and I’ve stuck things in cockpits when I’m bored. Usually, I either remember to take them out, or somebody catches them and makes me take them out.
Still a bit annoyed they made me take the Gumby keychain off the key on the Blackhawk Sim, but they left the ability to turn all the aircraft out the window into school buses. Or Superman.
Whatever. Crush my creativity, you bunch of cretins.
Fortunately, you’re mistaken. It’s actually a whisky and not whiskey.
I fixed that, thank you!
For Scotland, Canada, and Japan: it’s whisky.
I’m rather surprised that Noah Webster didn’t push to adopt it, too.
I forgot Japan above!, and maybe Webster didn’t catch it because it’s not on the ende of the worde. Or a u, he hated u’s that weren’t there in Latin.
I think the rule is if the place it comes from has an “e” in the name then so does the liquor – whiskey comes from Tennessee, Kentucky and Ireland, whisky comes from Scotland and Canada. (Mostly).