The fact is traditional high school driver education does not work.  Moreover, the National Safety Council, on page 16 of its 2004 TEEN DRIVER: A Family Guide to Teen Driving Safety, matter-of-factly reports that the failure is global. That’s not the worst of it though.  This information is anything but new.  Way back in 1962, Dr. Edward A. Tenney wrote a book entitled, The Highway Jungle: The Story of the Hoax in Our Schools that is Putting Death at the Wheel.

Any honest, careful analysis of traditional high school driver ed. can lead to only one conclusion: it does not teach driving, let alone good driving.  Thus it can never succeed. Its faults are fundamental and pervasive. Its philosophy, psychology, content, and method are wrong. The damage they cause is crippling and permanent.

PHILOSOPHY:  The idea behind traditional driver education is to get driver’s licenses for teenagers and to teach them good citizenship as defined by driver education.  Driver ed. believes driving is developmental (learned naturally as part of growing up like walking and talking.)  Therefore, little actual coaching is given in the car.  It’s pretty much up to the student to learn to drive by himself while the teacher figuratively holds his hand, as an adult literally holds the hands of the baby he is “teaching” to walk.

Classroom instruction is preaching and attempting to scare the students into using “mature judgment” without giving them the knowledge necessary to do so.

PSYCHOLOGY:  Teenagers’ primary job is becoming adults.  That’s why the phase is called “adolescence.” They labor tirelessly to stop mindlessly obeying orders.  They are being forced by nature itself to achieve a reasonable degree of control in their own lives.  Driving equals control, and teens understand that at the very deepest level.  Driver ed., instead of using this powerful motivation, does everything it can to kill it.  It harangues endlessly about yielding and obeying.  Is it any wonder the kids are not receptive?

CONTENT:  Driver ed. has been called a Mickey Mouse course. Enough said.

METHOD:  Traditional driver ed. employs tricks and gimmicks to simulate genuine skills and understanding.  The initial introduction to driving should never be done with simulators.  The kids need to feel the car’s reaction to their control inputs.  Ranges virtually ensure a lifelong habit of aiming and scanning much too near the front of the car.  Instructional time behind the wheel is absurdly brief.

Traditional high school driver education produces kids who can’t drive but believe they can, because they’ve “earned” their licenses.  Many crash. Some die. Others mutilate or kill and live the rest of their lives wracked by remorse.   Appalled adults ask why and request reform.  To date, that reform consists of Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL).

Years ago a student of mine told me Stirling Moss had once said that practice does make perfect, buy only if one practices the right things.  Well, look around at what passes for driving on our roads.  The people performing those atrocities include the parents charged by GDL with the major responsibility for teaching their teenaged children to drive.  Obviously, GDL is not the magic bullet.

In the end, the prime cause of the problem is probably that the people at the top of the driver education establishment do not love driving.  If they did, they could not help but understand it and teach it joyously and very well indeed.

The problem is not insoluble.  Proper philosophy, psychology, content, and method exist.  Driver education’s nonsense can be stopped.  Do the very best you can for your children, including high performance driving school(s), if feasible.  Spread the truth, expose the irrational, set good examples, keep learning, and keep intolerable pressure on those who can deliver the radical changes necessary to replace driver ed. with real education for driving.