How Driving Schools In The United States Have Evolved

Since the dawn of the automobile in the 1800′s, people have had previously unknown freedom. Coupled with what has been the need for educating drivers to properly and safely operate the automobile. Driver’s education has not been taken seriously by the public in the United States as the positive impact of current driver training methodology has not been proven to be effective.

In the 1970′s the first attempt to systemically teach new drivers how to handle an automobile was created. A book called Drive Right was written, which prescribed a formulaic approach to driver training. This became the core of early driver training and was coupled with videos and taught in an ad-hoc manner in public schools.

Enter defensive driving, which took driver training to the next level. It is defined as “driving to save lives, time, and money, in spite of the conditions around you and the actions of others”. This new methodology enhanced the impact of driving lessons for new drivers. However, it was still only a piece of the picture in the overall driver training program.

Today, driver’s education is migrating to dedicated private driving schools from the public schools. This creates a focus with professional driving instructors coupled with the defensive driving program, but still the basic focus of the program is to help a teenager get a drivers license only. Unfortunately, there is much more to driving a car, such as car control in critical situations, management of distractions, managing vision, and attitude. All of these need to be incorporated into truly effective driving lessons.

Research at universities, such as VTTI, UMASS, etc. has finally begun to emerge. This type of research, based on the understanding of how new drivers perform and is key to moving beyond simple defensive driving. Research can categorize the issues new drivers face and help provide key insights into how driving schools can develop higher impact driving lessons. However, the research has remained within the academic and governmental communities and has not really affected how teens are currently being trained.

Today, the research is starting to make its way into driver training via a few, innovative driving schools that are leading the way to a new method of training drivers. SWERVE Driver Training, a company in Redmond, Washington is one of the first to understand and take advantage of the research that is becoming available.

Given that driver training has been relatively static for decades, it takes a real commitment to innovation in order to develop a program of driving lessons that centers around the ideas coming out of the research community. Any driving school that really wants to make a difference will need to spend great effort understanding and applying the appropriate research.

In conclusion, SWERVE is beginning to see the proof that the program works. Information from the Washington DOL demonstrates statistically that SWERVE’s driving lessons are making a difference. There is a comparison chart on the SWERVE web site graphically demonstrating the difference.

Looking to find the best driving schools, then visit SWERVE Driver Training to find the best advice on driving lessons for your new driver.

Technorati Tags: driver training