New Spin on Driver's Ed

[Blind_Io]

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/01/No..._spin_on.shtml

OLDSMAR - Andrew Gingras stepped on the gas, and the BMW speed climbed to 50 mph. The engine's roar grew louder and louder, and the 15-year-old showed no sign of stopping.
"God!" yelled his backseat passenger, 16-year-old Stephanie McNiel.
"Brake!" Mike Speck commanded from the passenger seat.
Andrew stomped on the antilock brakes. The tires scraped the street. Seat belt squeezing tight to his chest, Andrew jolted the car into an abrupt stop.
"Good job!" said Speck, a race car driver and, for today, Andrew's driving teacher.
Over the weekend, about 400 teenagers at Tampa Bay Downs experienced a similar crash course during Driver's Edge, a free educational nationwide tour for young drivers that teaches real-life emergency techniques and driver safety.
A quarter of them poured into the air-conditioned tent for the Sunday morning session. Sleepy-eyed, the teenagers sipped free Starbucks coffee. Their parents perused pamphlets full of teen driving statistics.
Every 19 seconds, a young driver crashes a car. Every day, 20 young drivers wind up in fatal accidents. More 16- to 20-year-olds are killed in car crashes than by drugs, guns and violent crimes combined.
Blasting the Black Eyed Peas' Let's Get it Started, flat-screen televisions showed celebrities involved in car accidents.
Harrison Ford got the scar on his chin when he was 21 years old, crashing his car while trying to put on his seat belt. TLC singer Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes was thrown from a car in Honduras and died. And Paris Hilton drove drunk.
A panicked 911 call to the Las Vegas police replaced the music. Video footage showed a car wrapped around a telephone pole, in an accident that killed two out of five teenage passengers. The camera moved in on a girl in the hospital bed, barely able to speak.
"You don't realize it till it happens to you," she said. "And it can happen to you."
The screen dimmed. Everyone was fully awake now. Race car driver Jeff Payne took the mike.
"Quite honestly, it just sucks to be you," he said. People see teens as reckless, immature. "For some of you in here, that may be true."
They laughed. He told them people their age win Olympic medals, fly planes, fight wars. But when it comes to driving, they just don't get the same training.
"Driver's education in this country is sort of a joke," he said. "We aren't really taught how to drive. We're taught how to pass the test."
Not this morning.
The teens were schooled on the anatomy of brakes, what makes cars skid, what rollovers look like. Race car drivers taught them how to turn without oversteering and how to brake properly.
Joe Wilkinson zoomed off and made a sharp right turn on wet pavement, spinning out. The 16-year-old's hands danced around the wheel, his eyes glued to two cones. The object: regain control of the car.
His tires screeched and smoked. The smell of burning rubber filled the air.
"I'm glad it's not my car," his mom, Julie Spencer, said from a safe distance.
Spencer didn't like that her son got only 15 minutes of behind-the-wheel practice during his high school driver's education class, so she made him repeat it twice, in the summer. He's still a little jerky with the brakes, she said.
"I've been looking for a class like this for two years," said Spencer, of Safety Harbor. "I don't want the first time he goes into a skid to be on the highway."
Less than a month ago, a teen driver lost control of his car and spun out in St. Petersburg. His 14-year-old passenger, Northeast High School freshman Raquel Carreras, died.
Stephanie McNiel had another fatal accident in mind.
Her East Lake High School classmate, T.J. McPhee-Barry, died in a crash in March when the Mustang he was riding in veered into the path of an oncoming car.
Stephanie has been driving for about a year, but hasn't gotten her driver's license yet. She was scared. And the 16-year-old said her school's driver's ed program didn't make her feel prepared.
So she got into the BMW driver's seat Sunday and buckled up.
"Floor it!" Speck called from the passenger's seat. "Go, go, go!"
Eyes set dead ahead, she took off. At her instructor's command, she stepped on the brakes, and brought the almost 2-ton machine to a safe stop.
Out of the car, in front of the rest of the students, Speck commended Stephanie.
"Your focus was razor-sharp. It was pretty cool to watch," he said, adding that if we all drove with that kind of concentration all the time, we'd be safe.
Stephanie walked away from the lesson and said she felt ready for her driver's license.

I know some people think that if you teach this stuff to kids then they will be more likely to try it. The problem is that doesn't hold up with sex, drugs or anything else for that matter. If you normalize a behavior you take away the thrill of disobedience and in this case teach them valuable skills that could save their lives. I'm glad my parents did this kind of training with me on their own, because I didn't get it in school.

[No Boss]

Originally Posted by Blind_Io

If you normalize a behavior you take away the thrill of disobedience and in this case teach them valuable skills that could save their lives.

The truth and validity of this statement dwarf the internet itself. Things like sex, drugs, drinking, fighting, shooting, driving... the lot, are all things that could fit into this category. I think this is a great plan for the school and hopefully others will follow.

Unfortunately my school taught me how to only pass the test (a gym teach was my god damn instructor for christ sakes.) I remember they just followed the scare tactic schedule - "Show them as many scary things as we can to turn them off, and the world will be a safer place". One in particular was a video of a car crash that really looked like nothing more than mangled metal, glass, and plastic reflecting emergency services lights. Until the camera started zooming in. As the narrator prattled on sternly, you started wondering what they were showing until you realised that what looked like a charred pillar of metal was actually a body. Sticking out of the windshield at a rather curiously erect angle, there was now hair or discernible facial features. Just recesses and bumps where eyes, nose, and a mouth would be.

Certainly scared the crap out of me. But didn't make me drive any slower, thats for sure.

[JipJopJones]

I did somthing like this... through a company called Drving Unlimited or somthing like that. Although it was with my own car..... it hurt my wallet.

[KaJuN]

I absolutely recommend this kind of driver training. When I went through driver's ed they only taught us what we needed to know to pass the test. No emergency maneuvers. No car control. When the kids need to use these skills is when they end up getting killed. Thinking back on it I realize driver's ed is just a scam to make money off of teenagers. I spent more time learning how to park than I spent out on the roads. Come on now! I didn't really learn anything from the whole thing, I just went through it to get my license.

[crashmaxx]

I really don't know why this sort of class isn't part of the driver's ed program yet. I think that someone should not only have to do this sort of class, but should be able to show ample application of those skills in the driving test to get their license.

Currently, they barely, if at all, test the basic rules of the road. My test in Maryland was in a parking lot and basically involved driving 50ft, doing a 3 point turn, and parallel parking. You could still pass this POS if you were unable to turn on the car, drove in the wrong lane, or went through the stop sign. Only bumping the curb was an immediate fail. And I still know people that have failed it, more than once.

The most absurd thing, is the aggression towards speeding. There is almost no proper training, and very little enforcement of all aspects of driving. But whenever they get worried about car crashes, speeding is always right at the top of the list. No, the fact people were drunk, going the wrong way, pulled out in front of someone, wandering into other lanes, far to close to the person ahead, etc, wasn't the problem. Apparently, they could have been doing all these things, but they just needed to be going 10-20mph slower and everything would have been peachy.

[tigger]

Originally Posted by crashmaxx

The most absurd thing, is the aggression towards speeding.

I couldn't agree more. I never took drivers ed, but it was a joke at my school like the rest of you guys. But the first time I went on the highway my dad told me, "Quit looking at your speedometer and watch the cars, watch the road." He made me do panic stops, made me get out in the snow and put the car into a slide, taught me about looking through a turn; were you're going etc etc. My little brother went through the same deal, and went to Drivers Ed and said he couldn't believe how little it actually prepared him. All they did was try and scare him into obeying the laws and then give him a license. Either more schools need to implement something like this or more parents need to let their kids beat the hell out of their cars .

[Vette Boss]

Driver training is sparse in most parts of America, it does show when it comes to the majority of drivers here. Basically, you can get a license as long as you don't crash into anything.

I've been taught more about actual driving dynamics from the training sessions for racing simulators on the computer.

[airmenair]

Driver training, if you can call it that, is pathetic in Texas, or at least in the county I got my license from. I elected not to do the "driver training" through the school because it would have cost me $350 and instead I just did the "at home method" where you order all the material you need for $20. All I did was study the questions in the back of the book and went to take the test. Now, all I needed was to take a written exam, 20 questions, multiple choice and the actual physical test with an officer was optional! Left up to the parent. In fact the hardest thing was dealing with those damn DPS employees and getting every single piece of paper exactly correct. I must have gone to the office 3-4 times before they actually processed everything. I swear they're more paranoid that I'm going to lie about who I am, my age, or whether or not I'm in school, etc. than whether I'm going to have a wreck as I pull out of the parking lot.

Back to the article though, I think it's a really good idea. Instead of living in fantasy land where nothing goes wrong and your car stays on rails 100% of the time, they're thinking from a realist's point of view, chances are teen drivers will lose control of a car whether or not they are being reckless. I liken it to only teaching abstinance sex ed in high school, like some of you sort of mentioned. Which is how it was when I was in high school. Best to give them the tools and abilities to handle a car correctly than to just hope that nothing happens.

Also, I think it would be really fun!