Friday, May 28, 2010

The Yellow Light Reduces the Number of Bugs in the Intersection

When I was a kid, Driver's Education was administered by the public school system. They had video games (simulators), classroom education & actual on the road training. On top of that, our parents, to either safeguard their car or kids, I dunno, spent time practicing with us.
That's gone now. No budget. People who hate public schools & love privatization no doubt celebrated this public safety education being passed off to cheesy fly by night companies with no interest in anything but slamming kids through for short term profits.
Driver's quality has just declined ever since.
In a recent survey by GMAC Insurance it was determined 20% of drivers shouldn't even be on the road. The average score had diminished by .4% from the year before. Older drivers, over 45 (about the time public school driver's ed was dropped) scored the best.
Local organizations who don't like paying for schools (apparently public and private) have also argued that the red light running epidemic can be cured with longer yellow lights. The GMAC survey indicates 85% of drivers don't understand what a yellow light means.
So I guess we can pay for the state to educate kids in state schools on how to use state roads or we can abrogate that responsibility & we can pick up the tab ala carte for police, EMTs & private business in the form of driving schools, lawyers, doctors & morticians.

2 comments:

VisuaLingual said...

Hmm, my high school offered Driver's Ed, but I refused to take it because it wasn't an academic subject. It seemed like a waste of school time. Of course, I never learned to drive either.

I wonder what percentage of Cincinnatians don't understand what a red light means. Drivers here aren't the most aggressive I've ever encountered, but I've never seen so much red light-running as I have here, including public buses, school buses, and police cars. It's crazy!

Quimbob said...

I think I took it in high school because it was so cheap. I don't think it was free. $30? You got a lot more instruction time than what the driving schools give you (which didn't mean anything to me at the time).