Enough?
Writing
and art by
Oliver Fichte
Thousands of teenagers line up at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) annually to get their driver’s licenses. With the education they had received in the months prior, are they prepared for the dangerous roads that lie ahead? According to Rhino Car Hire’s Drive Smart page, American teenagers get their licenses earlier than 90% of teenagers in other countries. With so many new and young drivers on the road, the competence of driver’s education has come under question. According to the DMV, teenagers must take 25 hours of classroom instruction or home study or Internet training program, six hours of behindthe-wheel training, and 50 hours of supervised driving practice.
Despite all this, “traffic safety researchers concede that driver education and training, even when well designed and rigorous, have not been shown to reliably reduce the crash rates of young drivers,” according to a DMV study. In addition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s transportation safety page, people aged 16-19 are still at the highest risk for accidents. This raises the concern that a lack of proper driver’s education is directly causing this trend with teen drivers. Ken Wang, a licensed driving instructor, operator, and the owner of Bay Cities Driving School, thinks that online driver’s education doesn’t live up to the standard of its in-person counterpart. Nonetheless, according to Wang, it gets the job done; it prepares students enough to take the permit test
and pass it. However, it’s a different story when students get behind the wheel. “It varies by the individual. Most of them have retained something,” Wang said. “Not all of them have retained everything, that’s for sure.” While driving with students, Wang and his fellow instructors often quiz them about their knowledge, to mixed results. While memorizing facts and rules can get students past the DMV’s permit test, it doesn’t teach them about physically handling a vehicle and avoiding accidents. “I think the more important thing for collision and crash prevention is the behind-the-wheel training, which you get after you do the written part,” Wang said. But even though behind-the-wheel training is more effective for preventing accidents, the DMV only requires it for new drivers under 18; those learning to drive at 18 or older are exempt, and it shows.
34 HIGHLANDER FEATURES
