Like most new drivers, teen-me learned how to drive first from observation as a passenger, then by driver education classes in high school, accompanied by seat time with an instructor – in my case, behind the wheel of a Plymouth Horizon TC3, thus establishing a near unbeatable benchmark for performance, quality, and fun that has rendered every car since a crushing disappointment.
Anyway, the classroom and driver’s seat training were 100% about rules of the road and approximately zero percent about vehicle dynamics and any kind of experience at all with emergency situations. At best, students may have been advised to “steer into a skid,” illustrated by nothing at all and left completely to the student’s imagination to conceptualize its meaning. “Of course, steer into a skid, that makes sense.”
Now, if I were in charge of nationwide driver education standards, I would require all students to actually experience skidding and learn how to recover from a skid – safely, on a skidpad, of course. I’d also like students to perform evasive maneuvers, “moose test” style, so encountering such a quick-action scenario in real life won’t be a total shock to the system. I also believe every driver should get jolted by one of those 5mph impact simulators to encourage seatbelt wearing, even though kids seem pretty good about wearing them as it is.
How about a closed-course gauntlet of simulated intersections, pedestrians, and corners that students must navigate while replying to texts from the instructor? Hmmm, maybe not – the kids will see it as a challenge to show how good they are at it. Put the phone down!
Your turn:
What Lesson(s) Would You Add To Driver’s Ed?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
Merging. Teach kids early how to properly get into the flow of traffic with minimal disruptions. Though that would also mean that people currently with licenses would need to learn it as well, so I guess its kind of a fruitless labor
Not sure if it has already been mentioned, but try to sign young drivers up for the nearest Street Survival or Drivers Edge class.
https://streetsurvival.org/
https://driversedge.org/our-events/
Simple…anything on wheels that someone is riding (motorcycle, bicycle, electric scooter) that is on the street is treated like a car and has to stop at stoplights and stop signs just like the rest of us. If we can train a generation of new drivers about this simple fact it might trickle down to everyone around them and stop the maddening process of waiting for a bicycle to cross an intersection when it isn’t their turn.
How to handle white-out conditions in snow/fog.
I moved to Florida. I think I get an A+.
Florida comes with its own set of new complications
Be a pedestrian, bicyclist, or wait for public transportation on the roads you drive on. Things feel different when the airbags, safety features, and crash protection are your skull and bones. You’ll get to your destination way before they will. Suck it up and take the few extra seconds you’re delayed.
With that, re-learn how to be a pedestrian and bicyclist. Crosswalks, bike lanes, and shoulders aren’t your invisible force field. Put the phone away, walk on the correct side of the road, look both ways twice, and, while the law may give you the right to use the full lane or priority cross the road, the real world doesn’t follow the rules.
Trust is a four letter word
No phones allowed during all the “behind the wheel” sessions. People need to learn to live without constant communication while they’re driving. If a new driver’s phone must be in the vehicle with them, then it needs to be completely turned off until they reach their destination. Then they can power it back on and catch up on all that they fear they’ve been missing out on.
When training a new driver who is also a video gamer, explain that that watching out for other driver behavior is a form of threat assessment. Assess the driver of that car, are they a threat by their behavior. Are they still moving at a stop sign, are they moving too fast to be able to stop at the line, are they wavering around in their lane, are they speeding up then braking over and over. All signs of a potential threat. If a car is behaving predictably, they are not a threat.This advice turned around the skillset of one of my kids who was having difficulties.
Do they teach how to negotiate roundabouts in driver’s ed these days? because they certainly didn’t when I took it. In fact they should make every person renewing their license to have to demonstrate proficiency and knowledge of those diabolical things at least once. Not every renewal but like an endorsement that says you are qualified because far too many drivers in the United States have never been taught how they work.
The DMV near me makes every road test go though the only roundabout within a 5 mile radius. They have been doing that for least 20 years
Well if life has been cruel, and denied you from building and racing minibikes and go-carts since pre-teen, then you need some culture. Learn them skids on a dirt track date.