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This democratization of the highway has occurred simultaneously to a decline in traditional driver's education, once a near universal part of the curriculum in America's secondary schools--and a course beloved by generations of high schoolers, since the only way you could fail was by running over the instructor's cat. According to Allen Robinson, CEO of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association, 15 years ago, nearly 90% of all new drivers had taken an official driver's education course. With budget cuts chopping the course out of many public schools, that figure is down to 50%, perhaps as low as 30%.
And Robinson questions the use of the courses that are still in place. Having simplified the instruction of reading, writing and arithmetic, the American educational establishment may have finally managed to do the impossible: it has dumbed down even driver's ed. (What's next? Dodge ball?) Some states have backed off mandatory driver training altogether, and elsewhere most courses demand no more than six hours behind the wheel. In what was no doubt an exceptional case, last September a North Carolina driver's ed teacher allegedly told his trainee to chase a driver who had cut them off, then got out and punched the offending driver. The teacher (who later denied he had urged the student to step on the gas) was arrested. The student was not ticketed, and the assault charge against the teacher was dropped. "Our driving schools teach the mechanics of driving," says John Larson, a psychiatrist who lectures at Yale Medical School, "but they teach almost nothing about the psychology of drivers."
Driving is a curious combination of public and private acts. A car isolates a driver from the world even as it carries him through it. The sensation of personal power is intoxicating. Sealed in your little pod, you control the climate with the touch of a button, from Arctic tundra to equatorial tropic. The cabin is virtually soundproof. Your "pilot's chair" has more positions than a Barcalounger. You can't listen to that old Sammy Davis Jr. tape at home because your kids will think you're a dweeb, but in the car, the audience roars as you belt out I've Gotta Be Me. Coffee steams from the cup holder, a bag of Beer Nuts sits open at your side, and God knows you're safe. The safety belt is strapped snugly across your body, and if that fails, the air bag will save your life--if it doesn't decapitate you. Little bells and lights go off if you make a mistake: don't forget to buckle up! Change your oil, you sleepyhead! The illusions--of power, of anonymity, of self-containment--pile up. You are the master of your domain. Actually driving the car is the last thing you need to worry about. So you can pick your nose, break wind, fantasize to your heart's content. Who's to know?