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
I agree wholeheartedly with the “car control in low traction conditions” idea, but also basic vehicle self help and maintenance skills should also be covered.
Both my kids (daughters) knew how to check fluids, change a tire, jump start a car, and what NOT to do when hooking up a tow strap. And when they left the nest, their cars had jumper cables, a tow strap, collapsible shovel and emergency blanket in the back.
My youngest just made use of the tire changing skills the other day, and the eldest was the go-to person for jumpstarting cars at college, because nobody else had the skills to do it. (Some had jumper cables, but no clue what to do with them.)
I did draw the line at forcing them to change their own oil, but they were familiar with the process.
Those are all basic skills I think every driver should know.
Depth perception. The number of times I’ve waited to make a right and people were afraid to pull out even though the massive line of cars was in the far lane is infuriating.
Learn how to drive a small motorcycle or scooter first before being allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. It will teach a whole new level of respect for traffic rules, how essential situational awareness is, and how vulnerable you really are on the road unless you practice courteous and defensive driving.
Our instructor in high school had us drive him to a donut shop where he would buy himself a donut, tell us to rotate drivers, then tell us to take him to the next (but not necessarily the closest) donut shop. This pattern would continue until all of us had accumulated enough time driving under various conditions to meet the course requirements. From this I learned two valuable lessons:
(1) The location of every donut shop in the county.
(2) How to get paid to be chauffeured from donut shop to donut shop entirely at someone else’s expense (except for the donuts because, you know, ethics).
Looking back, I don’t know that I would add anything to this.
We must have had the same instructor. I did the same thing!
Don’t speed and stay off your damn phone!
I know they say you can’t teach it but, basic common sense. How to infer and react for the greater good.
You are talking about advanced driving. I’d be thrilled if most drivers could get competent at the basic level.
Proper use of the passing lane.
Right of Way!
Do not stop on a main street to yield to someone trying to enter that street from a side street / driveway / parking lot. If you do this, you are an idiot. The other driver doesn’t expect you to stop. You have to play hand gesture games to get them to move. In the end, everyone would have been better off if you just rolled by and they merged into the next gap.You are not helping anyone.
Defensive driving. The number of people I see with no situational awareness is quite scary.
Skid pad day! Teach the students how fast a car can go from in control to understeer/oversteer when the road gets slick. Then start teaching them the basics of skid recovery with hands on experience instead of just telling them in a classroom. I’ve seen too many people freeze in a skid and hit things when they could have recovered.
This. It’s compulsory in Finland.
Yes! I do this for myself every winter, first time we get something slick from the sky. Find an empty parking lot and get a feel for sliding around again so I recall that stopping distance no longer exists, and what the car does in various attitudes of sliding.
Two parts:
Part one: The basics; traffic rules, how to operate a car, etc. This part should happen in spring or summer; when things are nice and roads are pretty clear.
Part two: More advanced stuff; car control, how to drive in bad conditions, how winter changes the roads. This should happen in winter, maybe in a closed environment so kids can experience loss of grip.
In both parts, it should be emphasized: driving is an activity that can kill people if not taken seriously
Absolutely no phones or taking eyes off the road for more than a few seconds
Do your due diligence. Check your blind spots, look ahead, situational awareness, be predictable
I learned to drive in a small town; same as my classmates. We all did most of our instruction hours on 55 mph backroads with one or two trips down a short segment of highway. It’s kind of concerning how many kids racked up their hours driving the same rural routes, coasted through the classes, then started driving with a “whatever” attitude towards driving, then thought they were so good at driving they could Snapchat and drive at the same time
Of course it doesn’t help that drivers Ed in the US is some driving, with much of the instructions for different conditions coming from a list of questions nobody is going to remember
I took Driver’s Ed in ’89. Instructor was a totally cool guy in his 50’s named Herb. He had us parallel parking like champs. Among the many tips he gave us was this gem. Cover your brake. In other words, if you’re not actually pressing on the gas and just coasting, hover your foot about an inch over the brake. Dramatically cuts down your reaction time and can prevent hitting the gas by mistake in a panic situation. It just becomes muscle memory.
Driver training is so insufficient in the US. I sent two of my kids through the Tire Rack Teen Street Survival course this summer and I can’t recommend that enough. They had a mix of classroom and on-track driving, including threshold acceleration and braking, skid recovery, and a number of other exercises, using their own cars. I sat through the classroom stuff too, and it was engaging and important information.
ok this is awesome
I would overhaul the whole thing, along with licensing that requires proficiency in specific vehicle classes, towing, etc. If you learn to drive a Fiat 500, that should not mean you are qualified to tow a camper with a Silverado 3500. And testing should require actual proficiency.
If I can’t do that, I would add a lot of practical testing with simulated real-world situations. A driving sim that includes erratic/unpredictable drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists could really help new drivers learn how to respond in actual driving. And a road course that could allow students to actually feel acceleration, braking, sliding, and hydroplaning in a relatively controlled environment.
I’d also like to emphasize proper mirror adjustment and driving position (as opposed to just hand placement). A friend (who was learning to drive as an adult) did not realize that he shouldn’t see the car in the side mirrors. Whether he forgot the instructor told him that or the instructor assumed adults know more than kids, that one tip helped him go back to the next lesson a lot more confident getting onto the freeway.
I also think that city instructors should, whenever practical, take students out to a sparsely populated area a few times and rural instructors should take students to an urban center (especially the latter). The driving is different, and being comfortable in one may not translate to the other.
the sims we used were complete garbage
legit driving simulators would be a great starting point
Add? Evidence (but not gore) of how maniacal and antisocial the average driver actually is. I’m not sure if it’s this bad everywhere, and to be fair I live in what’s constantly ranked as one of the worst places in the country for traffic, bad driving, etc…but holy shit. I can’t go more than 3 or 4 days without having to perform some sort of last second maneuver to avoid getting smashed by a rogue driver.
This weekend I had to swerve over the yellow line to avoid getting hit by some idiot that wanted to get out from behind a bus and decided to let Jesus take the wheel rather than check their blind spots. Speaking of which-is blind spot monitoring standard kit yet? It needs to follow the path of rearview cameras and become legally mandated because the average person never has any idea what’s going on in their blind spots.
I also wanted to mention removing the gore/scared straight bullshit. I’m still scarred by stuff I saw in driver’s ed today. They had cops come in and show us Polaroids of deadly accident scenes. I was treated to the images that included a guy that got his head run over by a car, someone that was ejected from a car and died on impact, and what was left of some poor soul that hit a tree while racing.
Why the fuck was that normal in the 2000s? It’s incredibly disrespectful to the deceased to be used as examples in that way and I frankly none of us needed to be exposed to those images. I’ll never forget them, and it kind of bothers me. I signed up to be taught how to drive, not to be traumatized.
I used to work with a guy who was missing an ear. He lost it to the asphalt after being ejected from his car while street racing. I asked him why he didn’t get a prosthetic. His answer was he wanted to be a living cautionary tale to others that sometimes you do indeed find out when you fuck around.
If pictures of people who found out the hard way what fucking around can do is enough to stop others from the same fate then by all means show those pictures. Disrespectful? Anyone who fucked around and found out disrespected themselves, their families and anyone they put in danger with their fucking around. They earned their place as a cautionary tale.
Just because no lane is striped doesn’t mean you drive in the middle of the road. Especially at an intersection: if you’re turning left or going straight, leave room for the cars turning right.
There really should be a lesson on properly securing cargo, both on trucks and in any hatch/wagon/SUV where the luggage compartment can spill into the cabin. Add in an optional lesson in securing, towing and backing up a trailer (in an ideal world, this would get an endorsement on your license that’s necessary before you’re allowed to tow).
As for the exam itself, every driver should take a written test 4 years later. Most people are overwhelmed at 16, they take their license test like a school exam: cram the night before and forget everything the next day. The amount of adults that don’t know what a blinking yellow light means or what to do at a yield sign, drive in heavy rain/fog with their headlights off and can’t navigate a roundabout is astounding and needs to be addressed.
I just assumed those adults were sociopaths who decided rules don’t matter. Probably spell “its” wrong, too, because who cares.
We all know the correct way to secure a load is to pat it while reciting the incantation “Yep, that’s not going anywhere”.