According to most sources, one of the first modern driver education programs was created by Penn State professor Amos Neyhart in 1934 and debuting at a nearby high school. However, the state of New Jersey reportedly developed a driver’s education course in 1933, and in the same year, Bergen County, New Jersey is said to have offered the first classroom driver education instruction, a ten-hour course initially taught in three area schools. One year later, the program added an automobile and driving instructor, making it one of the earliest driver’s ed programs including both classwork and on-the-road training.*
At the same time, the first driver’s ed textbooks were published, mostly with support from auto insurance companies or organizations such as the American Automobile Association (AAA).
One of the most widely-used driver’s ed texts back in the day. (my collection)
The Sportsmanlike Driving text was notable for its breadth of scope, including chapters covering physical fitness, driver psychology, basic auto mechanics, car maintenance, and modern traffic management, as well as the expected “City Driving” and “Driving on the Open Highway” sections. Now-quaint illustrations like the one below peppered the text to add interest.
(Source: Sportsmanlike Driving, second edition, 1947)
Much of the advice is surprisingly applicable today. The “bottle test” depicted below would surely tax the situational awareness of many 21st-century drivers (not to mention running afoul of today’s open-container laws), but it was a clever idea decades before we became distracted by infotainment displays and cell-phone texts while behind the wheel…
The author then suggested turning the bottle upside down and repeating the exercise!
In a previous COAL, I related the process by which my mother, then in her mid-40s, obtained her first driver’s license after successfully completing a series of professional lessons and passing the required NJ DMV road test.
My story was a bit different. Just after the start of my sophomore year at Morristown High School I turned 15 1/2, and thus was eligible to enroll in a Driver’s Education class, a prerequisite for obtaining a learner’s permit, which would allow me to drive during the day, as long as a licensed driver rode shotgun in the passenger’s seat.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Driver’s Ed was offered by most U.S. high schools, unlike the state of affairs today, when many such elective courses have been discontinued due to budgetary constraints. In the fall of 1969, as I recall, our course combined classwork with actual behind-the-wheel driving experience. The former included reviewing the rules of the road as well as watching grainy black-and-white movies. These usually featured uniformed officers and/or lecturers in white lab coats sternly warning us of the myriad dangers awaiting newly-licensed drivers and reminding us that operating a motor vehicle was a privilege and not a right.
My Driver’s Ed car was a 1970 Pontiac Catalina four-door hardtop, green inside and out with a green vinyl roof just for good measure. Compared to my father’s ’64 T-Bird, it felt like a real land yacht, though it was nearly 400 pounds lighter. But the Catalina was over a foot longer, and the fact that it was nearly four inches wider made parallel-parking a real chore.
Too wide to fit on the cover of the brochure…
Looking ahead over the aircraft-carrier hood was one thing, but trying to see the corner of the rear bumper in parallel parking was impossible, especially with three classmates side-by-side in the rear seat, waiting for their turn to drive. A narrow one-way Morristown, NJ side street with parking on one side was the venue. Luckily, I couldn’t have been going more than 2- or 3-MPH when I lightly tapped the front bumper of a parked car in the midst of that maneuver, so no damage was done.
The tiny steering wheel facilitated three-across seating in front as well.
Another memorable one-on-one behind-the-wheel lesson involved driving our instructor, Mr. E., downtown to pick up a pack of cigarettes (for him, not me). On that occasion, the parallel parking task was completed with no bent sheet-metal or bruised self-confidence.
Long story short, I managed to complete my Driver’s Ed. stint with no further incident and then progressed from learner’s permit (no solo driving, no driving at night) to a real driver’s license. Freedom awaited!
*from History of Driver Education in the United States, Herbert J. Stack, 1966, pub. by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).
After “practice” driving the family’s ’53 Packard and ’50 Buick for years, my driver’s ed class (in Rockville Centre Long Island, NY) finally put me behind the wheel of a new ’61 Lancer 4 door.
With 3 classmates crowded in the back seat I got to do a few turns and one (dare I say perfect) parallel parking effort. That light and little Lancer was a delight to drive and very easy to park.
The instructor did not seem impressed with my skills; he actually seemed bored.
” Plaut, back seat; Anderson up front.”
(Not sure how well I could have parked a ’70 Catalina 4 door hardtop; the ’61 Lancer was much more user friendly.)
Total time on the road was 3 or 4 minutes. The worst part was then watching helplessly from the back seat as my classmates white knuckled their way around town, over braking on stops, over accelerating on starts, getting confused with the TF push buttons, and giving up on parallel parking halfway into the spot.
Getting back into the family monster vehicles after this quickie road class, I realized there was a whole new world of sleek, light, and modern vehicles out there.
It was an exciting time to be a car guy.
After my turn behind the wheel (in the aforementioned Bergen County) the instructor says to me, “you’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
I was probably too timid to reply, “Of course! Every time my parents go out, I take the other car for a spin”!
My parents have estimated me to have a few thousand miles of wheel time prior to ever obtaining a permit due to driving around their property and on various county roads. When Driver’s Education did come around, I started in a Taurus and, when that car hit 3,000 miles and went back to the dealer, ended in a tan Escort.
Most of the time I was alone with the instructor except one fateful day when a classmate went along. He and his twin were both behaviorally challenged so this one being along certainly made the trip memorable, with the teacher losing his cool only about three times.
When daughter was learning to drive, we hired a local lady to give her a few lessons, figuring another perspective would be good. This lady had been a driving instructor for the highway patrol, so she knew what she was doing. Daughter drove the teacher’s red Corolla hybrid.
I was very fortunate, having a father in the car business. Starting from the age of twelve he’d bring home a small used car periodically at lunch time for me to play with in a rather long straight driveway on the end of our dead-end street. The first car was a 1962 Renault Dauphine automatic, and I went thru quite a large assortment of cars in the remaining three years he had in the business. Various sizes, too, occasionally actually getting to drive a Cadillac de Ville – which was a bit of a feat given that our driveway was bordered by hedges during its entire length. Let’s just say, by 14 I was extremely proficient at three-point turns.
By dad’s final summer with the dealership (1965) I’d advanced to driving up and down our three block dead-end street as well as in and out of the driveway. And there were a couple of occasional Sunday afternoons while the family was out on it’s weekly Sunday drives (of course at 15 I couldn’t be caught dead on one of those anymore), I’d sneak dad’s silver blue ’65 Impala Super Sport hardtop on and put a mile or two on it sticking to our back streets.
After this, high school driver’s ed was anticlimactic. The car was a ’66 Ford Fairlane four door sedan, and the only real neat thing about the class is that it got me out of marching band practice (not my idea, mom’s) two days a week for a few weeks. License acquired in late ’66 just in time for dad to purchase the ’67 Camaro RS that he’d bragged up to a few of my classmates parents that he was getting it for his son for school.
I finally got to take it to school for the final two days of senior year. And only drove it during high school when one of the parents needed an errand run, or to my Friday/Saturday evening job at a local grocery chain.
As as 16 y.o. in 1976, our high-school Drivers’ Ed was similar. For classroom instruction, we had a roomful of consoles that were lifted from late-model Dodge Darts or some similar Mopar. Films made in mid 1960s around Skokie, Ill, played on the big projector screen… we were to drive along. Found these in the past on YouTube but can’t find any now.
My on-the-road was in a Ford Granada 6 cyl packed with students and instructor. That was the malaisiest of the malaise-era cars. Ford’s advertising compared the Granada to Mercedes… true in one respect… it was as slow as a diesel Mercedes… test 0-60 times were on the order of 25 seconds.
Recall three drivers ed cars used in my class. The first was a ‘67 Chevy Bel Air stripper, it’s only option being Powerglide. Then a ‘68 Pontiac Tempest, which at least had a V-8 and power steering. Then a ‘68 Plymouth Fury III, loaded including A/C. Usually three kids out with the instructor. Most of us picked up driving easily, having been around cars all our lives. But I recall one kid who came from a carless family, who didn’t even know how to start the car, let alone had any idea how to drive it.. Was always kinda anxious when he was behind the wheel.
I had gotten a few hours behind the wheel of my grandfather’s /6 Dart Swinger on country backroads before starting behind the wheel driver training, so I was also one of those “you’ve done this before” kids and was the only one allowed to drive the car on the street the first day. All the other kids got practice in a parking lot and I was picked to drive us all home. I’m thinking it was four kids of us plus the teacher in a green 1972 Galaxie. This was in late summer of ‘72 and for the final class we got a brand new 1973 Coronet. When my own kids took their training, our son first in 2007, there was no public school driver training in our town and their private instructor had a several year old 4 door Civic. When our daughter took it a few years later from the same guy, it was the same car. The days of learning in an 18 foot long dealer-loaned new car were definitely over.
Learned to drive at 15 in my Brother in law’s new 66 Mustang Convertible and my fathers then new 66 Bonneville. Talk about ends of the spectrum. But it made driving the taxi spec interior 67 Plymouth Fury during my HS driver’s training course a piece of cake. Of course the real “E” ticket experience was riding in back while classmates did some very interesting stunts. This included travelling over a narrow old 2 lane bridge over the Missouri River, with the added plus of a 30 degree turn in the middle of said bridge. When i rurned 16 in May of 67, i used my Mother’s 67 Grand prix, as it was the smaller of my parents cars. The road test was once around the block and a parallel parking test one sould have parked a semi, with trailer, in. It was so good to get that tissue thin temp license, the real thing arrived a week later.
My oldest daughter is just starting Drivers Ed at her high school now. In fact, this week we’re reviewing the Virginia Drivers Manual together, so she can take the Learner’s Permit test soon. It’s interesting to see the changes in Drivers Ed since when I took it in the late 1980s. Some changes are for the better; some not.
Some of the better changes (in my opinion) are ditching the 10-and-2 steering wheel hand position for 8-and-4 instead… I long ago realized that 8-and-4 suited me better. Also, new drivers seem to be taught better mirror position than they were years ago (i.e., you don’t need to see the side of your car in the sideview mirrors).
On the other hand, some recommendations go against common sense. They’re taught to tap the brakes if they’re being tailgated (does little but incite road rage), and to swivel their head when changing lanes on a highway (that’s what good mirror position is for).
A few weeks ago we both attended a “parent-and-teen-driver seminar” hosted by the Drivers Ed Dep’t and our local Police Dept. Similar scare tactics as used 30 years ago, though probably beneficial for “invincible” teenagers.
Oh, I like the “bottle test” idea. Seriously – I do. I’ve been stressing to my daughters the importance of smooth driving, both for situational awareness and for your passengers’ comfort. I recall Bob Bondurant’s driving school having a road course where drivers drove it with a bowl on the hood of their car, and the bowl contained some sort of ball. The object was to drive the course as quickly as possible without having the ball spill out. I like that idea.
As for our school’s Drivers Ed cars, they’re a fleet of 2006-13 era Camrys. Given their age, I assume the School District owns them. My high school’s Drivers Ed car was a Buick Century donated by the local Buick dealership.
Great article. I’ll admit that prior to driver’s education class (1977) I’d never been behind the wheel of a car aside from one or two illicit occasions. Said occasions would have resulted in disciplinary actions from my parents (one of which, come to think of it, did). My folks were nothing if not law-abiding…and I think that my mom was always a bit scared of the destructive power of motor vehicles.
So for me, driver’s ed was monumental fun and represented the liberating experience I think it was supposed to be. I took it very seriously (when actually driving…when riding as one of the 3 kids in the back seat, well, that was different).
Love the title of your post!!
When I took my first driver’s licence road test, to save time and hopefully lessen the degree of difficulty, I scheduled my road test in a quiet small town outside of my large, urban area. Like hundreds of future young drivers did in Ontario then, and probably still do.
It was more efficient to schedule an appointment in a small town, perhaps saving a month, and you would not be tested in heavy traffic, or on freeways. The catch I learned, was the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) offices and evaluators in these small towns, were wise to potential new drivers from the city taking this route to fast track their applications. I passed on my second attempt in Smiths Falls (80kms from Ottawa). First attempt in Pembroke, 150kms from Ottawa, the evaluator didn’t cut me much slack. Which better prepared me, for round two! Always, a large backlog in the larger cities.
With both of my kids we did the office in the smaller more remote town because the waiting list was much shorter, though in our case it wasn’t that much further than the two closer ones.
Here in Ontario, some of the more remote testing centres are located in popular vacation spots. Why young drivers from Toronto, while on family vacation, will conduct their road tests in small central Ontario towns like Bancroft or Huntsville. Locations that are hundreds of kilometres away, from home.
When I lived in the country as a teenager, there was a testing centre in a nearby village of 700. When I moved to a large urban area, I targeted that small centre, as my original testing location. Unfortunately, it closed by the time I was in my late teens.
Having a regular stream of city dwellers dropping in, certainly helps the local economy of these small towns. Some testers will stay overnight locally, so they are fresh and confident for their next-day test. Why, the locals don’t complain.
For us it was an easy choice, wait several weeks, drive 10mi and 30 min in one direction or wait a shorter time, drive 15 mi and 30 min in another direction.
Summer of 1966, HS drivers-ed was required to get a learners permit at age 15.. Our fleet of cars were 1965 Pontiac Catalina 4 door hardtops. I remember two had column shifts as we had to learn to clutch as well. I had already learned floor shifting driving my brothers MG in our neighborhood with Dad standing in the front yard. Four students per car plus instructor. Some things I learned back then I still use today. Come to a complete stop at stop signs, how to get in and out of traffic circles, parallel parking, and always turn to look to the side when changing lanes (saved my butt many times over the years). Early 1967, Dad took me out of school on my 16th birthday to get my drivers license and gave me Moms 1963 T-Bird. I never rode another bus until the second gas shortage in the late 70s.
Here in BC, there was no driver’s ed in schools. Aside from playing a gruesome movie from the early sixties showing all manner of carnage, the school system played no part at all in teaching students how to drive.
Most of us learned from good ol Dad, bad habits and all. My Dad was a good driver, and since he was the fleet and lease manager at the local Chev-Olds emporium he always had a nice new demo.
When it was time for me to learn how to drive a manual transmission, he brought home a bright yellow Camaro Z-28. That was fun!
While the situation is different today, in the ’70s it was absurdly easy to get a driver’s license in BC. You wrote a test for your learner’s license, waited a minimum 2 week period and then took your driver’s test. The hardest part was the parallel park in front of the courthouse.
Every year I was in high school there was at least one fatal crash in the graduating class.
I didn’t really have any formal training until I went to work for the Ministry of Highways and spent a week navigating Vancouver area highways and roads in a 5 ton dump truck with a standard trans and a 2 speed axle, while the driver trainer observed. It wasn’t fun, but I learned a lot.
I’ve read mixed reviews on the effectiveness of high school driver’s ed but it has to be better than doing nothing at all.
Aha! Rounding the Keizer Karelplein in the City of Nijmegen in all possible ways, driving a VW Golf Mk1 diesel (4-speed manual), spring 1984. Traffic lights when entering and leaving the roundabout. Hit the gas/diesel pedal when green and go for it, as traffic from the right (entering the roundabout) goes first. That means hit the brakes while on the roundabout. Cars, trucks, buses, cyclists and pedestrians everywhere.
Many folks avoid it like the pleague and do everything to find an alternative route. And many went to an other city for driver’s lessons and the test. Oh no, not the Keizer Karelplein!!
Nijmegen was my favorite stop-over, when travelling north/south through Germany. My favorite pub there was sort of shabby and they had a cheap sort of Belgian beer on tap. But the patrons were friendly and the bar tender was plenty of fun, having an accidental sense of humor
I believe I was amongst the last to be taught driver ed in my public high school in Maryland in 1980, before that task was handed off to private companies. It consisted of an 8-day rotation of four days of classroom instruction, one day on the road, and three days in simulators. The simulators used the left half of a ’75-’76 Chevrolet Caprice dashboard and wheel, with additional lights mounted above and forward on the dash, and an adjustable seat. You watched a projected film in a darkened room and had to respond properly to the onscreen action with the pedals and steering wheel, and the instructor would get a tally of your mistakes (also signaled by those extra lights atop the dash). There were about 15 of these in the room. On classroom days, we used a textbook called “Drive Right” (can’t believe I still remember that). We had three new 1981 Pontiacs for real-life driving: a Grand Prix (first car I ever drove), a Catalina sedan, and a LeMans wagon. These were not modified with an extra steering wheel or brake; the instructor would simply grab and move the regular wheel if needed.
As far as technique, I was surprised to learn I was to use my right foot for both the throttle and brake pedals rather than using my left foot for the latter (was this universally taught? I know people who use their left foot for braking). The rationale was that you couldn’t press both pedals at once, but it does seem to add to reaction time for hitting the brakes. Right-foot braking also seems all but necessary if you drive a manual transmission, something I learned to do on a ’68 Beetle and I’ve had nothing but stick shifts on my cars since 1989. The class was taught to 15-1/2 year olds, the minimum age for obtaining a learner’s permit (only restriction IIRC was having an adult in the car when you drove. At 16 you could get a full license. Since then, new drivers in my state get “graduated” driver’s licenses, which start with restrictions on when you can drive and having under-18s as passengers, and removes them one at a time until you’re 18.
For a long time I had my original, now-expired driver’s license from when I was 16, which looks primitive compared to new ones without all the electronic markings, holograms, and anti-counterfeit markings modern licenses have. I showed it to some friends in the last decade and they were like “wow, it must have been so easy to make a fake ID back then” and I was like “no, it was extremely difficult to make a fake ID back then. Sure, it’s easy to make a fake 1980 ID using 2020s technology, but making a fake 1980 ID using 1980 technology was almost impossible for most of us. We didn’t even have access to color printers or copiers back then.
I had a lot of experience before I started driver’s ed. My mother was raised on a farm, and when we went to visit my grandma, I was allowed to drive on some of the virtually-deserted country roads that were part of our trip. Dad lived on a U-shaped private gravel road, and I was allowed to drive on that so long as I made a 3-point turnaround before I got to houses that were at either end.
Fort Wayne Community Schools had a centralized drivers ed program, which I took in the summer of 1975. We had simulators in a classroom and then cars, with three students in each. I got a 1975 Mercury Marquis sedan, which I figure was probably as big a driver’s ed car as there ever was. If you could parallel park that big Marquis, you could do it in about anything. My best friend got a 75 Olds 88 sedan. The cars had an extra brake pedal installed on the passenger side floor for the instructor.
I was surprised, but the Catholic high school where my kids went ran its own drivers ed program, and each of my kids went through it. They didn’t have the road-driving chances I had before starting, but I took them out to big empty parking lots where we would spend lots of time.
For my driver’s ed we still had that as an elective in normal class time. We of course watched several “death on the highway” movies, the teacher lectured some and we had a few written tests. Later in the class we drove in the bus parking area durring class around a set of cones the teacher had set up. There were two of us in the car while the teacher stood in the middle of the lot with his Mr Microphone. Mr Microphone was of course FM while the old fleet cars were AM only. The solution was of course to put one of the under dash converters which we often tuned to a real radio station and ignored the teacher’s outbursts. Since we were in a parking lot there were speed bumps. I still remember the teacher yelling my name out when I didn’t slow down for the bumps. “Slow down Scoutdude, you are going to blow out the shocks”.
The cars did have that passenger side brake pedal so of course if you were sitting there you would occasionally slam on the brakes or hold them tight when stopped to make the other guy look bad.
I was bummed that we got clapped out Satellites that had been retired from other duty. Meanwhile where my older Cousins lived the local dealer donated the use of new cars, which of course was called out on the Driver’s Ed signs.
When my kids took Driver’s Ed the school still offered it but it was a zero hour, before school started, and a fee was required, which was about 1/3rd the cost of the private schools. They did do their driving time after school. One thing I appreciated was one of the homework assignments was to change a tire. Just so happened that when that time came for my Son one of the cars did spring a leak in one of the tires. It wasn’t a particularly quick leak so it could have been pumped up and driven to the tire store, but instead I had him put on the temporary tire and took it in loose and he had to put it back on.
Meanwhile one of my Daughter’s friend did a private school and she remarked that for one of her first on-road driving sessions the instructor told her to head to a destination, that required a bunch of freeway driving where she wasn’t that familiar where to go and then took a nap. She was terrified and of course told her parents who told everyone they knew not to use that school.
I’ve been driving for over fifty years and it still remains one of the joys of my life. At 15 1/2
I got my motorcycle permit which allowed for a lot of freedom. The restrictions were that I could not carry a passenger, or drive on the freeway. I initially rode a Honda 50 that my Dad had bought, and we had used to ride around in empty parking lots, with him watching. Then I got a Honda CB160 which was perfect for exploring the local back roads and county highways.
My Dad also would let us drive the car around in empty parking lots with him seated besides us. This was years before we would be old enough to get a permit. I think that it was his idea that if he allowed us to drive the car with him, it would prevent us from trying to sneak the car out on our own. So I never tried to drive the car by myself, before I had a license. I did the same with my kids.
I taught all of our kids to drive, though they still had to take mandated driver training classes. The two oldest learned to drive manual transmissions. Once they had their permits I’d take them out to get practice. I told my friends that it’s better to have your kids get their permit at 16 years, because at this age it’s convenient to let them drive while on errands and family trips. After high school, a lot of kids don’t like to hang out with their family as much, and it’s a chore to take them out just for practice’s sake. I discovered that when my youngest Daughter got her license at 20 years of age. She has never been a fan of driving.
I taught my Son to drive a manual in my 280Z. We spent hours driving through all the back roads of the South Bay. This was one of my favorite memories of us together.
When Alan Jackson released the song, “Drive for Daddy Gene” it brought back so many memories of driving with my Dad and of the time with my Son. I still can’t help getting watery eyed when I hear that song.
Something that was appearing, as my nephew was preparing for his road test several years ago, was the sharing online of road test routes. And young drivers being tested, following the routes of earlier testers. So, they knew in advance, exactly what to expect. I guess that’s been going on forever. As the DriveTest evaluators here in Ontario did not appear to alter their routes, at that time.
No idea, what the situation is like today.
https://drivetest.ca/
My father taught me similarly – in parking lots long before I was able to legally drive. He told me he was glad to teach me, but if I ever tried to sneak the car out on my own before I was licensed, then I’d never get a license as long as I lived at home. I was never tempted to do so.
An ‘emergency stop’ used to be part of the UK driving test, where you’d have to stop on the instructor’s signal as if a child had run out in front of the car, without skidding. On my friend’s test, a child really did run out in front of his car. He stopped in time and passed the test. It wouldn’t do much for your nerves, though.
Speaking of roundabouts…
I could do that Swinden roundabout (or rotary or circle)!
One of the great things about learning how to drive growing up 5 miles from DC is that traffic circles (and parallel parking for that matter) were a function of day to day driving and hence young driver practice. Maybe not every kid in Bethesda in 1977 drove into the District, but that was my thing, so of course I put in more hours in the city than I did in mall parking lots.
Anyhow, yeah, I have no issues whatsoever with roundabouts so long as most drivers follow the rules of yielding. Sadly, that’s something that at least around here has fallen very much by the wayside. (e.g., the % of drivers around my parts who no longer seem to understand how 4-way-stops work has diminished by the year. Even if it is on the driver’s test.).
Good comments .
I was never able to get signed up for high school driver’s training, others did multiple times as they’d get stoned and sleep in the darkened classroom .
Being a county boy I taught my self to drive at 12 Y.O. or so .
My ex wife IIRC took _seven_ tries to get her license because she flat refused to make full stops, or make U-Turns without using someone’s driveway, etc. etc. .
I’d tried hard to teach her but she always knew better than everyone else and would come home enraged when she failed again , I laughed .
I like roundabouts, they ease traffic flow very well *if* one or more idiots don’t stop and panic .
-Nate
I travelled to beautiful Morristown NJ on a number of occasions on visits to corporate HQ on Columbia Rd.
In ’68 our HS had two driver training cars, both donated by local dealers and equipped with dual foot controls. Giant Plymouth wagon was one, but I wanted to learn in the VW, as I was already driving dad’s Impala wagon, under his supervision, of course. The VW actually had an instructors clutch pedal. My history teacher was the instructor.
Classroom drivers ed was drivers ed and health. Anti-drug films were shown and we were even given fallout shelter plans to take home as part of the Civil Defense course. Dad, who was an engineer for a defense contractor said that a shelter was pointless.
Forgot to mention about the one local driving school. They have a fleet of Prius C vehicles and the owner apparently is a bit of a car guy and apparently is from my generation. They have a General Lee (though w/o the flag on the roof), Herbie, complete with wheel covers that are in the same vein as the ones on a Beetle, A Mystery Machine, complete with flower painted wheels, and one with an A-Team paint scheme.
Started with changing gears for Dad with my right hand (RHD cars) at 11 or 12.
At 14 I was busted driving home with Dad in the Austin 1800 ute. No ticket. We were told “don’t do it again”
No driving until I was 16 when I did a 100 odd Ks in outback Queensland on a family road trip.
Got my learners at the earliest possible date, my 17th birthday. License on my 18th. A provisional license, but the government had only just abolished the requirement to display “P” plates. (they returned some time ago)
No Driver’s Ed at my state high school.
I took driver’s ed through our small high school in Indiana in summer of 1965. Local dealers provided two cars, a white 1965 Plymouth Fury III four-door sedan and a burgundy 1965 Chevrolet Impala four-door hardtop. I got the Fury III: the 318, Torqueflite, the infamous low effort P/S, and a big greenhouse all made it an easy car to drive and park. IIRC it had the combination vinyl and cloth upholstery in pale blue.
At the time I was disappointed not to have been assigned to the Impala because it had A/C and it was a hot summer. But at least the Fury was white and the seats were a lighter shade and didn’t stick to us badly.
The coach was my instructor and did a fairly decent job. Lots of blood and gore films of course but the one on Getting the Big Picture (keeping your eyes moving across the panorama in front and to the sides and back of the car while driving) has stuck with me over the decades and I think made me a better driver.
At that time in Indiana you could get a learner’s permit at 15 after passing driver’s ed and then take the tests and get a license at age 16 plus one month. I passed the written and driving tests and had that magic card in my hand at 16 plus a month to the day. I took the driving test in a Falcon with three-on-the-tree and my ability to drive stick seemed to impress the man giving the tests. I used the Falcon because it was the smallest car in our fleet – easier to parallel park even without power steering or automatic. Good times. Hard to believe so many kids today are not avid to get a license but they do have transportation alternatives not available to us and cars, upkeep, and insurance are far costlier today.
Gore flicks had little if any influence on my earlier driving habits. The only thing that did was when I became a parent.
Given both data-protection legislation and modern vehicle stiffness, I doubt that gore flicks would have much of an effect on today’s driver ed pupils, given that the grimacing driver pinned between the wheel and crushed whatever was pushed up behind him didn’t have the luxury of getting freed by any of those later invented hydraulic prying jaws that would have freed him from that deathtrap bubble-topped Invicta he just crashed, let alone air bags
I never got to see any of those gore driver training films , is there a link to them somewhere ? .
-Nate
Nate: They are all over YouTube. Signal 30 will get you started. Red Asphalt is another series of these films you will find there. Too many to list here.
THANK YOU Sir ! .
Knowing the names helps, when I search using ‘old driver training films’ I get millions of not gory films to wade through .
-Nate
Driving from Michigan to Down South and to the West Coast made driving on the Ohio Turnpike inevitable. Back then, they had just reduced the national speed limit down to only 55 mph, making it even easier to fall asleep behind the wheel. Simultaneous to that, I have never driven on a freeway of which was so heavilly surveilled by radar-equipped patrol cars than through Ohio.
The Germans deliberately avoided building their Autobahn in a straight line, for reasons of safety, given that monotonous straight line driving is the principal cause of fatigue
I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto and our schools did not have driver training classes. Some of my cousins who lived in other cities In Ontario did have driver training. I ended up taking a similar course privately. It was called “Pro-Drivers” and was sponsored by CAA (Canadian version of AAA) or some similar organization. It got you a discount on your insurance, and I think it also got you a bit of leniency in the road test. The classroom teaching seems to have been similar to those described here. The in car training was done by a local driving school in their 1966 Rambler Classic. At that time the ministry had their own private area for road tests, about 2 short blocks by 2 blocks, so you drove around a block and then parallel parked. After that I had to drive out on the main road (Keele Street), and then back. I passed the test, but I don’t think I should have, as my parallel parking was atrocious. I think it was because they knew I was taking this driving course and they wanted a high pass rate.
When Mom needed a driver’s license, she sent three dollars to the State, along with a copy of her birth certificate. The State wrote back that “Baby Girl” wasn’t a valid name. She then had to write to a different department of the State, to get a corrected birth certificate. She took the opportunity to get her preferred spelling of her first name rather than the spelling her parents had chosen. Then the revised birth certificate and the three dollars got her a real, live driver’s license (not a “learner’s permit”).
To put this in time perspective, she drove to Omaha where her sisters were living, and got a job with Glenn L. Martin building B29s (clerical, not Rosie the Riveter.) From there it was Texas where Dear Old Dad was stationed, (Brownwood? Brownsville? Brown-something) and got married in a military-style wedding.
As for me, I was sitting on Dear Old Dad’s lap at 5 years old, steering the 1950-ish Buick “Battlewagon”, an utterly ancient car even then. When he got a brand-new ’66 Biscayne Wagon with 3-speed, when I wasn’t sitting on his lap steering, I was moving the shift lever as he punched the clutch pedal. Dad had me actually driving the ’66 starting when I was about 12. I remember having a terrible time working the clutch at a stop sign, on an uphill grade over traintracks, with traffic behind me honking. Eventually, I got going, and the clutch survived (barely.)
I got my learner’s permit the summer between 8th and 9th grade. Made the age cut-off by a week or two. Driver’s training was required for high-school graduation (1/4 credit out of 21 1/4 credits required to graduate.) There were “simulators” which–I suppose–were the same early-60s Mopar-based driver’s area as mentioned earlier. They could be set up as an automatic trans, or as a (3-speed?) manual. One guy had his up to 80 mph, the instructor was not amused and crammed the thing into “Park”. We all expected the simulator to be damaged; of course it was not.
I failed my first driver’s test by respecting the Highway Patrol officer assessing me, too much. He said “pull out into traffic” and I did. He docked me for not looking for traffic before pulling out. I figured he’d looked before he told me…but I still failed.
I’m teaching a friend’s daughter to drive. “I guess” Mom is too fraidy-cat, and Dad spends all day at work. I’m not sure how I got elected, but elected I am.
Eurotrash roundabouts–especially “Mini-roundabouts”–should be outright illegal. They’re concrete impediments to smooth traffic flow; essentially traffic lights that never turn green even for emergency vehicles. But that’s the point–they’re illegally used to disrupt traffic and make driving slower and less convenient. The “War on Cars” is real, and the dirtbags are winning.
I’ve been a member of the National Motorists Association for decades. Strongly recommended. https://ww2.motorists.org/
Your mom must have been continually bullied in school, because of her name. That was pretty mean of her parents, to name her that, sort of like ending up a female version of Johnny Cash’s Boy named Sue.
Driver’s Ed was never a prerequisite for graduation, in my school precint. But, mine took place in 1973. It might have been different, before then.
In many situations, Euro-style roundabouts function actually better than a traditional intersection where one of the crossing streets is a priority roadway. Problems arise, as soon as traffic begins jamming up for whatever reason, though
Funny you should say that–the “boy named Sue” reference. “Baby Girl” was of course merely a place-holder on the birth certificate, not her actual name.
Her actual first name was of the semi-unisex style, like Lindsey and Lindsay where the girl’s spelling is a little different from the boy’s spelling…and she preferred the boy’s spelling. So, yeah, Mom had a “boy’s” name.