The National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration recently held its big powwow in Washington, DC.
Although driver education is a very tiny part of what this agency oversees, the driver education community (those who make their living from regulating or offering mostly mandated driver education) with NHTSA has once again failed the public it serves.
The standards released by NHTSA in the past year fail in four ways:
First, these standards once again emphasize theory over practical training for students.
Classroom requirements are increased from 30 hours to 53 hours and in-vehicle behind-the-wheel hours are increased from 6 to 10 hours. Look at the ratio of hours of class compared to actual in-vehicle hours. Does anything look familiar? Yes, it is still about a 5 to 1 ratio of theory versus practical.
It's as though these folks have learned nothing since the Highway Safety Act of 1966.
Does the DeKalb Study ring a bell?
I find it hard to believe that anyone with any common sense would suggest, support or recommend a system that requires 5 times more classroom hours than it does practical behind-the-wheel training.
Second, these standards once again emphasize theory over practical training for instructors.
Although the recommendations do address instructor preparation and training, once again, the emphasis is in classroom with very little in-vehicle preparation. Since the instructors themselves never go through any rigorous or thorough in-vehicle training, it is no surprise that they are unable to produce safer drivers.
Third, the standards focus on maintaining a flawed delivery system.
The very structure of these standards reinforces a flawed delivery system - the public and/or private high schools. This may also account for why there is so much resistance to move the initial driver license age up to 18. Once the student is out of high school, all the education agency administrators, high school teachers and their college required courses, would lose their market. There would be no need for them.
Don't misunderstand me - commercial driving schools are, for the most part, not much better than their public school counterparts because they offer the same pathetic standards to their customers. They simply have to work harder to get their customers.
The biggest failure of these standards is the utter lack of clear, specific goals for reducing motor vehicle collisions.
There is No Accountability!
Fourth, there is no accountability for results by course providers and instructors.
There is no accountability. Nothing to measure. These standards are activity driven, not outcome driven.
Nowhere does it state what the goal or outcome is. For instance, a nice start would be something like, by the year 2015 we will have reduced the collision-rate for beginning drivers in their first year of driving on their own by 50%, from 12% to 6%.* This is why these standards will fail to produce safer drivers.
An objective observer might say that the standards promulgated by these self-defined "stakeholders" are designed to insure that they have jobs, that they can get more money from the taxpayers and from their customers.
It's job security and job protection at its worst - mandated courses with no requirement for accountability.
What's old is new again.
The challenge and need to produce collision-free drivers is greater than ever and has now been made more difficult by the very people who have, by the nature of their position, a public trust.
For more articles like this, please visit our website: http://driveredinabox.com.
Patrick L. Barrett is a nationally known expert in training for collision-free driving. Pat owns Driver Ed in a Box LLC, a company with a mission to provide families with the knowledge and tools necessary to build the habits of safe, collision-free driving through their parent taught drivers education course.
For more information on Patrick Barrett or Driver Ed in a Box LLC please visit: http://teendriveamerica.com
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