Kamikazes: drivers without driver training
By: David Thornhill Thompson
Date: 1994-09-15
This article originally appeared in Vol. 4, Number 3 of Driver/Education, in September, 1994
In the waning months of the war in the Pacific, the Japanese High Command, lacking long-range bombers, developed a squadron of suicide pilots called kamikazes, or Divine Wind.
In exchange for a spiritual ticket to a higher place in heaven these brave young men were trained to take off in a small fighter plane with a huge bomb strapped to the belly and to fly that plane directly into an Allied warship. Of course, with the pressing constraints of time and resources, and because it was seen to be unnecessary, these human instruments of war were never taught how to land the plane. Taught to take off but not how to land.
That was 50 years ago. In 1993, in the U.S., nearly 8,000 young men and women died in vehicles they didn't know how to "land" either, only this time they were in automobiles, not airplanes. They were taught how to turn the key and turn the wheel but not how to turn an automotive emergency into a safe landing.
Over the past 15 years, successive administrations in Washington and countless state and local governments have relentlessly gutted the driver education system, based on the premise that it is a waste of taxpayers' money. In 1994, less than 25 states offer driver ed in their school systems and only 15 require it as a condition of licensing.
Teenage drivers are 7% of all licensed drivers, yet they are involved in 25% of all accidents. Their death rates are similar. They account for something in the order of $75-100 billion in crash damage, personal injury, medical costs and other accident expenses annually. So we have a set of opposing trend lines.
Teenage accident rates go up and driver ed efforts go down. Every day we send more kamikazes off to deal with an increasingly hostile traffic environment, while simultaneously reducing their pre-flight training. How can this make sense?
People raise kids, not government
Driver education became a sacrificial lamb to budget pressures when the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency (NHTSA), an agency of the Department of Transportation, reached a fundamental, if totally counter-intuitive, conclusion. It decided years ago, and stands firm in this conviction now, that driver ed does not produce safer drivers.
That's right. NHTSA believes that it has proof that you cannot improve traffic safety through improved driver training. This is based primarily on a study conducted in Georgia over ten years ago, often called the DeKalb County Study, or more formally, the Safe Performance Curriculum Study.
And that's where it's been left for 10 years. In more recent times, NHTSA has reviewed the Georgia experience and firmly concluded that "we have done a reasonable assessment of the driving task." They go on to speculate that "results from [new analysis would not] lead to significant changes in the current content of driver education programs."
Finally, NHTSA has concluded that "the missing link in the question of why driver education is not more effective...[is] when driver ed is taught."
Accordingly, in a Report To Congress on May 31, 1994, NHTSA made a formal proposal to introduce graduated licensing programs nationwide-the postponement of the driving privilege from 16 to a later age. This report, mis-titled Research Agenda For An Improved Novice Driver Education Program, devotes the first 20 of its 22 pages (90%) to making its case for graduated licensing. One page is devoted to parental involvement and a half-page to innovative technology.
There is in this report not one specific proposal concerning driver training. Nothing concerning new curricula. No reference to evaluation of current techniques.
It appears that, beginning 15 years ago, the scientists met, designed an experiment called the Safe Performance Curriculum and applied it to some subjects. During the test the laboratory "rats" just didn't get it. So the scientists met again and concluded that since there was nothing wrong with their design, it must be the fault of the "rats". Conclusion? Perhaps we need older "rats" to make our design work.
No administration since 1984 has put driver training on its agenda. The most recent proposal to Congress by NHTSA continues this theme. Having concluded that students were incapable of changing their behavior, NHTSA now is pushing strongly for graduated licensing, proposing nothing concrete in the area of improved driver training. Meanwhile, states, often dependent on federal highway funds, have followed the federal lead, continuing to reduce their own driver training programs.
Try, try again
While the concept of graduated licensing may well have important benefits in reducing accident rates by raising consciousness of the consequences of accidents among young drivers, a poorly trained 18-year-old is just as dangerous as a poorly trained 16-year-old. And there is little likelihood that such legislation, which must be passed at the state and local level, will be popular or universally applauded.
In other words, it will be a long time coming. In the meantime, government must become pro-active in the funding and development of new training techniques and systems, the benefits of which would apply with or without graduated licensing.
Congress should demand that NHTSA go back to its drawing board and produce some real innovation in driver ed for the first time in 15 years.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
But we ordinary citizens and parents should stop sitting around holding our breath, waiting for government to solve our problem, or the sound of our teenagers crashing, whichever comes first. Followed shortly by the mailman with a bill for tripling the insurance premium.
It is time for parents to take control again; to reassume the ultimate responsibility for the safety of their children. That, importantly, includes driver training.
Here is a perfect opportunity for citizen activism. If those in the driver ed community who have felt helpless as the politicians and the bureaucrats bled driver ed programs into ineffectiveness, would unite in a program to re-involve parents in the process, two important things would happen.
First, some new drivers would get the additional training and experience necessary to help them survive their early automotive emergencies. And second, they would be reaching a powerful, voting constituency-parents-and showing them firsthand how little government is doing to support driver ed.
Why do we not have PTA groups organizing local driver training days? Why can't we get local governments to provide some open spaces for training ranges just as they provide basketball and tennis courts?
Back to basics
No one doubts that we have become a nation of bad drivers. Every day on the way to work, you can witness multiple acts of bad habits, bad judgment and bad manners. It's time we went back to basics and got parents back into the habit of taking responsibility for the safety and behavior of their children. The driver ed community should take the lead in this back-to-basics movement.
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