Toward A Generation Of Safer Drivers (1953)

[Music] here at this high school in Brooklyn, New York, an experiment of far-reaching educational importance was conducted recently. It was an experiment which may well revolutionize the training given to high school students in one vital subject, not only in New York City, but throughout the entire country. Let's take a closer look at this experiment. Let's go in and see what the newspapers, magazines, and television stations hail as the classroom of tomorrow. What's this? Little model cars. These youngsters are learning to drive right in the classroom. What they learn can well point the way toward the solution of what has been termed the greatest uncontrolled social problem the country faces. What to do about the automobile death and injury toll. More than 1 million people have been cut and crushed to death in wrecks like these. 1 million people in a little over 50 years. In a half century, the automobile has claimed more lives than all the American fighting men who have been lost since the Battle of Lexington on April 19th, 1775. injuries, 35 million of them, more than the combined populations of the states of Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Kentucky. Why is this such a familiar scene in our highways? Haynes taking investigation shows that nine out of every 10 smashups are caused by the human factor, the driver himself. If we're going to reduce the highway toll, we've got to have better drivers. It's just as simple as that. There are about 65 million licensed drivers in the country. A great many of these people are fairly good drivers. Others are poor drivers. Some are downright dangerous. Almost all of these people picked up what they know about driving. They had little or no formal training. Their habits are set. Some of these habits are good. A lot are bad. As you can see from the accident records to help the average driver to greater safety. We build better roads. Enact and enforce reasonable traffic regulatory laws. Make available a wide variety of educational materials through stricter licensing procedures. Try to keep the unsafe driver off the highways. All these activities are necessary and beneficial. And were it not for them, our traffic toll would be much worse than it is. But our best and brightest hope for the solution of the highway accident problem lies in youngsters like these. Train them in high school now to drive safely, says an impressive array of authorities. Here is the picture today. Only 3 million out of our 65 million licensed drivers have had driving instruction in high school. As old age and death reduce the number of presently licensed drivers, we could in a generation put 40 million more safety trained drivers on our highways if all high schools offered such a course. Would this help the situation? Educators and safety officials answer with a resounding yes. If you can train boys and girls to be good and conscientious citizens, you can train them to be careful and considerate drivers, they say. And no one can deny that youth needs this training. Accident statistics from all sections of the country show that the driver under 25 has more than his share of accidents. But before we blame our youngsters too much, shouldn't we ask ourselves this? Is their poor driving record their fault or ours? Limited surveys show that given proper training, their driving record improves immeasurably. No one knows exactly how much our accident hole would drop if all high school youngsters receive driver education and training, but there are some straws in the wind. In Vermont, those who had not taken driver education courses had almost three and one half times as many accidents in a 4-year period as those who had taken the course. Untrained drivers had almost six times as many convictions for driving violations as the train drivers. A Delaware study of 800 untrained versus 800 train drivers showed this. In Pennsylvania, a three-year study was made of 250 untrained and 250 trained drivers. The untrained group reported 13 accidents and 11 injuries. Nine of the drivers were held responsible for these accidents. The trained drivers had five accidents in that period. No injuries were involved and none of the drivers was declared at fault. Four out of 10. That is typical of the driver education situation throughout the country. Only four out of every 10 students have a chance to take even a classroom course. As for behind the wheel training, the situation is even worse. Only one school student out of every six gets the opportunity to take classroom and behind the wheel training, which educators agree is the ideal combination. But many school systems have been reluctant to undertake it because of cost. In an effort to help schools meet the cost of providing behind the- wheel instruction, many automobile dealers have generously donated or offered to donate cars to their local school systems. But even though the cars cost nothing, many school boards have not seen their way clear to establish behind the wheel training programs. Their reluctance has been based on the cost of providing teachers. Here, a teacher takes care of a typical academic class, 25 to 35 pupils. But on the road, one teacher can only handle four pupils at most, the one who is driving and the three who are riding as observers. So, six or seven additional teachers would be needed for the same class that one instructor could handle in the classroom. Conscious of the need of schools to make more efficient use of teacher time if behind the wheel driving was to spread, officials of the Etna Casualty Insurance Company, together with their technical consultants held a series of conferences with representatives of the New York City Board of Education and the Greater New York Safety Council. Here, Superintendent of Schools William Jansen studies plans for equipment designed to bring behind the wheel training into the classroom. The product of those conferences was the driver trainer, a multipplace classroom training device that enables one instructor to supervise behind the wheel instruction for an entire class. The first experimental unit financed as a public service by the Etna and loan without cost to the New York Board of Education may provide an inexpensive key to training a generation of safer drivers. Although the machine is offered for sale to other boards of education by its manufacturers, the Etna has no commercial interest in its sale. The unit this young lady is driving has all of the controls and most of the instruments found in your car and mine. She drives according to instruction given her by the teacher or what she sees on the motion picture screen at the front of the classroom which represents the view she would get through the windshield of a real car. Everything she does and everything the other pupils do is automatically recorded for the instructor on their scorecard. He can tell at a glance which pupils have absorbed today's lesson and which have not. Let's take a closer look at the little car our pretty young friend was driving. It has a steering wheel, a horn, a directional signal, and a standard gear shift lever. An ignition key and a starter button. Under the hood, an electric motor is started and realistically simulates the noise of a real car. There's a handbrake, standard clutch, accelerator, and brake pedals. Yes, even a high and low beam switch button for the headlights. Under the hood, an ingenious maze of wires, gears, electric motors, resistors, and relays simulates the operation of a real car and transmits a record of the students every action to the instructor. She let the clutch up too fast, installed her drive a trainer car. The machine can be set so that a predetermined test can be given the students and the results recorded automatically. or by means of these push buttons, the teacher can test at will for the correct performance of as many as 40 separate driving actions. Here's a typical scorecard. Each of the vertical rows represents one student. Each horizontal row, the driver action being tested. The absence of a mark in these squares shows that the student did not perform the correct action at the proper time. In this case, the teacher was testing to see whether the student slowed down for another car which had the right of way. 22 motion pictures representing the first effort to put a complete behind-the-wheel driver education course on film were written and produced through the close cooperation of the ETHNA and the New York City Board of Education. Note that the films are arranged for continuous projection so that the instructor can rerun a film without having to rethread the projector. If the scorecards show him a class has not grasped the lesson, he can repeat the film immediately. Let's take a look at one or two scenes from these driver trainer films. First, the students are instructed in elementary skills. They see someone demonstrate how to shift gears. Then, by means of film, they're taken out on the road and given the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice. The same is true of steering. They're taught to observe traffic signs and lights. They're trained in good attitudes. They get used to heavy traffic. and they're trained in meeting emergency situations. Educators say that this training, which cannot be given in real cars because of the hazards involved, is one of the outstanding features of the driver trainer. Even backing can be taught. This mirror, which reflects the screen, represents the view this girl would have out of the rear window of her car as she backs up. They learn how to pass safely. how to turn their cars around, diagonal and parallel parking. For 24 periods, the students are drilled in basic driving skills and good attitude building procedures. And at the conclusion of the driver trainer course, they take a rugged 27minut final examination on film, which officials of the New York Board of Education believe is unmatched in scope and severity by any driver licensing examination. Periodically, they are taken out on the road in real cars to be sure that they can apply what they have learned in the driver trainer to actual driving situations. No one expects the driver trainer to eliminate actual road training entirely, but it can substantially reduce expensive on the road time. Although final data is not yet available, early indications are that two pupils can be taught to drive in the driver trainer and in real cars for the cost of training one pupil with the old-fashioned car only method. Should this ratio of savings of two for one be maintained and even improved upon, as is very likely, the driver trainer could be the means of putting behindthe-wheel instruction within the economic reach of virtually every high school in the country. Scientific studies of the records of hundreds of students are continuing in New York to work out the most economical and effective blend of driver trainer and on the road experience. Better drivers, safer drivers at less expense to the taxpayer. That is the goal. The next few years will tell the final story. But in this high school, there may well have been found through the cooperation of a forward-looking board of education and a public spirited business organization the most promising answer yet to a pressing national problem. The finding of an economical and practical way to train our youngsters to drive and live.