The news is generally good: U.S. highway deaths continue to fall even as the number of miles driven continues to grow. And yet a small city of people--roughly 40,000 a year--vanish from the American landscape. Cars have gotten much safer in the past two decades. Traffic management has gotten smarter. But driver training remains unconscionably inadequate. As the "Wall Street Journal" noted last week, almost anyone with two forms of ID who can pass a vision test, a multiple-choice
test and an absurdly short driver's test can get a license. John Semmens, who wrote the article, argues that licensing should be handed over to auto insurers, who would be far more vigilant and discriminating about who gets behind the wheel--and who loses the privilege from reckless driving, multiple tickets or intoxication. This would certainly help remove drunks and hotheads from our nation's roads. But unless insurers were willing to take on the business of driver training, privatizing our nation's motor vehicle agencies would have little effect on the biggest cause of car crashes: incompetence. "AutoWeek," which has run a series of articles on driver training over the past two weeks, finds that many other countries have made far greater gains in reducing highway deaths through better driver training and stricter enforcement of traffic laws. Europe makes far greater use of stoplight cameras. One in three Australians can expect to be randomly stopped to prove his sobriety. And traffic fines in Europe would outrage most Americans. But better driver training has made the most important difference. Denmark has cut its traffic deaths by one-third over the past decade. Drivers can't even get a learner's permit before age 18, and can expect to spend two years training before receiving a full license. Sweden actually requires skid control handling in its curricula. In Germany, drivers must attend a state-certified driving school. Compare that with the moonlighting high-school coach who often teaches driver's education in America. Anyone who has spent time at a race-car driver's school learns how to recover from a spin--and to prevent one--as well as threshold braking and the techniques of load transfer to maintain traction. Most American drivers may read about these things in their driver's education manuals. But too often they don't get to practice these techniques until their lives are on the line.
The Missing Piece in Highway Safety Is Too Often the Driver
The news is generally good: U.S. highway deaths continue to fall even as the number of miles driven continues to grow. And yet a small city of people–roughly 40,000 a year–vanish from the American landscape. Cars have gotten much safer in the past two decades. Traffic management has gotten smarter. But driver training remains unconscionably […]
