What's Something You Wish Had Been Taught In Drivers Education?

Is 24 hours of guided study enough to learn how to drive a car?

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Driver education instruction
Image: Ohio Traffic Safety Office

Every year hundreds of local teens will barely pay attention to their geometry teacher providing summer driving instruction courses. From my personal experience all those years ago, Drivers Ed is mostly concerned with the dangers of drunk driving and what to do at a yellow light. There are so many everyday topics that get completely left out of the process of learning how to drive. There is practically nothing involved in the driver education process about car control or what unexpected things to expect on the road. Better driver education could create better drivers, but what is missing from the formula?

Personally, I think that there could be a lot more focus on how to actually control a car in adverse conditions. You won’t know how to handle a car in an emergency, and that’s when physics jumps up and bites a young driver in the ass. If you don’t know how to steer when your car skids on loose pavement, a rainy day, or in the winter, you shouldn’t have a license. Those are the kinds of situations where not knowing what to do could end someone’s life. Prepare for the worst!

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What about you? What kinds of educational lessons should new drivers be subjected to before getting a license to hit the road with three of their dumbass friends in a Hellcat? What are the skills needed to create a safe and heads-up driver on the roads we use everyday? Let’s say you are in charge of a national driver education improvement plan with all the budget and time you could ask for. What’s the first brand new policy change you’re instituting, and how will it make kids safer on the modern 2024 roadways? Sound off in the comments, let’s hear it!