Teaching the Future
Preparing the young generation to drive streets that don't yet exist.
Not so long ago the prevailing wisdom held that kids didn’t want to drive, would never have to drive, and couldn’t afford to own a car even if they do have to or want to drive. It’s true that a declining number of teens rush out to get a license, but that trend began half a century ago. Car ownership has certainly gotten more expensive and mobile devices (the other kind) make it possible for people to be both here and there at once. Uber and Lyft afford most of the benefits of automobility without the hassles of ownership. The advent of lithium ion battery powered bikes, scooters, hoverboards, skateboards, and whatever that elliptical machine is that I saw rolling down the road last week provide alternatives to the automobile, especially when coupled with mass transit.
Yet there are still more licensed drivers than cars and trucks for them to drive. The majority of sixteen year olds — turn 16 per year.… Check stats ornl tedb And the state still requires them to earn a license before letting them loose on the road. That’s where I come in. After 65 hours of in-car training and a 100 question exam (a passing score is 90), I became a Massachusetts State Certified Driving Instructor.
That job is both easier and harder than it used to be. Cars have never been so easy to drive. Not only do the most modern ones have backup cameras, blind spot monitors, and lane keeping assist, even the lowliest have automatic transmissions, power steering, and antilock brakes. A not insignificant number of kids I teach have never seen a car key. They push a button and the car boots up.
The hard part is trying to teach them to drive roads that don’t yet exist, at least not here in Marblehead. When they leave the nest though, to college, that European internship, or to the bright lights of the big city, they’ll encounter another landscape. In Dublin, in Paris, and increasingly in American cities and small towns, the drivers have been dethroned. Pedestrians and cyclists now rule the road; the driver is barely tolerated.
Since motor cars were invented, they have squeezed all other road users to the margins, or off the road entirely. Now, communities are undergoing the slow and arduous process of clawing back that space for those who choose alternative modes of transportation.
Alongside the explosive rise of mass automobility in the U.S. came an epidemic of traffic deaths. By the middle 1930s, some 34,000 people a year were dying in traffic, at a rate that had been climbing steadily since 1900. Driver education was one leg of the three legged-stool, “Education, Engineering, Enforcement, the “Three E’s.” It quickly became a standard part of high school curriculum, which meant textbooks. Man and the Motor Car, published in 1936 and considered the first driver’s ed textbook, describes how “traffic authorities” had divided the streets into three sections: “the sidewalks for pedestrians, the curb strips for bicyclists, and the central lanes for cars.”
Of course drivers were being trained so they wouldn’t hit pedestrians, even those who violated the rules. An observant driver should be on the lookout for “suspicious actions!” exhibited by such pedestrians as the man “hurrying across the sidewalk with his head down.” “The untrained driver,” presumably one who has not read the textbook or paid attention in class, “does not see him until he steps out from between two parked cars.”
The lesson for pedestrians is that they shouldn’t be darting out and invading the driver’s rightful territory. If they want to cross the street, they can wait patiently and ask politely by pushing the “walk button.” Then they must stay in the crosswalk; if they do not, they are fair game. The driving student meanwhile learns that she is king of the road and to show her subjects. Jaywalking shouldn’t be punishable by death.
Man is out of print, and most of my students spend classroom time on their phones or doodling. But they have been learning that lesson since kindergarten: parents grip their hands tight when cars appear; the friendly policeman who comes to school for a special safety day tells them to always use the crosswalk. (In fact, crosswalks aren’t necessarily safer and crossing outside of a crosswalk isn’t necessarily jaywalking in Massachusetts.) And they’ve learned it from watching their parents drive.
That’s why, when a young athlete rolled on by a couple waiting to cross the road, I start socratically: Did you see the pedestrians? Yes. Did you see they were waiting to cross? Yes, he tells me, but they weren’t at a crosswalk. I switch into lecture mode.
First of all, I explain, pedestrians don’t use crosswalks unless they happen upon one. Pedestrians walk from where they are coming from to where they are going. Second, I continue, if there is no crosswalk within 300 feet of where they want to cross, it isn’t jaywalking. And if I’m in a mood, I go on to quote Massachusetts 720 CMR 9.09: Pedestrian Regulations.
This particular high school sophomore showed himself to be intellectually curious, and even a little bit sheepish. That’s okay, I tell him, that’s why you’re in driver’s ed. If you didn’t make mistakes I’d be out of a job.
I had another girl who came upon some cyclists. You know the kind, those middle-aged men peacocked in latex, trying to out pedal senescence We were driving along the waterfront in Swampscott; 30 miles an hour was the posted speed. “I had that,” she said, “Bicycles should be on the sidewalk. What I thought was, “Pull over and let me drive.” What I said was, “Don’t say that during your driving test or you’ll fail.” (I couldn’t be sure, but then neither could she.)
I did my job and instructed, perhaps with a bit of unintentional piqué in my tone. The bicycles aren’t in traffic. They are traffic. By law they can take as much of the lane as they want on any road, anywhere, in the state. You have to give them four feet of berth if you want to pass them. You are welcome to cross the double line if need be, if it is safe to do so, of course. Otherwise, you need to slow down, stay well away from them, and be patient.
No doubt she’ll hear that message again from another one of our dedicated instructors. To ease her annoyance, I remind her that we’re not actually going anywhere. We’re in the car for an hour no matter what.
In the new traffic order, pedestrians are the kings of the road, from sidewalk to sidewalk and all the way from one curb to another. Next come bicycles, mobility devices for the disabled, and whatever wacky new form of micromobility comes along next. You, inside your two-ton steel cage, protected by air bags, may be the most physically powerful road user.. But you’re also the most carbon inefficient (gas or electric), the greatest threat to public health and safety, and will almost assuredly violate at least one rule of the road on every trip. That’s why in the new traffic safety paradigm, you’re at the bottom of the totem pole.
The good news is that many of my students already get it. They are steeped in environmental causes. They have visited and even lived in the European capitals, college towns, and progressive American cities where protected bike lanes, raised crosswalks, and shared scooters are the rule.
The other thing about many, even most, of my students is that they aren’t especially interested in driving. Sure, they want the freedom and mobility, the escape from parental oversight, that driving allows. But feeling a car handle down a windy road? Nah, that’s okay, I’ll pass. Shifting a five speed? Never heard of it.
We’ve reached a point in time that the driver’s license is no longer the rite of passage it once was. Half of teens don’t even bother to get a license. Some of the ones I teach have been holding off lessons off for a year or more past their sixteenth birthdays. They are already primed for the new mobility paradigm. As for the rest, shifting the paradigm, taking the red pill, isn’t always easy. That’s why I teach driver’s ed. The future is coming to Marblehead and they will be leading it.
