Driver's Ed should be harder, and require refresher courses

Great Debates
1

To see where I’m coming from, this was my experience in driver’s ed, in 1995, in North Carolina - feel free to post your own.

The first step was a one week (5 days) of after school classes, lasting, IIRC, 2 hours each. I skipped IIRC 2 of them, and slept through the other 3, and passed the multiple choice quiz at the end based on common sense, which allowed me to move on to step 2. I had to drive around for IIRC 5 hours with a driving instructor. He looked out of his window and talked about football and wrestling the entire time - neither of which I was interested in so he was basically talking to himself. There was no test during this part and not much if any actual instruction IIRC - it was just practice time. This was all towards the end of age 14. When I turned 15 I was able to go to the DMV, take a 25 question multiple choice test, and get my learner’s permit. The only restriction on that at the time was that someone over 18 had to be in the car with me - I’m not sure what, if anything, has changed.
Luckily, my parents made me drive EVERYWHERE we went that year (none of my friends’ parents did this, and they all got in wrecks and got tickets the first year they had their licenses. I didn’t.)
When I turned 16, I went to the DMV, got in the car with one of the ladies there - it was definitely either Patty or Selma, but I can’t remember which - and headed out of the parking lot. We went MAYBE 100 feet and she told me to do a 3-point turn. I did it and she said, “Good. Let’s go get your license.” So we drove back and did just that.

Anyone else think that was too easy?

This is an activity that we all pretty much have to do these days, in machines as big as Ford Excursions and Nissan Armadas, at speeds often exceeding 75mph.

I think driver’s ed should be far more intense, require more practice, and a refresher course should be required every 5 years. It’s shocking how ignorant people are of traffic rules (including me, even now, but especially before I took an interest in them), and it’s not necessarily their fault. Not all laws are covered in driver’s ed, and some change with little fanfare, and many change state to state. I recently got a ticket for something I had absolutely no clue was against the law (because it wasn’t in the state I learned to drive in), and if by some fluke I had hurt someone in the process, I’d probably be in jail for it.

The refresher courses would keep road safety in adults’ minds and raise public awareness of traffic laws and proper traffic safety and conduct. Whereas now, most people seem to cement the way they drive within a few years of learning and nothing that takes place on the road - nor during any dinner party conversation - is going to change that.

2

It already is a lot harder in many states. Louisiana used to be pitifully easy as well but driver’s ed was a relatively intense summer school course by the time I got my license in the late 1980’s (of course, we were allowed to get our full license at 15 after completing such a course). We had a few weeks of half day classroom classes that were sort of hard and I found it useful. We also had to ride around either as the driver or passenger with other students for some number of days.

It could have been much more intense but this isn’t Europe and a driver’s license is often a very real need and not a luxury under many circumstances. The level of training varies greatly by state.

3

I think it should definitely be harder than that! Thankfully, it is.

Illinois requires a minimum of 30 hours classroom time and 6 behind the wheel hours with a certified instructor, and 50 with a parent. In reality, every driver’s ed program I know requires more than that - my son needs 100 hours of driving with someone 21 or over, and half of that has to be with a parent. At least 10 of those hours have to be at night.

Teens in Illinois have a Graduated License, with additional restrictions like number and relation of passengers in the car, until they are 18.

4

I thought someone might say that, and I almost brought it up in the OP, but I felt like it was getting too long as it was. I don’t think this matters a bit. The course should be intense, and if you can’t pass it, you shouldn’t be able to drive. Really needing a license should serve as inspiration to study your ass off and pass the course.

5

Ok, sounds like a great start, but I’m guessing a lot of states still aren’t this hard, and the numbers would dwindle much further if you looked at the programs people over the age of 30 went through (which, without even checking figures, I gotta think they make up the vast majority of drivers.) This is all the more reason for refresher courses, IMO. You’ve got kids learning stuff in drivers ed that the majority of adults on the road probably never learned.

6

I got my provisional MN license 4 years ago. 30 hours of classtime were required. When the teacher felt you had adequately understood the material thy signed either a blue or white form that you took to the DMV to get permission to take a multiple choice test on a computer terminal. The test would automatically shut down if you failed too many questions or if you answered enough right that you couldn’t fail which is rather disturbing if you weren’t paying attention to your right answers vs. number of questions left. Then you got your permit. Permit holders have to have a licensed driver in the passenger seat. 6 hours of behind the wheel instruction from wherever you had your class and either 30 or 50 hours (I don’t remember which) with a parent and 10 of those at night. This earned you either a white or blue form, whichever color the first one wasn’t, that was permission to take the road test at the DMV. At the road test, you parallel parked, pulled over on a curb, maybe went through a tricky intersection in the town and just generally drove around for 15-20 minutes. All this for a provisional.

Note: My teacher was utter crap and somehow managed to find time to have us watch Tommy Boy, Water Boy and Rush Hour during class.

7

Washington has the same rules, and its still a joke.
the op notes hes lucky his parents made him drive everywhere, and he really is.
the single biggest issue with new drivers is lack of experience, the only way to get that experience is to you know, drive the friggin car, a lot.

what I would like to see
full license at 18, permit at 16, until you have your full license either no driving alone or very very restricted. (like to and from school/work) adopt the British drive test. currently the American drivers license requirements are a complete waste, I know one guy who failed the drive test 9 times before he managed to string together a pass, he did this over the course of a couple months.
most states the test is as follows
parallel park
lane change (often done in a residential area into the “parking lane” instead of on a street with traffic)
Washington has the hill park, where you park your car with the wheels turned
and the ever moronic backing around a corner.
other states have a 3 point turn.
average test time 10 minutes
average pass rate on the first time 80%
the British test takes 45min to an hour, includes freeways, city streets (including one ways) parallel parking on a busy street, it has to be done in a Stick (not something I think we need here) if you fail you cant retest for a full year.

any time you get a moving violation it should include refresher classes. and it should include some simple logical thought into the driving that got you the ticket.

my example to students, you get a ticket for failure to stop at a sign or light, $101, but its a moving violation so you insurance goes up, you also may have to take some time off work to deal with the ticket. all told the one ticket could easily end up costing $600. now you didnt stop because you thought it was a waste of time but if you are taking home $10 per hour AFTER taxes (a good job for a teen) it will take 60 hours of your life to pay for an attempt to save 2-3 seconds in order for this to balance out you would have to run 86,400 stop signs or red lights without getting another ticket or causing an collision.

tailgating, same idea. driving around 15 ’ between you and the car in front and you and the car in back gets you home faster how? we have all seen the chain reaction crash where one person in the chain fails to react in time and all the cars behind him pile up and crash, why? because you have no room for error…and anyone who assumes a freeway full of drivers will remain error free is a moron.

yeah I am with ya, pilots licenses are a bitch to get and require hours and hours of classes and flying time but pilots dont really put that many other people in danger, most plane crashes involve only the people on the plane. Cars on the other hand…

8

IIRC, the rules when I was 16 in Ohio were that minors had to have 8 hours of behind the wheel time with a drivers ed course, and an additional 8 hours classroom instruction. This was after you got your learner’s permit. I think I did 1 full Saturday for the classroom, and then 3 sessions of 3, 3, and 2 hours behind the wheel. At one point, my instructor fell asleep (I’ve been a very good driver from day 2. Don’t ask me about day 1).

Then it was a 100 question written test and a 20 minute road test or so.

In any case, all of this, including the test, was a complete waste of time considering I had already driven hundreds of miles with my parents in the car. It was just more of the same at that point. I’m all for making the requirements more strict as long as it’s not just more of the same.

There were a lot of things about spacial awareness, advanced car control, driver understanding and learning the REAL rules of the road that I didn’t learn until I had been on the road for years. I plan on taking my kids to autocrosses as soon as they can, to quiz them regularly on where other cars are on the road, to ask them to make assumptions about what other drivers are doing. I want them to get sideways on wet and dry pavement in a controlled situation. They need to understand about contact patches and bump steer and over-correction and what to do when a tire blows out and when you put two wheels off the road and how to correct from a skid in a RWD and FWD car. I plan on teaching them all of this crap myself, but if the state mandated it, that’d be great too.

Reminding people to come to a complete stop at a stop sign or that you have to turn into the closest lane and THEN signal and move over doesn’t necessarily make anyone safer. We really need to get gritty with this.

9

Bravo good man, I like your style.

Skidding should definitely be a requirement because we’re all going to have to do it at some point and most people freak the first time. I saw a video about a police officer who died because he skidded for the first time with anti-lock brakes, thought something was wrong, left off, and hit a tree. My first thought was “people are out on the road skidding for the first time with anti-lock brakes every day.”

10

One thing I would like to see around here (Chicago) is an ice-and-snow driving requirement. I’m about to make my kid go through it with my dad, who’s an ice racer. He’s the one who taught me to drive, although my driver’s ed teacher might take exception to that statement. As soon as Kid gets his permit, he’s going off with Gramps to learn a manual transmission and driving on ice the same day, weather permitting.

Really, ice racing was awesome as a teenager. Take the car out on a frozen lake, go, and when you get your car stuck in a snowdrift, three huge guys named Biff come yank you out by the fender. Good times!

11

Things have really changed; I participated in the first Driver’s Ed program in my town and was able to get my license at the age of 14 (1954) and that was a full-fledged driver’s license; there was no such thing as a learner’s permit. I don’t remember all the instruction details but I do remember the car we used was a 1953 Ford with a 3 speed transmission. But—most of the kids my age had been driving pickup trucks and assorted farm equipment since they were old enough to see over the steering wheel. Now I’m at an age where I probably should begin to think about surrendering my license but I hope I put that off for at least another two years. I do agree that the education involved should be more intensive and I think that just maybe the minimum age should be increased but I don’t know to what figure. Kids today are just as stupid as we were and they have the advantage of driving faster cars.

12

This would mean that millions of high school students across the country would be out of work. I got my first job the day after I got my driver’s license, and have been employed in one fashion or another since.

I never took driver’s ed. I learned to drive by getting my permit and driving a car. I passed the permit test by reading the manual for about 20 minutes and then taking the test.

Considering the vast number of people who have taken driver’s ed, and are currently horrible drivers, it seems that the requirement that you pay the state for driving instruction is nothing more than a money making scheme by the state.

As to the OP’s idea that you have to take refresher courses and re-test every five years, it’s a ridiculous and unnecessary expense that would only serve to further bloat an already oversize bureaucracy. Who’s supposed to pay for all this additional infrastructure and the people who have to staff such a giant organization? You want to make driver’s licenses expensive and very difficult to obtain?

More people will drive without one.

If someone can’t afford to take a week unpaid off of work in order to take the refresher course to get their license renewed because it will mean they don’t make the rent or can’t afford food or medicine, they’ll drive without a license and you have fixed nothing.

13

Maybe it would work better if the police would ticket people for actually being awful drivers instead of following the letter of the law and ticketing those who are going X number of miles over the speed limit, or who don’t come to a total, absolutely complete stop at a sign. I’ve got 5 - 6 speeding tickets, but haven’t had an accident in many many years, and have never had one that resulted in more than dented metal. This despite the 40,000 to 50,000 miles I drive every year.

OTOH I don’t know how such a law would be written - “you there, $100 fine for driving like crap!” doesn’t seem to work…

14

first I noted an exception for work/school
you never took drivers ed and passed by driving yourself around and reading a book for 20 min and now you are licensed to operate a vehicle capable of causing death at any moment on the road and you think thats ok?
current drivers ed is pretty sad, I have worked for 3 different driving schools and I am less than impressed with all of them, the answer isnt to start handing out licenses like candy.

and currently the Dol is nothing more than a money making scheme by the state, are you kidding me (not you, the state) you dont actually test to see if people are qualified drivers but make them pay for a test to get a license to drive even though they havent shown they are even remotely capable?)

you dont need new infrastructure, you change the rules. right now in some areas if you fail a test you could literally take it again RIGHT THEN. under the British rules I suggested you could only take one test a year.
of course drivers licenses should be difficult to obtain, do you have any idea how many people die in vehicle related crashes every single day? do you realize that some 90%+ are easily avoidable crashes?

and what makes you think you would need to take a week off work for a refresher course? more like a few hours on a weekend.

as for driving without one, put them in jail. you do not have a right to drive a car…repeat you do not have a right to drive a car. this one is a privilege.

15

The more vague the offence, the more prone it will be to abuse. It might end up being more like “You ni****, $100 fine for driving like crap!”

Or so the claim will be. We don’t even see too many tickets for unsafe lane changes, which are far more dangerous than exceeding the posted speed limit, IMHO. It is because with the radar gun (or laser or whatever they use) speeding tickets are like a printing money. Close to a 100% conviction rate, and a 95%+ pay-by-mail rate. If you had a more vague offence, more people might try to contest the tickets which would clog the whole system. The system isn’t really capable of processing trials for $100 fines.

16

So the program and teaching methods should be re-evaluated and restructured into something that works. Trial and error for 100 years if necessary; we’re talking 10s of thousands of lives per year here.

I haven’t thought about it extensively, but an additional gas tax is the first thing that comes to mind.

Hell yes. Well, maybe not necessarily more expensive, but the latter is obvious from my OP.

Who said anything about a week off work unpaid? The courses would be offered 7 days a week and people would be given a reasonable window in which to complete them. And I don’t think they should be a week. Two days sounds like a good number to me, and not a boring, all day class - just a few hours. I feel like people would just turn their brain off during a one day class, but they would have to absorb something if it was stretched out over 2 days.

People with “give me my license, my keys, and get out of my way” attitudes need to start buying their own land and building their own roads on it, or realize that our current infrastructure is public property and we ALL have to share it.

17

I will, as soon as they are old enough (6 months after their 16th birthdays), give my niece and nephew a young driver’s course in something akin to Bob Bondurant’s course for new drivers, because I know normal driver’s ed won’t teach them all that they need to know.

18

I really doubt you’re going to find a lot of support from voters when it comes to mandatory refresher courses that take a few hours out of their lives every few years. I do not believe such courses are necessary nor do I think they will do a lot of good. Does anyone have any reliable statistics to suggest that those who recently completed drivers education are less likely to get into an accident? Is there any reason to think that more drivers education would actually make our roads safer?
Odesio

19

Pretty sure most insurance companies cut you a break on your premium if you voluntarily take such a class, and I can’t see them doing so without the numbers to back it up.

20

Perhaps then they need to raise the fines. As I was driving home today, there was an awful lot of weaving going on, of the type that looked like people just weren’t paying attention to what they were doing. Don’t most or all police cars have video cameras in the windshields now? They could just send a picture of the car weaving like they send pictures of cars running red lites!