Drivers ed should be a multi-year mandatory part of public education

asian women and cyclists, op.

I agree, Drivers Ed is so important that a kid learn to drive carefully but it was cut. When I went to school we learned all sorts of basic everyday stuff like Home Ecc which was more than making brownies, they taught us how to budget and balance a checkbook. Shop was important so kids could get familiar with different tools and how they worked

Everyday stuff you need for everyday living all cut. It's stupid 😠

Drivers Ed was a thing when I went to HS in VA circa 1980. Usually taught by gym coaches as an elective when you turned 15-16. From what I've heard it's not offered anymore in a lot of areas. Also had consumer math teaching about household budgets and balancing checkbooks (outdated now but it helped) as well as home ec.

R2 and families are less engaged with their kids than ever - overworked and zonked out on pills or drunk, among my own generation of older millenials a lot of us are lacking in skills that would have been taught to most gen xers by their parents for sure if not at school. It seems to be about a thousand times worse with zoomers - I read on reddit all the time from college administrators and educators, these incoming freshmen have less life skills than you'd expect of a very young latchkey kid. Parents are calling and asking who's going to do their laundry or help them make basic dishes like eggs and toast.

Here's an example of what i was talking about - sad example of American decline

R4 gets his "facts" from reddit but rants against "kids today"

R5 gets his "facts" from Parade and probably voted for Trump....but thinks young people are the problem

R7 I'm a millenial who voted for Bernie Sanders, considering myself well to the left of him. Idiot, I'm not blaming kids I feel sorry for them and my OWN generation for the parenting and education culture we came up in.

R7 I even specifically blame the right wing for all of this

I think it’s due to cell phones as much as anything. And while that skews younger, it’s by no means just the Millennials.

Drivers Ed is offered in many suburban schools for a half or full school year. The problem is that there is rarely any actual driving because of the insurance liabilities. Mostly classroom instruction. Rich kids have their parents pay for private lessons with professionals. It leads to a much safer driver.

Not sure what many years of drivers ed would accomplish. Five lessons with a qualified and competent driving teacher paired with a few months of classroom learning is all anyone needs.

R3 same here. L.A. County, late 70s. My varsity tennis coach taught driver’s ed., & the baseball coach taught Consumer Econ. Both were required classes.

R11 what you describe was Driver’s Training, which come separately, and after, Driver’s Ed. In my 70s h.s., the training class was offered strictly by birthdate—there was a backlog, so I would have had to wait until I was almost 17. My parents shelled out $85 to California Driving School for the 6 hrs. needed to take my actual test on my actual 16th birthday. That was a great day!

Well, Republicans want to defund public schools so that the government can pay rich kids to go to private school and buy kayaks for homeschooled religious nuts....who is going to pay for this?

I don't know if it should be a mandatory part of public education – not all people want or need to learn how to drive, e.g. New Yorkers or people in general who always travel via public transport or bike – but the US should *definitely* take some cues from how European countries handle driver's ed. None of this weeklong "training" bullshit followed by an easy quiz & driving test: in, say, Germany, you're not permitted to drive until you ACTUALLY know how to drive properly, and IIRC it takes 9-12 months to complete all of its mandates.

Well 160 km per hour on the Autobahn is a different order of magnitude than the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass.

It may be good for everyone to learn to drive in case they experience an emergency and need to get behind the wheel. It would be like learning CPR.

R16, I've driven extensively on both the autobahn and in L.A., and I feel VASTLY safer in Germany! Yes, you're correct that autobahn driving doesn't directly correlate to American interstate driving, but most European driver's ed programs are far closer to Germany's than ours – and that's a *good* thing. (Also, I think Germany may have separate licensing for "normal" driving and autobahn-specific driving, but I'm not certain.)

Much more important than fucking P.E.

I am shock to see all the drivers out there that dont know the left lane is for passing and faster traffic.

I went to catholic school. We had no drivers Ed and my parents wouldn’t allow me to learn how to drive in their cars. Nor would they pay for driving lessons. They just said, “Find someone with a car to teach you.” Except my school was so far away from the town I lived in that I didn’t live near anyone else.

I learned to drive when I was 50. Don’t know the first thing about cars. Don’t know a carburetor from cruise control. Don’t care.

Had drivers ED in high school at age 16. Got my license at 16 and am 54 and live in LA and have never been in an accident.

AND I learned to drive in a stick shift. If you never want to worry about your car being stolen, drive a stick. No one knows how to drive them anymore.

When I was in high-school it sort of was. There was a driving ed class, I don't remember if we were graded on it but it's how I got mine

I have started to relentlessly hyperfocus on other drivers who don't use their turn signals. I feel like it's getting worse and worse. I wonder if it's because they're using one hand to play with their phone and couldn't be bothered to reach up and turn on the signal. Or they just have that "freedumb" mentality where it's nobody's business whether they are making a turn or going straight.

R25 there's actually a video going around lately of a hot college bimbo saying it gives her the "ick" when guys use turn signals and that like she thinks like it's like uhhhh really feminine or something like idk like they it just turns me off haha you know

I noticed on tinder myself a few years ago that a lot of the hot young girls are saying stuff like take me to car shows, i like when you drive fast, etc. I think that tiktok and social media is pushing reckless driving in and of itself as fashionable to the point that it could even be considered nerdy to use your turn signal at all.

People are fucking idiots now trying to get on SM. A cyclist was mowed down by two teens recording their hit and run and laughing about it. Someone died and they think it's all shits and giggles for social media fame.

My mom taught me the mere basics of driving a car in the sleepy public park in my hometown. I can't remember if driver's ed was mandatory at my high school (this was the 70s), but I took it to learn the things my mom didn't teach me (parallel parking, how to change a tire, etc.). The teacher's name was Mr. Kornbau, and I think he taught PE or shop (or both) otherwise. I'm still driving and have yet to have an accident (knock wood...) and I've driven on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway, CA's Pacific Coast Highway, German autobahns, circled the Arc d' Triomphe in Paris, and on the "other" side of the road in Australia and Ireland. Thanks, Mr. Kornbau!

My driver's ed teacher gave us a little routine to repeat in our heads when parallel parking. To this day I repeat it to myself every time I parallel park. I ace it first time every time. Thank you Maine South Drivers Ed 👍

Well— what the fuck was it LL Bean?

There ought to be a basic life skills curriculum, or at least as an after school club. Instead of throwing so much money and emphasis on sports, how about teach kids about basic health/fitness/nutrition, investing, drivers ed, cooking and food prep, etc.

In middle school social studies we had one teacher explain the basics of investing in the stock market. We were all assigned a random stock to watch and it all made sense. It literally took him 20 minutes tops to explain how the stock market operates, and took us maybe a minute a day/week to check our stocks?

I’ve never parallel parked and I never will.

R33 never makes left turns either.

How about schools just concentrating on the core subjects? Subjects such as nutrition are taught in mandatory health classes. Leave the driver's ed to an auxiliary offering after school or better yet, leave it to the family. Maybe if there were fewer responsibilities undertaken by schools which should be done by parents, there wouldn't be as much parental interference by incensed Karens. It's been my experience that it's the mothers who do almost all of the interfering and fathers don't complain unless it's about sports. How about they use that interfering time to teach their kids about finances and cooking?

I live in civilization R34, where we have left lane turning lights.

Is "Red Asphalt" still shown in Drivers' Ed classes? (When I took DE at my school in the early 1980s, we were shown "Red Asphalt II", which prompted several jokes about highly anticipated/blockbuster sequels) For those unfamiliar, it was grisly, graphic "Scared Straight" for teenage drivers about the perils of speeding, drunk driving, not wearing a seatbelt, etc. I think it also discouraged riding motorcycles.

It won't make any difference if people are still obsessed with using their phones at all times.

The phone is what we used to call the glass dick. in the good olde days.

[quote] How about they use that interfering time to teach their kids about finances and cooking?

Sounds good but the Karens will find something not to like about this.

Rip Van OP where you been?

Rep 20:

I am shocked at the # of drivers that don't think the speed limit applies to them and that they are also entitled to flash their headlights, honk their horn (following someone who "not going as fast as you want them to" is NOT an emergency) and flip off legal-speed drivers.

Legal speed drivers "sauntering" in the passing lane? Women and old people; women and girls texting, old people just being old and afraid of the traffic in the right hand lane. They are worse than what you describe, R42.

Everyone! Everyone!

Let your chauffeur do the driving!