Driver training myths

Driver's training: Put aside the myths
By ROBERT BRYAN Friday, June 22, 2007 11:25 PM EDT

Talk to a few veteran driver's training instructors from area high schools and you find that the you've probably bought into a number of myths. Myths like the one so dear to stand-up comics, the one showing the trainer nervous, humorless, dyspeptic, crawling to safety after his spell in the car.

The Plain Dealer talked to Roger Cook and Daren Porter of the Wabash High School staff and Dick Leming and Mark Coppler of the Metro staff. Veterans all, they appeared serious about the job but not altogether serious about themselves and their experiences. In other words, apparently normal, whole of mind and body.

Coppler and Leming, particularly, are frequently asked by the parents and sometimes by the student drivers, "Don't you get nervous? Do you take pills? How do you unwind?"

Cook occasionally unwinds by going for a walk or a bike ride; Porter has no special formula, but knows he's a bit keyed up at the end of a session. One day, coincidentally keeping a doctor's appointment right after getting out of the car, he found his blood pressure startlingly elevated.

But all four downplayed the idea theirs is a hazardous job.

Said Coppler, "I don't know that the kids make me nervous, but we have had some extremely nervous drivers, and I feel sorry for them."

All four indicated one of the manifestions of the nervous student driver is a tendency to have "tunnel vision" - so absorbed in task that they see nothing but what's immediately ahead.

Coppler and the others try to correct that problem posing little quizzes, "What did that last sign say? What's the speed limit here?"

Leming recalled a species of tunnel vision, a concentration on task that blocks out the big picture: Traveling south a few years ago on Wabash Street, approaching the light at Market, the girl driving showed no sign of slowing down, even as two elderly ladies stepped from the curb and started crossing against the light.

Leming braked the car and asked the driver, "Don't you see those ladies? The student responded, "I have the right of way. The light's green."

The godsend for driver's training cars, of course, is the brake at the disposal of the instructor.

The instructor has to know when to ride "covering the brake - so he can stop a bad move instantly, as when students are parallel parking or driving in heavy city traffic.

He has to know when to brake and when not to. Explained Cook, "You have to give the kid the chance to decide, to make a right or wrong decision."

Ten years ago, the state began allowing kids enrolled in a driver's education class to drive also with their parents. On the whole, that's been a benefit for the driver's trainers. State regulations require just six hours of driving in a driver's education class. That's not very much, and the more it can be supplemented by driving with parents, the better.

Generally speaking, anyway.

Said Porter, "They can pick up bad habits from parents that we have to break in just a few days."

Just as one or two students every year need to be shown where the key goes, and which is the brake and which the accelerator, one or two "know" too much. These are the know-it-alls.
Has he every had a student in his car knowing more than he from Day One about driving?
Coppler laughed slyly, "Not in my car, and you can quote me."


Just this summer Leming had an example of a lesson from home to be unlearned. On a highway marked 55, the student driver was breezing along at 60. Asked about it by Leming, the student passed along his father's wisdom - that it was permissible to do 5 above the speed limit.

"And I said, noooo..." Leming recalled.

And how about the notion that other drivers sharing the road with a carload of students generally are driving their Sunday-best? Courtesy and safety would surely guarantee that.

Pose that to a driver's trainer and you will get something between a guffaw and a sad chuckle: There are exceptions, of course, but many drivers, they said, exhibit the same bad behavior they normally do, and some are provoked into terrible behavior.

Said Cook, "Especially on highways, they pass on the double yellow lines, they pass on hills and on curves. We're doing 55 and they pass us like we're sitting still."

Porter took it from there, "Others will honk, stare, swerve at us, especially teenagers. They think it's funny. They think its funny to see their friends mess up."

The good guys sometime win in these encounters: Two or three years ago out on U.S. 24, Coppler's car full of students was being bugged by a car-full of teenagers.

"They would get very close behind us, pass and slow up, making vulgar gestures, and hanging out the window. I had my cell phone and called state police and within three minutes they were pulled over.

There's nothing good about having to endure such behavior, but the trainers can use it for educational purposes - partly as vivid examples of what not to do.

There's another thing to be said for bad, bad driving, as Coppler remarked: It's good practice for the students in driving well despite distractions. Out on their own, there will be times the radio will be blaring, two friends will be talking, a friend in another car will be passing and signally something. Sooner or later, the good drivers will learn to stay on task, Coppler said.

To end on a somber note:
All veteran driver's trainers have had the experience: They'll pick up a newspaper and see a familiar name, a former student from last month, last year or last decade arrested, say, for speeding, or reckless driving, or worse - injured in an accident apparently their fault. Or still worse, killed in such an accident.

Sometime during the brief time instructor and students have together, the instructor is likely to tell them, "I check that part of the paper. I don't want to see you guys' names there."

Leming and Coppler said their experience suggests that, in general, it is the better drivers during training whose names appear in the bad part of the paper. Is it cockiness?

Overconfidence? The students not quite so skilled , they said, seem to fare better, perhaps because they have to work on it.

Why do they do it year after year? For Coppler, Cook, Leming and Porter - it has become a part of the summer routine. The compensation is OK, they enjoy it, the kids are highly motivated.

And all four firmly believe school-oriented driver's training is important.

Said Leming, "I hope we don't price kids out of the opportunity to have driver's education."