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.
Just finished a Murakami novel, and Cutty Sark whisky was part of the story, but in the end nothing important came of it… actually a part of it was somewhat irrelevant. Weird…
No, it builds background and character. Read an actual Fleming Bond novel – 75% of the book is background and character. We know what brand of cigarette he smokes and his preferred lighter. How he likes his eggs prepared. How the beach sand looks, smells and feels. The man was a journalist by trade. The books are better for it.
Umberto Eco wrote quite an interesting piece about this in the 1960s, it’s in one of the essay collections. A point he makes is that Fleming would show us Bond doing secret agent stuff all the time, he would be completely unrelatable to us non-secret-agents. By allocating a lot of descriptive energy to things every reader could experience (given sufficient funds) he allows everyone to live the more accessible parts of the secret agent life. Plus he often makes a point of letting the reader in on little secrets. See, for example, Felix Leiter’s lengthy discourse in (I believe) Diamonds Are Forever about how barkeepers cheat customers out of their well-deserved booze.
If you write an action novel, Cutty Sark is a great reference for your protagonist to make a Molotov cocktail with. Or to clean up a bathroom floor murder scene. Also to induce vomiting after accidentally ingesting cyanide, but I think Malort would be more effective for that.
Yeah the driver’s ed stuff tends to be a little dated…
And I don’t want any questions about the tables!
I’ll be pedant since it doesn’t look like anyone beat me to it: the third door on the Saturn SC wasn’t introduced until 1999, so it has to be a ’99 at least, not a ’98.
COTD.
Autopians are the bestest
Is this where the pedants are gathering? Good, I’m in the right place.
That’s a 3rd gen SC2 so it’s either a 2001 or 2002. Also, it’s a reverse image since the 3rd door was on the driver’s side.
I didn’t bother to point out the image reversal because that seemed obvious, but I’d love to know how to spot the difference between the 1999-2000 and the 2001-2002 versions!
Second-gen coupes ran from 1997 to 2000. As you mentioned, the third door was introduced late in the model run. Second-gen was much more angular than the 3rd gen which was swoopier, with curvy headlights, blob-ish taillights and a body crease that ran on an angle from the spoiler down to the lower front bumper.
Oooh, the body crease will probably be the easiest for me to spot. Thanks for the knowledge!
Not curbside?
That’s interesting
Cutty Sark? Now I can let this bit of trivia out of my head for some air:
The evergreen Robert Burns, who gave us such phrases as ‘auld lang syne’ (yuletide song), ‘bonny doon’ (place name in California, Edmonton and Melbourne) and ‘Tam O’Shanter (floppy hat used to hold dreadlocks, also fictional chartacter) gave us the phrase ‘cutty sark’ which translates as ‘short dress’.
In the poem about Tam O’Shanter, Tam shouts ‘Weel done, cutty sark!’ at a dancing girl he’s been peeping through a crack in the wall at; hilarity ensues, horse loses tail.
The ship Cutty Sark has the girl in the short dress as it’s figurehead, forever pursuing Tam O’Shanter for his insolence and indolence.
I believe the “girl” was a witch dancing with her coven and she wore a cutty sark because it allowed her to move faster. Which doesn’t change the fact that naming a fast ship after a short shirt or nightdress is pretty stupid. Although, Mary Quant did name the mini skirt after the Mini car in a kind of turn about logic. British people are odd.
Skoda did once sell cars in Canada, but back when they were still a Czechoslovak company, so well before the VAG takeover. I’ve never actually seen one in person (other than in Europe)
Also, thanks Jason for putting an ‘é’ in your spelling of Montréal. I appreciate the respect!
Back when the engine was in the trunk
In an alternate reality, I’d like to think that’s how the Stastny brothers escaped, in the frunk of a Skoda shipped Québec, but that doesn’t fit the timeline…
The actual Cutty Sark is now a museum in Greewich UK. Pretty neat stop if you’re there.
Subliminal advertising 101.
Somebody got paid under the table for this.
The Cutty Sark was an actual ship so at first I thought maybe the autocadder was just a nautical fan (NautiFans?) but sure enough, it says Scots Whisky underneath there so that ain’t it. I now assume they’re just a raging alcoholic.
“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.“
Eh- unless you have older siblings, it’ll likely start with whatever’s going to be least likely missed from your parents’ or your friend’s parents’ liquor collection.
In my case it was popcorn-flavored schnapps.
Yep, for me it was 99 Bananas.
That sounds positively vomit inducing…
it’s, somehow, worse than it sounds.
My parents owned a liquor store when I was just into double digits. Our liquor cabinet had just about every type you could imagine. And yes, only the odd ball bottles would lose an inch or two.
Cutty Sark! I recall there being an often-touched bottle of that hidden out in body shop I worked at in high school. It was the alternative to the warm beer, Milwaukee’s Best (Heavy), that my boss kept next to his desk. I recall the first time I was offered some – it was suggested to pour a little in a coffee mug and add some water from the sink. As the water was drawn straight from a well and smelled like uncut ass, I went with the “neat” option for my after-work nip.
The bus image might have been born as a city transit bus (ask Mercedes) and modified to look like a school bus. Quick flip, add school bus colors, remove the ads. Almost all the ads anyway…
It’s the wrong color for a school bus anywhere I’ve lived. Too yellow, not edging toward orange at all. Also the “School Bus” lettering looks either fakely added or like the bus producer had no one on staff with any sense of …things. And there’s liquor ads, one of them backwards, on the bus, but no “<town> School District” or “<company> Transportation Inc., Operator” on there? An there’s no black horizontal lines for floor and seat heights? And, no emergency exit doors, with their handles prominently marked with the big rotation direction arrows plus the “EMERGENCY EXIT” lettering?
That is not a school bus. It is either a very modern city bus (judging by the windows) that’s been ‘shopped up poorly to be a school bus, or it’s AI generated.
That’s probably it. They didn’t have a school bus model, so they just repurposed a transit bus. Funny that the ad would be part of the model and not a skin.
I thought this story about a weird drivers ed video was going ro be about something else, but then I remembered we were specifically told not to say ANYTHING about the TABLES.
Also, the black stripe down it’s side is too wide 😉
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.
I took a drivers training refresher course, for reasons; earlier this year. It was far more in-depth and involved than the “training” I received in the 1990s, which was basically: Good Luck don’t die; here are some snuff films.
Oh and our classroom instructor harped endlessly on how we shouldn’t steer with one finger, pointing at us like the little deviants we were. She drove a pale blue Cimarron, and wore color coordinated sweaters and pants. They were all the same in different matching colors, and way too tight.
I took driver’s ed in the late ’90s, and my instructor also went on at great length about not steering with one finger (specifically, one pinky). He was one of the high school’s coaches, and was pretty chill.
To be fair, power steering has a very different feel now than the overboosted steering of the 60 and 70s where you could drive with 1 finger.
I don’t miss the old overboosted PS. My ’78 LTDII could be steered with one finger. Dad’s ’85 Colony park was quite a bit better, his ’90 Town Car was better still. Going from a Torino platform to a Fox body my senior year of high school was a revelation.
Yes, all the instructors were gym teachers/athletic coaches.
Our coach/driver’s ed teacher played for the Raiders!
We spent waaaay too much time learning .08 was the legal BAC level.
You know, in case the cop breathalyzing you forgets.
In five minutes anyone can learn to beat a breathalyser.
It’s just junk science, same as amateur hour intoxication testing.
How does one beat a breathalyzer?
The easy way is deep breathing before and during the “test”.
It measures % of alcohol in your breath, a carnival gimmick with only a tenuous connection to blood alcohol.
On that point, blood alcohol on its own is not a measure of impairment.
Just a way to make it easier to arrest people without proving anything.
Attorneys go into court and make breath machines go up and down.
Georgia has licensed cops as marijuana intoxication technicians.
Another fake science project.
And you can always just drink at home.
FYI Attorneys say if you’ve had anything at all to drink, you should refuse any tests you can.
Why is it “SCOTS Whisky” on the bus?
Because it’s from Scotland, not Scotchland.
lol
Southern Culture On The Skids Whisky
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!
I thought we controlled all the hunan-made slop floating around the interwebs these days. What gives?
This is “AUTOCAD Is My Passion”
If you think that, I’m not sure you have ever (knowingly) seen an AI image. AI looks like a random mixup of real images (or real artwork). What did they put into the prompt; “Make the cars look like slightly worse grand Theft Auto 2 graphics”?
We’ve had shitty images for a long, long time before AI. Thinking shitty image = AI is really dumb. Add I don’t say that to defend AI, but you are gonna get fooled real easy if you expect AI images to always look like crap.
I think that image is (barely) some mock up of a Chrysler/Plymouth sedan from the 70’s-the taillights were in the rear bumper (Fury, Satellite?). You know-the generic sedans that always were rushed during high speed chases in CHiPs
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…
Now I want 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.
Replace that Saturn with a 1937 Talbot-Lago and add an intriguing rewrite of some historical event.
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.
I think I had this same film/book and comment about 1991 or so. Understeer – nose hits first. Oversteer – ass hits first. Push vs Shove.
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.
FWIU teen vaping has really crashed in the past couple years, whether it’s due to the forced withdrawal of candy/fruit/bubblegum flavors and scents or whether it had reached a point of saturation where every single one was “school bathroom flavored” because once a scent association like that is made deep in the amygdala, no amount of influencer marketing can break it.
As long as it’s not accompanied by a resurgence in actual smoking..
From what I’ve heard that is happening.
That was my thought every time I saw an anti-vaping commercial…they’re just going to go back to smoking. As someone who used vaping to quit a 16-year smoking habit, then spent a couple years stepping down the nicotine to get off completely, I have a generally positive view of vaping if the alternative is real cigs.
I believe that was the original use case before some dick with an MBA ran the numbers and realized there was a better business model than “make a product designed to be obsolete.”
I find the vapes more nauseating than actual smoking – yes I was born in the ’70s and hot boxed in all the cars of my youth.
I went through nicotine withdrawl my freshman year of college.
Colorado once banned teens from places with alcohol, resulting in a spike in smoking.
That’s exactly what happened where I work, once corporate decided that it was not ok for people to suck on their Mountain Dew-flavored vapes at their desks all day.
Assuming true, that’s really good to hear. I watched a documentary a while back that was utterly terrifying—these poor kids hopelessly and permanently addicted to nicotine.
I’m glad to hear that. I tried vaping, but they all seemed to make my lungs and throat feel irritated and gross in a way that cigarettes do not.
When I was a teenager I had to sneak out of my house when my family were asleep to smoke, and they could smell it on me if I smoked at any point during the day. Now you can vape to your heart’s content and hide it from parents with ease. No wonder it got popular with teens.
We already have rest stops sponsored by GEICO in the state of Virginia.
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 recall a taste or two of beer or wine as a child. Dad apparently used the whiskey method to numb my teething pains and claimed I would eagerly suck on Jack Daniels on a finger. Yeah, the ’70s were great!
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
I remember that one well. There was also one involving a sheriff having to tell a family their kid died being stupid in the car that later showed up in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.
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)
…which is exactly what a new driver would do anyway
I took driver’s ed in the early ’80s. Our simulators were so old the dash looked like it was from the early ’60’s. Also, the shifter was on the column, and it could be set to automatic or column shift manual! We could only use the automatic, which is too bad because I could have used the practice before driving the shop truck in my cousin’s body shop where I worked part time.
Yep! Ours had the manual three-on-a-tree option too, and we actually used it.
Pretty much useless, because the clutch was either engaged or disengaged. You could clutch in, shift to first, floor the throttle and pop the clutch and the system would think you did just fine. All it monitored was whether the clutch was pressed while the shifter changed.
A lot of us were pretty annoyed when we switched to real cars and discovered manuals don’t work that way and dads get pissed when you roast their clutch.
I learned to drive with a 3 on tree in the winter in Alaska. You could drop the clutch with no issues. Ok, You did have to try and keep the rear end from swinging. But it was a good way to learn how to do doughnuts.
We had these when I took driver’s ed in the early 80s. My high school was built in 1972, so I would guess the simulator system was installed then.
On ours the grading was only available via a printed paper tape, but apparently the supplier went out of business or something, as there was no ribbon for the printout. At the end of the session a blank tape was produced.
Which I think our teacher knew made the session completely BS, so he would start the film and leave the room. Which meant we could do whatever we wanted.
My favorite was to floor it until it reached top speed, and then throw it into park. This lit all the idiot lights for a nice Xmas tree effect.
I don’t remember what the trick was now, but there was a sequence of inputs you could do to make the speedo needle instantly slam all the way to the right. We’d do “drag races” in the sims while waiting for class to start, and us nerds who were always poking at systems to see what you could do with them always won. 😉
“…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/
Kids need to be prepared for driving internationally. I support this.
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.
Not sure what you definition of “cheap” is, but here is a liter bottle of Clan MacGregor for ~$14.
Blended Scotch Whisky | Spec’s Wines, Spirits & Foods
The ad copy for that Whisky has got to be full of BS.
“Clan MacGregor Blended Scotch Whisky is made using fifteen of the finest malt and grain whiskies from the heart of Scotland.”
For $14, you can call me a skeptic. BUT, I am a bit curious….
Glenlivet it’s not, but a friend told me years ago that Clan MacGregor was “the best scotch you can buy in a plastic bottle” and he wasn’t far off the mark…
I used-to buy Jim Beam in a plastic bottle. It wasn’t the plastic bottle, but the metallic taste that moved me on to better spirits.
That is high praise indeed!
Ah yes, Clan MacGregor replaces peat and barrel aging with a burnt sticks and old band-aids.
Jason was probably interested for a moment before realizing it’s not “Clam MacGregor.”
It’s their second job because teaching doesn’t pay enough for the bills either.
Given the labor shortage, I believe they are getting paid more than you’d think. I know “traveling bus driver” is now a thing, getting deployed to districts in dire need.
A good point. I also spoke in jest, as a former colleague of mine, who was paid much more than me and a fabulous person, drove a bus for a few years until his spouse could retire. His stories on FB show him to be one of the most awesome school bus drivers around. He rewarded curtesy toward others with candy, and dressed up as Santa in December. Fun and principled.
That’s what it would take for me to be a school bus driver.
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.
*snicker*
Okay, the Gumby keychain would be my favorite part of the simulator.
THANK YOU!!!
Continues to grumble about engineers with no sense of humor…
Honestly I’d be way more into that kind of training if I knew there were Easter eggs to look for.
I was in a CAE lab many years back and the software engineers had subbed in a whole bunch of funny stuff while testing. My favourite was the approach to an airport where all of the planes on the ground were those flying toasters from the screen saver. None were in the air, the only in air traffic was a big pink dragon. They apparently had a rigorous checklist to change everything back before shipping. I thought they should have offered it as an extra charge option pack.
Anybody remember when you could swap out all of the monsters in Doom with Simpsons characters?
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).
Or if it’s too crappy to be actual whiskey here, they leave the E out to not get in trouble. Fireball, for instance is brown colored vodka with some fake cinnammon flavor, so they leave the e out.
Most countries have legal definitions of whisk(e)y regardless of spelling. So export versions would still need to meet those definitions even if they wouldn’t at home.
It’s even weirder: the big bottle uses actual whiskey, whereas the small single shots do not and have to be labeled “fireball cinnamon.”
Japan produces whisky and has no “e” so that rule checks out.