Teen Safety Week, as designated by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), begins October 17 and goes through October 24th.

Another teen driver is ready to go?

Although NHSTA is emphasizing areas of concern such as safety belts, distracted driving, riding with minors and night driving, according to Patrick Barrett, nationally recognized expert in driver education and training, “NHTSA is on the wrong track because it has failed to alter the standards that can produce safer beginning drivers.”

The NHTSA held its big powwow in Washington, DC earlier this year.

“Although driver education is a very tiny part of what this agency oversees, the driver education community and NHTSA has once again failed the public it serves,” said Patrick Barrett, Driver Ed in a Box® President. (https://www.driveredinabox.com)

Standards released by NHTSA in the past year have failed in four ways:

1. These standards emphasize theory over practical training.  Classroom requirements are increased from 30 hours to 53 hours and in-vehicle behind-the-wheel hours are increased from 6 to 10 hours.

“I find it hard to believe that anyone would support or recommend a system that requires 5 times more classroom hours than it does practical behind-the-wheel training,” said Patrick Barrett, author of the popular Driver Ed in a Box® course that teaches parents how to teach their teens to become collision-free . (. (. (. (https://www.driveredinabox.com)

2. Although the recommendations do address instructor preparation and training, once again, the emphasis is in classroom with very little in-vehicle preparation.  Since the instructors themselves never go through any rigorous or thorough in-vehicle training, it is no surprise that they are unable to produce safer drivers.

3. The very structure of these standards reinforces a flawed delivery system – the public and/or private high schools.  This may also account for why there is so much resistance to move up the initial driver license age to 18.

Once the student is out of high school, all the education agency administrators, high school teachers and their college required courses, would lose their market.  There would be no need for them.

4.   The biggest failure of these standards is the utter lack of clarity for reducing motor vehicle collisions. Nowhere does it state what the goal or outcome is.

An objective observer might say that the standards promulgated by these self-defined “stakeholders” are designed to insure that they have jobs, that they can get more money from the taxpayers and from their customers.

It’s job security and job protection at its worst – mandated courses with no requirement for accountability.  What’s old is new again.
For more information about how Driver Ed in a Box® guarantees teens to drive their first year collision-free, go to https://www.driveredinabox.com