Dr. Charles E. McDaniel

285 Wildwood Lane Boone, North Carolina 28607 828-264-3190

Historically driver education programs have been developed around 30 hours of classroom and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction taught by school-based or commercial driver education teachers. When I, and some of you, learned to drive, these programs were not available so we were taught by our parents, older adults, and / or other family members. Today there are many communities where no driver education program is offered by the local school system or a commercial driving school. Unfortunately, in some of the communities where a formal driving education program is offered, the driver education program and the driving instructors are both inadequate and poorly trained as a result of lax or reduced standards adopted by the state. Fortunately, there are some school-based and/or commercial driving schools that offer quality instruction taught by competent driver education instructors.

In the last several years parent-taught driver education has emerged to fill the void where no formal driver education program was available. Some of these parent-taught programs fall into the same “poor” category as described above. I have examined some of the parent-taught driver education programs. One of the best of these programs is the National Driver Training Institute “Help For the Teenager Who Wants to Drive” program.

The NDTI Program meets the content standards established by ADTSEA and various State Agencies. The NDTI Program far exceeds the number of hours spent in the traditional 30 hours of classroom and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel driving instruction program. The NDTI Program provides a variety of current driver education videos for the students to watch. The NDTI Program also provides a classroom and a behind-the-wheel evaluation program that is more detailed than evaluations normally performed by driver education teachers in school based or commercial driving school programs. The turn around time on test and/or on-road evaluations is consistently much less with a greater percent of the test/evaluations reaching the parents. The NDTI Program has also reached back in time to the 1960’s and 1970’s for a resurrection of the “correlated and intergraded” organization of the driver education classroom and behind-the-wheel instruction.

In the 1960’s the Brevard County, Florida four-phase driver education program was developed around the “correlated and intergraded” format where students received short periods of classroom instruction (3-5 days) followed by simulation, range, and/or behind-the-wheel instruction for several days (5-10 days) etc., until each student had received 30 hours of classroom and 30 hours of behind-the-wheel training or its equivalent.

During this period of time there were several major research studies that utilized the “correlated and intergraded” approach to program organization:

The National Driver Education Study (DeKalb County, Ga) – Dr. Jack Weaver

Driving Range Study (Brevard County, Florida School ) – Dr. Richard Bishop

Four Phase Driver Education Study (Brevard County, Florida schools) – Dr. Tom Seals

Renton, Washington Model Driver Education Study (Renton, Washington) – Dr. Charles E. McDaniel

San Diego, Madison High School Model Drivers Education Study (San Diego, California) – Dr. Tom Seals and Dr. Charles E. McDaniel.

The NDTI “Help For the Teenager Who Wants to Drive” utilizes the “correlated and intergraded” organizational approach. Their approach spreads the driving over a longer period of time and is able to relate the classroom information more closely to the behind-the-wheel instruction. Also the times spent in behind-the-wheel instruction is a documented minimum 50 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction. Current GDL programs, which provide for supervision driving instruction after successful completion of a high school based or a commercial driver education program, generally have very little or no required structure for the GDL experience. The NDTI Program provides both documented times and structure. Until steps are taken to build in required structure and documented time standards, serious consideration should be given to allowing quality parent taught driver education programs like the NDTI to be approved.

Sincerely,

Dr. Charles McDaniel