Are Driving Schools Worth It? Part Two

Are Driving Schools Worth It?

PART TWO

                The following table shows some of the results from around the world, of surveys and studies, on the purported value of Driver Education. As you can see, irrespective of country or type, Driver Education classes seem to be meaningless, except as a knowledge source.

SPC mentioned = Safe Performance Curriculum, a specially devised course.

Reference	Design	Results	Methodological Strengths/Limitations
Dreyer and Janke 1979 California	2,057 students randomly assigned to two training conditions	Those receiving range practice had fewer recorded crashes, but tests scores were no different	Randomized control trial                 Intermediate measures                 No follow-up survey for exposure & behavioral measures
Ray et al. 1980 Stock et al. 1983 DeKalb County, Georgia	Intensive, minimal, and no driver education groups                 About 6,000 students randomly assigned to each group	Intensive training (SPC) drivers had better skills and fewer crashes during first 6 months, but not beyond	Comprehensive randomized controlled trial                 Long follow-up – 6 years                 Formative evaluations and intermediate outcomes measures
Wynne-Jones and Hurst 1984 New Zealand	788 students, 561 received course, 227 family/friend taught                 Random assignment	No reduction in collisions for driver education group	Adequate design                 Small control group                 No formative evaluation or intermediate outcomes
Gregersen 1994 Sweden	850 students received driver education course compared to controls                 Random assignment	Driver education group significantly worse first year, significantly better second year	Longer follow-up – 2 years                 Reasonable sample size
Masten and Chapman 2003; 2004 California	1,300 students randomly assigned to one of four instructional settings	Home-based methods better for 1 knowledge and attitude test, classroom better for DMV knowledge test	Sample size adequate                 Well planned and controlled                 Psychometric measures only
Forsyth et al. 1995 United Kingdom	Survey of 15,000 new drivers	Longer time learning to drive associated with fewer crashes for males             More driving education was associated with more crashes	Several follow-ups over time                 Self-selection bias            Self-reported data only
Howarth et al. 2000 Australia	Self-report crash effects for in-car training effects	Substantial differences, but not significant	Sample size too small
McKenna et al. 2000 Pennsylvania	Survey and crash records                 Random sampling for survey	Driver education not associated with lower crashes or convictions	Multi-variate statistical analysis used to control for confounding variables                 SES missing from control variables
Lonero et al. 2005 Manitoba	Survey and crash records                 Random sampling for survey	Driver education not associated with lower crashes or convictions	Multi-variate statistical analysis used to control for confounding variables
Wiggins 2005 British Columbia	Cohort record study                 Case control study with survey and records	New graduated license holders who took driver education had 26% more crashes	Multi-variate statistical analysis used to control for confounding variables
Zhao et al. 2005 Ontario	Self-report survey of high school students	Driver education associated with fewer crashes for learner license holders	Multi-variate statistical analysis used to control for confounding variables
Pezoldt et al. (2007) Texas	Focus groups, surveys, and driver records	Parent-taught teens less safe.	Comprehensive approach with intermediate measures
Robertson and Zador 1978 27 U.S. States	Modeling study of driver education and fatal crash rates	No relation between proportion taking driver education and fatality rates	Not program specific
Robertson 1980 Connecticut	School boards with and without driver education	For school boards without driver education, total licensing and crashes of 16- and 17-year-olds decreased by 10-15%	Not enough data analysis presented
Potvin et al. 1988 Québec	Mandatory driver education introduced in Québec for all (formerly just 16-17 year olds)	Increased number of young driver crashes due to increased number of licensed females aged 16-17	Large sample size                 Different timeframes for treatment and control groups
Levy 1990 USA 47 States	Large-scale modeling study of effects of mandatory driver education	Small but significant beneficial effect on fatal crashes	Not program specific
Carstensen 2002 Denmark	Mandatory driver education, new curriculum	Reduced crashes	Large sample size                 No control of confounding variables

It is especially interesting to note the 2 yellow highlighted areas....in one, a 26% INCREASE in crashes if they took driver education classes, in another, a 10-15% REDUCTION in crashes if there was NO driver education classes.

I leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusion.

Are Driving Schools Worth It? Part One

Are Driving Schools Worth It?

PART ONE

World-wide, we have this idea, called “face validity”, that it is obvious that more education for young, novice drivers, is a good thing. The problem is…..it isn’t! Study after study after study, from Sweden and Denmark, to England, Canada and the United States, have shown otherwise.

First, let’s examine what Driver Education / Training is, in its’ general context. By design, classroom training (the Driver Education portion) should give a student a better grasp of the laws governing roadway use, signs and markings used by their respective country, and a general idea of both the vehicle and how it handles. All of this is done in roughly 30 hours or so. Then, comes the “practical” side, the in-car training.

I can only speak of this, with authority, in terms of United States training; it tends to be much longer, and more detailed in other countries. Most states still use the “30-and-6” rule, where 30 hours of classroom and 6 hours of in-car are required/recommended. To see what your state uses for Graduated Driver Licensing rules, go to http://www.iihs.org/laws/graduatedlicensestatelaws.aspx?StateAbbr=AL and select your state from the drop-down menu. Some states also require a Driver Education course, either from a public school or a commercial driving school.

The major problem in ANY driver education course, whether it is public or commercially given, is the lack of motivation and inspiration to actually teach SAFE driving. Instead, the SKILL of driving is focused on, by both the student and the teacher, because the end-result desired is to pass the road test to become licensed. A SKILLFUL driver is NOT necessarily, a SAFE driver. It has been my sad experience, in teaching in 3 states and conducting seminars in many others, that the majority of driving schools fall under this category, whether meaning to or not.

Many of the instructors I have met have been either poorly trained, or hardly trained at all, and they tend to teach “Here’s How I Drive” lessons, without giving thought to WHY a certain technique should be used, WHEN braking is more harmful than good, HOW to safely negotiate curves and tight turns, etc. They simply check off on the lesson plan that the student was satisfactory at a certain task.

Similarly, classrooms have devolved into relying on reading a handbook, viewing a few videos/DVD’s, and then testing on what was read or seen. Instructor interaction (called “participative Lecture”) is almost non-existent, except for the occasional commentary of “here’s how I handle that situation”. Classrooms that I have visited tend to have, to save costs, textbooks that are 10 or more years old, and no solid agenda for a parent to view on exactly what their teen is going to learn, how it will be determined if learning occurred, or even what the testing will entail. A parent would, rightfully, be angered if a school teacher for, say, English or Math, treated the student’s education the same way. Speaking of which, even in the public school system, many of the “Driver Education” teachers are NOT licensed to be one, as ordained by their K-12 Teaching Certificate.

So, just what is being accomplished here? Is it all bad? Of course not. The classroom AND behind the wheel training are valuable for learning WHAT the rules are. But they do little, if anything, to teach WHY the rules are there, and WHY a driver should utilize safer driving practices. To make matters worse, almost everyone seems to think that they are a better driver than others, and such training is a waste of time. And yet, close to 40,000 people, 2-4,000 of which are teens, die every year on US roads.


The next section will show results from around the globe, many of which are taken from the LSEDE (Large-Scale Evaluation of Driver Education, 2010 Update) which can be downloaded in a pdf format from: https://sites.google.com/site/parentinstructor/my-forms (scroll down to LSEDElit). This link also has many other informational documents for those interested in driver safety, especially as it relates to teens.

Distracted Driving Redux


Much has been written about distracted driving, and considering a Massachusetts case now wending its way thru the courts (http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/31/justice/massachusetts-texting-trial/index.html?hpt=hp_t3), I thought I would present a series of pix from my Distracted Driving Seminar. The original program these are taken from is an interactive media program I use, so the links you see aren't clickable.

This is one of the best videos I have seen on the subject:

For more information on this, please visit:

http://www.distraction.gov/