Ah… Summertime and drivers ed was a sophomore ritual during the summer before we started or junior high school year. At least that’s when most of us turned 15 or 16 and were eligible for learner permits.
I remember the sacrifice well. Drivers Ed meant lower insurance premiums. My parents made it clear. No driving until I took the class. So, bye bye six weeks of my summer vacation. Spent all of June and the first part of July in class. I actually had been driving on my uncle’s farm since I turned 12. His truck and also tractor bush-hogging the pasture.
They still have those driving simulators? Terrible film strips of the road on a screen? With computers grading your response? I was glad when they finally let us on the road with an instructor. Three kids in the car at a time. We’d swap out and then practice whatever maneuver the teacher wanted.
We also had to change a tire in the school parking lot. Loosen the lug nuts, Jack the car, take off the nuts and lift the tire off the hub. The Girls got to skip that part. Even breaking the nuts free was tough for some of the girls and smaller guys.
No such thing anymore, at least anywhere I know of directly. Driver’s Ed was one of the first things cut when the schools had to tighten their budgets. You want to learn to drive, go find a private driving school.
My kids just went through it in the last couple of years. The high school offers it, but it costs $559 right now. Some high schools have an outside driving school come and teach it there instead. Driving schools have a range of prices from about $400 to $700. Some of the higher priced ones will even have the students drive to the other students’ locations to pick them up and then drop them off afterward.
When I took drivers ed last millenium, it was a course offered during the school day, but it’s now an after-school class.
No more simulators. My kids did not do the tire changing, but some driving schools might still. Seems like a good idea.
Back in the 1700s when I took Driver’s Ed, I got the record score for peripheral vision. Nobody noticed that if you put your hands on the bottom of the machine, you can feel them move the targets way before you can pick them up visually.
I’m a bit more north than the States, but hey all opinions wanted right?
I took driver’s ed in…2001? 2002? Anyway, basic insurance is required here so that wasn’t the issue. All students eligible were automatically enrolled and told to show up on their lunch hours. We ate lunch and went over the handbook for the written test, and then watched The World’s Greatest Car Chases (no joke! ) Then we had a certain amount of time with the instructor in the car. I’m sorry Ms. Driver Instructor, I’ve gotten a lot better at highway driving! No simulators or car maintenance included though, just the handbook, the written test and then the hours with driver.
I sucked at driving and needed more help, so my parents paid for a private tutor as well.
It was a standard elective when I was in high school (from 2000 - 2004, and I took the class in 2003). I took it along with all the other juniors. Standard classroom stuff, some grisly videos, and the three-student-one-instructor driving you mentioned. No simulators except we had one session where we wore glasses to simulate drunkenness and tried to play basketball. That was fun.
Back when I was in high school, I was able to take it through the school during my freshman-to-junior sophomore. I’ve had many friends say they were actually able to take it as a class but that wasn’t the case around here. It was still cheap though, something like $60 for the summer if you had a good report card. I remember it being bi-weekly for two or three hours. It would alternate with one day half class/half driving in the parking lot, half class/driving on the road. I had two other students in the car with me practicing, and there were about 30 in the class in total. All I really remember is being bored in class, watching the drunk driving movies, and being petrified on the road. You took the written test in order to get your permit.
A year or two later there was a “segment two” you had to take, which consisted of two days of watching more videos and then taking the written test one more time.
Now, the school doesn’t have any student driving option at all, it was cut. My little sister had to go through a private company to the tune of $300 or so.
I took it in 2003. My experience was like that of StarsApart, but with a few minor differences.
For one, we didn’t do the drunk driving thing. For another, if we had problems, we were encouraged to go to the local Pizza Hut which had a driving arcade game.
But, otherwise, it was the same. No actual simulation, and it was a standard elective–although it was offered during after school hours–I’d pray for our poor counselors if it wasn’t, as scheduling so that every kid can get into the classes they need is tough enough, without adding in a class that didn’t last a whole semester.
My cousins are Danish and they had a similar experience. It costs literally thousands to get your driver’s license. And the test are crazy.
You have to take several tests including wet conditions and emergency situations. You also need to know all sorts of stuff about the mechanics of your particular vehicle like the engine size and amount of horsepower.
Incredible amount of work and money, plus cars cost something like twice what they cost in North America.
Dreadful. It’s quite obvious. You must not venture onto the highways very often (j/k).
The question I’d like to see answered is, what are they teaching?
Accelerate into high speed traffic? Apparently not.
Accelerate around a curve? Also apparently not.
Downshift when braking? Well probably not since just about all America drives automatics.
Always. Use. Signals. Evidently not.
Keep it in a low gear and don’t slow down in snow? Hmmm I might be venturing into the unknown with this question.
They didn’t teach parallel parking at my school anymore all the way back in 1983. The state had changed the driving test to include a manueverability test in replacement of the parallel parking requirement.
Most of these were taught to my kids (except for the snow and the downshifting). My kids rant about all the other drivers who drive like they never learned how.
People who don’t take Drivers Ed can get their license nonetheless once they turn 18 so long as they can pass the incredibly short test. The testers don’t take them onto the freeway, as that would be incredibly dangerous if the driver doesn’t know what they’re doing. I suspect it is these people who drive as though they were never taught these things.
I took Driver’s Ed almost exactly 10 years ago. The classroom part was mandatory for all sophmores. The practical part was optional and you had to already have your learners permit. If you had a study hall they’d try to schedule the session then, otherwise you just missed the occasional class. Always at least two students (but never more than 3) went out with the instructor. One student would drive to a given location; then we’d switch and the other would drive back. The instructor sat in the passenger side and had his own break pedals. The was a fee to cover gas & insurance (& maintence on the car), but I don’t remember what it was. Both the classroom & practical lessions were focused solely on driving & road safety; we learned nothing about auto maintence. Well one girl needed to be shown how to use a gas pump during a driving session, but that was it. I did get a discount on my car insurance for taking & passing both portions of Drivers’ Ed; that discount lasted until I turned 25.
When I took it back in the Dark Ages (1989) it was a month-long summer course that cost $195. My first time behind the wheel I took a corner too fast, lost control, and went careening wildly across the front lawn of a local funeral parlor. The instructor made me sit in the back seat for the rest of the session.
There was a rather graphic movie about the dire consequences of failing to stop at railroad crossings, and another one about drunk driving. The only other thing I remember clearly from that class is the way the instructor immediately disappeared into the bathroom after every group returned. We figured either we were literally scaring the shit out of him or he was toking up to calm his nerves before heading out again.
My son’s school didn’t offer it when he was 15 (5 years ago), so he got taught the old-fashioned way, with me cringing and hyperventilating in the passenger seat. I’ve got a couple more years before I have to teach the girl to drive. Which reminds me, I need to make a run to the liquor store…
I took it in fall 2009 and it was honestly a complete joke. My high school stopped funding/subsidizing/supporting it like 5 years ago, so we had to do it through private companies- however, the former Driver’s Ed teacher was still around, worked for a private company, and they let him teach classes exclusively for students of my high school in the high school (after school, of course). There was a pretty hefty classroom portion (30 hours? 3 hours a week for maybe 8-10 weeks) as well as an actual in-car portion of 12 hours behind the wheel, as well as 6 hours of “observation time”, AKA naptime in the back seat. (Seriously, RMV? I have had 16 years of observation time at this point). There were two main characters I dealt with in Driver’s Ed- the former HS driver’s ed teacher-a borderline senile, yet well intentioned and kindhearted man whom we will call Bill, and the owner of the business he worked for, whom we will call Diane. I was able to take the classes with Bill, which was overall not a terrible experience. He did not care if you were there for the whole time (although very few people actually skipped out, as he was such a nice guy you didn’t want to take advantage of him) and we never did much of anything except watch movies, talk about things very tenuously related to cars, and listen to him tell stories. The greatest hits were definitely the time he worked in a drugstore in the early 70s and had one customer who would order NyQuil by the caseload once a week, (presumably freebasing it-very different formulations back then) and also the time he and his friends were able to drive on the Indianapolis Speedway at night (the gate was open), but they only did 30mph around the track because they did not want to damage it or something (???)
Anyway, as enjoyable a person as Bill was, I was forced to do my driving hours with Diane. She is without doubt the most 100% batshit crazy person I have ever met. She believed, and I am not kidding, that she singlehandedly ended the Cold War (She claimed that she and her friends made flowers out of tissue papers for the sailors aboard a Russian ship in harbor, and the Russian sailors could not get enough of them. “And I kid you not, they brought them back to Russia to show their countrymen, and 1 month later the war was over!” :smack:
She also believed that she had contacts at the FBI investigating her competitors and that she had adopted my uncle. I am not certain as to how she was allowed to be in a vehicle with children, let alone let out of the looney bin.
So, yeah, all in all, I didn’t learn anything in driver’s ed. Thankfully, I was driving with my parents well before that, and I have always been a bit of a car fanatic, so I didn’t miss out on too much
Spent all of June and the first part of July in class. I actually had been driving on my uncle’s farm since I turned 12. His truck and also tractor bush-hogging the pasture.
