DRIVER ED IN A BOX AUDIO CD EXCERPTS

What to Expect

We’ll give you some inside tips; how to communicate with your teenager and avoid the

errors that most driver ed teachers make; how to plant the seeds of collision-free driving techniques and basic vehicle control in the parking lot sessions. Now since some of you are training a teenager with some experience, we’ll show you how to evaluate objectively, where the holes are in their prior training and how to correct those gaps; how to read and respond to the traffic scenes so you can easily and safely navigate through even the worst traffic; and to follow a simple, organized progression from the parking lot to the neighborhood, to light and heavy traffic, to rural and freeway driving and how to handle adverse conditions and emergencies. Also covered will be how to test and use a graduated approach to give your teenager the best chance of learning how to drive collision-free.

As we progress from one driving environment to the next one, what is my teen going to be learning?

Well, once you move from the parking lot to the neighborhood, you’ll add more Commentary to the driving as you begin to read the traffic scenes, the intersections and the movements of others and get a feel for dealing with a modest amount of potential hazards.

From the neighborhood, you’ll move into light traffic where you’ll have the opportunity to practice the point of no return, picking the path of least resistance, creating and maintaining a minimum three second following distance, stabilizing traffic from the rear, leaving an escape route, avoiding blind spots, identifying potential traps, improving your eye movement, reading and anticipating the movement of others and much more. You’ll progress to heavy traffic, downtown traffic, freeway and rural driving, driving at night and other adverse conditions. You’ll practice “what if?” for various emergency situations.

How do I know when I’m ready to leave the parking lot?

If you are leaving the parking lot, your teen has mastered these skills:

Fundamental vehicle control
Targeting up ahead
Doing Commentary so, as the instructor, you know what the teen is planning and the information the teen is basingLhis or her decisions on
Visually clearing intersections
Checking the mirror before the teen takes his or her foot off the accelerator
Using the SMOG sequence for lane changes
Making lane changes gradually
Making smooth right and left turns
Reversing straight and to the right and left without difficulty
Able to parallel park, pull through, and angle park successfully

All these things are accomplished in the parking lot so you can safely and effectively move out into the streets of the neighborhood.

Choose a Neighborhood

It’s your responsibility to pick a neighborhood that doesn’t have too many problems or too much traffic. Your search for a location may be simple or may take some time, depending on where you live. Before you start in a neighborhood, go ahead and warm up a little bit in the parking lot. Just review some of the things you did and make sure that your teen leaves the parking lot having been refreshed in good habits, and is loose and relaxed behind the wheel. You don’t want to start in the neighborhood with white knuckles on the steering wheel.

Your teen must have the necessary habits of looking well ahead, clearing intersections and keeping space without thinking about doing those things. No matter how good your teen’s character and how good a driver your teen is when you’re in the vehicle, when you are not there, they’re going to do things more out of habit. Like you, they will not always be thinking about driving.

Be patient with yourself on this and be patient with your teen. Understand that just doing it a couple of times correctly doesn’t mean the teen has developed the habit of doing it right. Doing it a couple of times might be enough evidence for your teenager to think, “Hey, I got this. Why should I do it again? Let’s move on, I’m ready.” Understand that if you go out for an hour, you might do 15 to 20 miles in the course of your driving. Over the course of your lifetime, you will probably drive over a million miles. That’s just 20,000 miles a year for 50 years.

That’s not an uncommon number. So to believe that a new driver is going to be prepared to drive a million miles, collision-free, with just 50, 60 or maybe 100 miles in a few lessons, is ludicrous. Be patient and repeat the drills with your teen until you’re confident that when you go out in the neighborhood your teen will, by habit, clear intersections, look well ahead, use turn signals and mirrors, — all those things. Most critically, be certain that you and your teen are communicating well and clearly.

City Traffic (Light-Heavy) – Introduction

By now you have finished the neighborhood training, or you feel you will soon finish that training area, and you probably feel that both you and your youngster are ready to move into light traffic.

Remember, you build from the foundation up to build the habits of collision-free driving, and you have been laying your foundation with care. Now, just take a deep breath and relax. You and your teen can do this. We’ll cover how to get into light traffic and begin to read the traffic scene as it gets more complicated. We’re going to add a few more Commentary terms and phrases, and add some additional concepts.

How do I know when my teen is ready?

Your teen is ready to move on from light traffic when:

1. Your teen slows well in advance for a turn without your coaching,

2. You don’t have to worry if your teen is going to run a light,

3. Your teen is clearing every intersection,

4. Your teen is leaving extra space,

5. Reading traffic from the rear,

6. Moving his/her eyes about every two seconds,

7. Picking the path of least resistance,

8. Staying out of other people’s blind spots,

9. Adjusting when others cut you off,

10. Being patient with the traffic

11. And doing all this without being coached by you – in other words, is using these habits of collision-free driving.

FREEWAY

How much do we do in the first freeway lesson?

The first few times all you do is get on and off the freeway several times. Once you get on the freeway, you don’t have to go too far. You can let them get up to the flow of traffic then take the first or second exit. When getting off, look up ahead. They see the space that is open, check the mirror and make sure that it’s clear back there. Remember, entering and exiting the freeway is making a lane change. They don’t want somebody already hanging in that lane to the right of them. Now that your teen has determined it is clear to the right, your teen looks way up ahead to see that it’s open, and see there is no problem with the exit ramp.

As with any lane change, you signal, check the mirror and maintain your speed while you’re on the freeway. When you get off on the deceleration lane, you begin to slow to the recommended speed, whatever that is for that particular ramp or road. Usually, you are exiting to the type of road that runs parallel to the freeway, called a feeder or an access road. Stay on the feeder to the next entrance and then get right back up on the freeway. That’s all you want to do. You want to get on and get off. All that is important right now is for your teen to get a sense of how they need to use the available space to enter, how to read the break in the flow of traffic to get in and accelerate to the flow and how much they need to slow when leaving the freeway.

Typically with a new driver, the first time they are coming off the exit ramp, they don’t have a clue how fast they’re going. They’ve adjusted to the feel of freeway speed and, depending on the type of vehicle they’re in, it often doesn’t feel as if they’re going very fast now at all. Some newer vehicles don’t give that kinesthetic feedback, that sensation of a vehicle really slowing down. They may think they’re just creeping along, when in fact they could be doing 45 or 50 miles per hour.

Rural Driving

Rural highways have their own unique characteristics. Just as the rural driving student should be trained in city traffic before driving in the city on his/her own, the city student should be trained on rural highways. Remember, you build from the foundation up to build the habits of collision-free driving, and you have been laying your foundation with care.

What about driving on rural highways?

Sometimes in rural areas, the line of sight tends to be less. You have less visibility and more serious, high speed collisions. You have more access to the rural highway which means that there are even greater risks of conflict because it’s easier for vehicles to get on and off at cross streets. Also the traffic lights that they encounter in a rural area frequently require you to slow down and stop completely from a relatively high speed.

I’ve noticed when I’m driving through a small town there are abrupt changes from a higher to a slower speed. In that type of situation what has to happen?

The new driver has to get used to reducing speed while being alert that people behind them may not be reducing their speed. Your teen’s habit of checking the mirror before slowing is critical here and they must be sure they’re leaving themselves an escape route. Your teen must be aware that people may be pulling out and going much slower as they enter the highway because they don’t have an acceleration lane. They may be entering the highway from a dead stop. In rural areas, you must be prepared to adjust your speed dramatically, and many times look for a way to pass the other vehicle safely. Passing another vehicle in a rural area can be very dangerous. Unlike the freeway where traffic is moving all in the same direction, you may have oncoming traffic closing on you at speeds of 60 to 70 miles per hour or more.

TESTING

We’re going be talking about testing our teenagers.

I thought I had been testing my teen.

In a sense you have, and if you’ve been training as we’ve laid out the program, the testing we’re about to conduct should go along very smoothly. If you haven’t followed the program completely or taken enough time in the training, this testing will point out some glaring errors that need to be corrected and correct driving techniques practiced so they become habits. As a parent, you don’t want to have to worry about whether or not your teen is turning his head to check the blind spot or wondering if he’s likely to get trapped. You don’t want to have to worry about whether or not your teen leaves that extra space when slowing.

All right. So, let’s get onto the final test. What are we going to do?

It’s really not a final test per se. This is a process of testing several times. You test when there is no traffic, light traffic, heavy traffic on the freeway, in rural conditions, night driving and during adverse weather. That’s at least seven separate tests. Chances are that several of these tests will need to be repeated.

There are five categories to score and ten different sections.

The categories are:

1. Aiming over the intended path.

2. Scanning – is your teen moving his/her eyes enough.

3. Leaving an escape route.

4. Communicating — with you by doing the commentary, and with others by signals, eye contact, horn taps, etc.

5. Does your teen demonstrate enough confidence to be able to make decisions on his/her own?

Now, you’ve been testing your teen constantly as you went along and hopefully, have moved to each phase of training only when your teen has mastered the previous phase. Still, you may be in for some surprises as you go through this testing process.