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- Allan F. WilliamsPublished on: 13 May 2016
- Vanessa C WigandPublished on: 13 May 2016
- David C HuffPublished on: 13 May 2016
- Robert P GreenPublished on: 13 May 2016
- Published on: 13 May 2016Authors' response to letter from David Huff
- Allan F. Williams
- Other Contributors:
- Susan A. Ferguson
Show MoreDear Editor:
David Huff[1] either didn’t read our article carefully or didn’t comprehend it. Besides mischaracterizing us as “experts at crash tests” (we are behavioural scientists, while engineers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety direct crash testing), Huff misstates what we say, claiming we are “at a loss” as to how to improve driver education and want it eliminated from high schools.
What...
Show LessDear Editor:
David Huff[1] either didn’t read our article carefully or didn’t comprehend it. Besides mischaracterizing us as “experts at crash tests” (we are behavioural scientists, while engineers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety direct crash testing), Huff misstates what we say, claiming we are “at a loss” as to how to improve driver education and want it eliminated from high schools.
What we did say is this: Despite worldwide evidence that driver education does not produce safer drivers and in some cases increases the crash problem, it has enduring appeal. Many new driver education programs, often using computer-based technology, have been introduced in recent years. There is a program in Australia combining professional driving instructors and parents that we describe as promising. However, given what research studies have told us about prior programs thought to be state-of- the-art, we argue that scientific evaluations of the effects of new programs are essential. We also need to be alert to programs that may do harm. In this regard it is noteworthy that programs teaching skid control and other emergency manoeuvres are becoming increasingly popular in the United States; yet studies have shown that they can increase rather than decrease the crash problem.[2]
This explains the title of our commentary (“Driver Education Renaissance?”).[3] Yes, there has been a proliferation of new driver education programs, but are they making a difference? We won’t know without rigorous scientific evaluations to guide us. We don’t expect this view to be appreciated by someone who declares that “we must respect what is unscientifically ‘known’ by the public;” but as behavioural scientists who have spent many years addressing the young driver problem, we think this is the rational way to proceed.[4]
Allan F. Williams, Ph.D.,
Susan A. Ferguson, Ph.D.,
Insurance Institute for Highway SafetyReferences
1. Huff DC. A rebuttal to skeptics of teen driver education. Inj Prev, eLetters, 20 April 2005.
2. Jones B. The effectiveness of skid-car training for teenage novice drivers in Oregon. Salem, OR: Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles, 1993.
3. Williams AF, Ferguson SA. Driver education renaissance? Inj Prev 2004;10:4-7.
4. Williams AF. Barriers and opportunities in reducing motor vehicle injuries. Inj Prev 2001;7:83-84.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared. - Published on: 13 May 2016I thought we were on the same team?Show More
Dear Editor,
Why is IIHS such a staunch critic of driver education programs? To suggest driver education is a way to "crash proof" novice drivers is just silly. Driver education provides students with tangible skills that set the foundation for the acquisition of mature driving skills and judgement. Driver education at its best is a team effort involving schools, communities, students, and families.
W...
Show LessDear Editor,
Why is IIHS such a staunch critic of driver education programs? To suggest driver education is a way to "crash proof" novice drivers is just silly. Driver education provides students with tangible skills that set the foundation for the acquisition of mature driving skills and judgement. Driver education at its best is a team effort involving schools, communities, students, and families.
While IIHS focus is on engineering safer cars, there is still a need to address safer road user behaviours through enhanced enforcement, education, reinforcement, and graduated licensing legislation.
Cars don't crash, PEOPLE crash cars. We teach civics--many people don't vote. We teach nutrition--many people don't eat balanced diets. We teach about vehicle crashworthiness--many people buy cars with poor crash ratings. We teach the essential knowledge and skills needed to manage driving risks--many drivers still take unnecessary risks.
How do you temper the heady mix of youth, mechanical power, and newly -discovered freedom? How do you counteract the effects of young drivers' role models who are drunk, enraged, unbelted drivers? We don't know do we?
Have you looked at the data (Texas, Colorado, etc.) to see the difference between the crash rates of parent-taught and formal driver education programs?
Following is the 2003 and 2004 fatality data for VA teens.
Age -- 2003 -- 2004
15 ----- 9 ----- 5
16 ---- 19 ---- 21
17 ---- 31 ---- 30
18 ---- 22 ---- 29
19 ---- 26 ---- 38
Total - 107 --- 123
It's interesting to note that the data shows older teens' crash rates are significantly higher than younger teens' rates. DO they drive more? Maybe. Gain a few years of experience and take more risks? Maybe. Have less parent involvement? Maybe. All of the above? Maybe!
Think about it. Where can you experience the sensation of power, "rock out" in a chair that adjusts to fit every curve on your body, talk on the phone, eat, drink, and act irresponsibly (and sometime violently) in public and still have the illusion of anonymity? Have you hugged your car today? Now throw in youthful risk taking, thrill-seeking behaviour with little to no adult supervision and yes we have a tragedy in the making.
While parents and peers have a significant impact on risk-taking behaviours, effective teachers influence student achievement and behaviour in a powerful way. Driving is far from the simple task it is perceived to be and driver education is an important component in the process of preparing novice drivers to effectively handle this dangerous task.
I would like to invite you to visit our classrooms/driver education vehicles to shadow some our students so you can observe firsthand their skill acquisition. You will have the opportunity to see the difference between an educated and a clueless driver.
You may also be interested in looking at our transfer student, public, non public, and commercial school driver education program graduates' first-year crash data located at http//www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Instruction/PE. We use this data to evaluate and improve our instructional programs.
We need to be on the same team to help students understand the fundamentals of driving and to foster responsible attitudes and driving behaviours needed for safe motor vehicle operation.
Please don't encourage throwing the baby out with the bath water. I have no desire to share the road with under educated drivers!
"Teachers plant seeds that grow forever"
Conflict of Interest:
None declared. - Published on: 13 May 2016A rebuttal to sceptics of teen driver education
- David C Huff, Traffic Education Director
Show MoreDear Editor,
Why do some research professionals continue to hold positions that result in avoiding a serious overhaul of, and investment into, educating new drivers? Education-testing young drivers warrants as much attention and investment as crash-testing new vehicles! Exploring how to teach and motivate teen drivers will result in knowledge that is likely more valuable to society and traffic safety than expl...
Show LessDear Editor,
Why do some research professionals continue to hold positions that result in avoiding a serious overhaul of, and investment into, educating new drivers? Education-testing young drivers warrants as much attention and investment as crash-testing new vehicles! Exploring how to teach and motivate teen drivers will result in knowledge that is likely more valuable to society and traffic safety than exploring the crush of a new vehicle!
Researchers Allan Williams and Susan Ferguson of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) have weighed in once again on their position regarding driver education. Although they title their article “Driver’s Education Renaissance?”, their comments reflect an old position that does not promote education; it promotes delaying and avoiding education. The premise of this position is kids who don’t drive won’t crash, and educating someone on how to do something will result in them doing it. Their commentary is posted at the Injury Prevention Online Web site [2]. This article is a rebuttal to the position they put forward.
This author found no positive suggestions for improving driver education in the Williams and Ferguson commentary, yet research abounds on how people learn, [3] and the body of knowledge on how it applies to driver education, although still largely ignored, continues to grow [4]. Their specific, useful positive suggestions are limited to the agreed benefits of various elements of graduated driver experience models. But, because driver education results in kids driving, they also recommend that access to driver education be made less convenient by removing it from high schools.
Those who would define the agenda on teen driver education should be able to offer something more positive than to make driver education less convenient to the general public. This suggestion leads this author to believe they are at a loss on how to improve driver education, or as to what role it can provide in improving the learning experiences of young drivers.
Their commentary continues their public message that scarce public dollars will be wasted if spent on driver education. They disclose that a good driver education program results in more skilled drivers, but the context and underlying message is “skilled drivers are not necessarily safe drivers.” [5]. Even so, the article also conveys the fact that efforts over the past couple decades to convince the public that education measures are useless has failed, and with that admission the article appears to divulge a concern that efforts to keep public dollars from being invested into driver education are at risk.
The Williams and Ferguson article appears to be part of a strategy, perhaps well intended, to counter the ongoing struggle to adequately fund and improve driver education—a counter stimulated by renewed interest of the public and Congress in driver education. The struggle that exists between some researchers and those who directly work with teens is a challenging conundrum. Most parents and teachers believe education is important to help teens learn safe driving behaviours, but some of those who review literature and research at arms length from young, aspiring drivers believe teens should not be taught to do something that might result in their harm.
Would Williams or Ferguson consider delaying young minds from being taught the basics of the scientific method? Any teacher can tell you that young minds will err in their methods, analysis and conclusions until they learn, through experience, to master the skill. Yet, society knows that young minds should be taught. Teachers, therefore, work patiently, over time, to establish a foundation of knowledge in the scientific method and provide expanding experience, helping students overcome errors and produce more accurate conclusions in more complex scientific inquiries. Society demands this be done because society understands the value of the educational process.
The facts cited by Williams and Ferguson overlook new emerging reports coming out of Washington and Oregon that indicate teens whose learning experience includes a standards-based, state-approved driver education program are safer drivers than those who do not take a state- approved driver education program [6]. In addition, what is known by research is not the only useful body of knowledge relating to teen drivers. The writers report “86 percent” of the public “considered driver education courses ‘very important’ in training new drivers to drive safely.” Those who are closer to the real world have ways of understanding things that frustrate the analytical and necessarily myopic world of research and empiricism. We must respect what is unscientifically "known" by the public. In fact, intuitive knowledge and hunches are an important seedbed of hypotheses that eventually become scientific knowledge.
Champions and guardians of empirical knowledge are invaluable contributors to public discussion and policy development. However, I learned years ago that while the advice of accountants and researches is very important, unless those analyzing the data understand the heartbeat of the business, their advice may not result in the hoped for outcome. Why is that? It is because the world of science is a discovery process and what has been empirically explored and documented represents only the tiniest piece of the universe of knowledge awaiting exploration. Despite our great and wonderful advances, what is unknown is far greater than what is known, and what is thought to be known is often, at best, only partially known.
It is not unusual for researchers to warn that a particular effort represents a focus for which there is no scientifically proven value, only to find through additional research that there is evidence of its value. Examples of this abound [7].
Delaying license may reduce crashes for the younger teens, but what does it do for the older teens who have yet to learn to drive, and how does that help rural states that insist on young teens being able to drive. At some point the would-be driver must learn to drive and begin the path of acquiring experience. Society has invested too little effort and resources into improving methods of initial instruction. The public intuitively knows that education has to play a part as certainly as the staff at the IIHS know that young minds must be taught the scientific method.
Perhaps the driver education agenda should be defined by experts in education, learning development and human behaviour who have explored the nuances of the human mind and know the heartbeat of the education and training process. Perhaps its time to expand the dialogue to folks who have suggestions other than Williams’ and Ferguson’s suggestion to avoid or delay the task, and who are willing to forge ahead and improve a driver education system that has yet to embrace present education and training knowledge and technologies. Perhaps experts at crashing cars and calculating the costs of crashes for insurance companies are not the experts that can best advance solutions to the driver education challenges.
The bottom line is that experience without skilled and knowledgeable instruction will lead to reinforcement and establishment of poor and illegal driving behaviours and habits. Society can’t expect the teen driver to drive safely if they do not know how. A quality driver education and training experience is the foundation for safe driving behaviour. That foundation needs to be true and sound so that subsequent safe-driver initiatives can build upon that foundation of knowledge and skill, including public policies that encourage improved driving norms for all drivers [8].
In the words of Russell W. Davenport [9], “Progress in every age results only from the fact that there are some men and women who refuse to believe that what they know to be right cannot be done.”
For more on the suggestions of this author (David Huff) and other experts who believe something positive can be done, visit the Driver Education Forum sponsored by the National Transportation Safety Board at http://www.ntsb.gov/Events/symp_driver_ed/symp_driver_ed.htm.
David C. Huff 1
References
1. David C. Huff is the director of traffic education for the state of Montana through the Montana Office of Public Instruction. He has a master of science in education--learning development with an emphasis on traffic education.
2. http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/10/1/4; March, 2005
3. One such resource: National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
4. The National Institute for Driver Behavior is one organization that applies brain-based research on how teens learn to driver education curriculum and technologies. http://www.NIDB.org.
5. Williams A F. (Dec. 2004) Are driver education courses for teenagers effective? CQ Researcher. http://www.thecqresearcher.com. Also posted at http://adtsea.iup.edu/adtsea/
6. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration research report on Oregon at 2005 Lifesavers Conference, and research reports on Washington driver education programs delivered at 2003 and 2004 American Driver and Traffic Safety Education annual conference by Nickolas Lovrich and Steve Ellwanger, Washington State University.
7. In the 1960s some members of the medical community warned there was no evidence of vitamins C and E’s value as a preventative treatment for various ailments. Today, however, they are valued as an important part of a healthy diet, as anti-oxidants that fight free radicals and among other things, recognized as potentially beneficial in preventing cancer (http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/antioxidants). A similar campaign by some scientists resisted alternate theories on the causes of ulcers. We now know that some forms of ulcers are caused by bacteria, are easily cured, and not just the symptoms of too much stomach acid (http://www.cdc.gov/ulcer/).
8. This author recognizes that even the best driver education efforts will have less positive long-term benefit than desired if the driving norms of society are poorer than the desired behaviours taught to the new driver. The teens will soon drive like the parents and neighbors who perpetuate the norms. Solutions must also be pursued for improving the norms of all drivers. See the author’s recommendations at the National Transportation Safety Board Web site listed in the closing paragraph above, and comments by: Evans, L (2004) Traffic Safety, Chapters 13 and 16. http://scienceservingsociety.com
Conflict of Interest:
None declared. - Published on: 13 May 2016Evidence Based?
- Robert P Green, Instructor/trainer
Show MoreDear Editor,
survivethedrive.org “Your Best Behind the Wheel”
An open letter to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
Please, don’t train and evaluate my surgeon, airline pilot or electrician as well as we prepare our nation’s youthful drivers.
Studies showing little or no “crash reduction” b...
Show LessDear Editor,
survivethedrive.org “Your Best Behind the Wheel”
An open letter to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
Please, don’t train and evaluate my surgeon, airline pilot or electrician as well as we prepare our nation’s youthful drivers.
Studies showing little or no “crash reduction” benefit from traditional driver education programs have concluded that they have little or no benefit, or the disbenefit of getting these students on the road sooner. But aren’t the programs themselves ineffective at achieving crash reduction? Can we expect a demonstration of improvement in the short time and attention allotted to those programs? Didn’t the DeKalb study show that a students who took a “little better” program fare a little better for a little while? What results could we expect through a “lot better” program.
We have no evidence that it wouldn’t work.
Why would the insurance industry condemn the motivation to improve?
As evidence, didn’t “every driver that ever crashed”, pass their DMV driver’s test? We haven’t seen any scrutiny on the ineffectiveness of DMV standardized testing based on the gruesome evidence of GES data.
From the tragic statistics, the recent tsunami, the 911 terrorism and the serial mid-eastern wars pale in comparison to the perpetuated human tragedy of car crashes. Small mistakes make for big consequences with a moving automobile even if, through engineering, the car is made to be more crash protective. The forensics show that the victims suffer from some mistake, their own or someone else’s. We’re all accountable.
Six million crashes and 40,000+ U.S. fatalities per year? After ten years or forty years? The totals are staggering.
What is to be done? How can we reduce the error rate? However, unintentional or inadvertent, most crashes aren’t accidents.
Failure is when your best isn’t good enough.
Please don’t believe that violence of this proportion is inevitable or has to be the price of our free, independent mobility.
I contributed on an advisory committee for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) several years ago. The committee made recommendations on graduated licensing for the states’ legislatures to ponder. Most states adopted graduated licensing plans that shelved the more expensive provisions of training and evaluation, in favor of the less expensive restrictions and required parental involvement. Oh yes, and enforcement.
The restrictions and supervision are, gratefully, pointed out as immediate successes and work primarily because of reduced total youthful driving exposure, under more controlled conditions and circumstances.
Any parent could have instituted these restrictions at any time prior to the legislation. Those parents would have had to enforce it themselves (an unpleasant task in some families).
The international figures show that eight industrialized countries fare better than the U.S. on their crash and fatality rates. Each of these countries have more rigorous training (albeit more expensive) for initial licensing and periodic updates.
Other studies show that few American drivers feel the need to improve their own driving (“self certified”, “I’m OK”) fewer still have crash avoidance competency. Forensic crash investigations show that in more than one third of all crashes, there is no evidence that driver made an attempt at avoidance. If you hit what is in your way, you probably failed to miss it. Fatal inability.
All educators know that the most difficult personal factors to improve are; decision making, judgment and maturity. Twelve years of English classes most frequently produces readers. How much training effort does a violinist or quarterback put in? Even the IIHS “Northport” study stated that emergency procedures training “showed promise” for crash rate reduction, “when coupled with motivational influences”.
The first time you took a ride in a car (?), and the last time you will? We’re in cars practically from “womb to tomb”, a lifetime of potentially hazardous, kinetic mobility.
I hope that your efforts would be to never give up on helping the individual behave with deliberate effort to be their own best driver . . . . and endorse whatever (public policy) improvements to driver training and education that can reduce the accumulation of cost, pain and the fatal price we’re all subject to.
Bob Green, Instructor/Trainer, survivethedrive.org
rgreen{at}survivethedrive.org
GreenWorks, 125 White Hollow Road,
Lakeville,
CT 06039
home/ofc ph 1+(860) 435-1054Conflict of Interest:
None declared.