Where did you take drivers ed?

In high school, it was a requirement for graduation. One kid's family moved to Montana about 8th grade, he gets his driver's license there, they move back about junior year. They made him take driver's ed. He was driving to school every day.
Minnesota is kinda weird about some things, even then.

 

We would sneek out early on snowy, icy Saturday mornings, and went to the large parking lot at the middle school, and got comfortable drifting sideways and doing do-nuts and spinning out just to get the feel of it. The oldest guy in the group had a learner's permit, or did eventually, and we just took turns getting the knack of a mostly out of control vehicle. One of the guys might have bent a wheel, or maybe dinged a bumper a little on a post, but we'd go all winter long and the car was still ready to go, come spring time and we also had the confidence, we could fix anything we broke.

A patrolman lived right next to my lead guitar player. We were invited to swim in that family's backyard pool. I think this cop recognized we worked hard not to do anything too stupid (at least not in his beat) and figured we'd earned it when we found and turned in all that expensive Navy signalling equipment that some insiders had stolen and stashed behind the golf course. So, people knew we were out there, but I guess nobody called because nobody ever intervened to stop us from our "development" as drivers.

 

I don't know.

It reminds me of a young kid in the neighborhood, who had gotten a girl pregnant - and afterwards they made him take sex-ed classes with the rest of his classmates.

 

I took drivers ed in the summer of '78 between my sophomore and junior years on high school. The football coach was the classroom instructor. Our in car instructor was a basketball player from the local college. It was all he could do to fold himself up small enough to fit in the Ford Granada. A good time was had by all.

 

With my father in his '71 Plymouth Fury Wagon (V8-383cu). This was before regular folks bought pick-ups. It was both the family car and Dad's "truck" for hauling lumber, hardware etc. on the weekends while he renovated our 100 year old home.

Like the B52's sang, the size of a whale or a small ocean liner. Drove like an overstuffed sofa but once it got goin' was pretty fast. After learning on that I never had a problem with driving anything big.

 

I took Drivers Ed at me high school. the class was taught by one of the Metal and Woodshop teachers. What I will never forget is one day he says to the class, Should you stop if you see a dog in the road? We were all like, well yeah, of course. He says, No! You should never stop. There was this little old lady who stopped for a dog and then a tractor trailer slammed into her and killed her! So, you should never stop for animals in the road! We all looked at each other and were like, ah, ok.

For the driving portion, this woman would come from some driving school. You would drive all over and she'd have me stop so she could get coffee, stop at her daughter's house. Great stuff.

 

He probably flunked. Lol

 

When I was learning to drive (1963) we didn't have any formal driving ed as such. We had a booklet called the Highway Code (still do, but it's much thicker these days)) ànd when you finished the driving part of your test you'd be asked half a dozen random questions the tester would pick from the book.

My Dad taught me more or less the mechanics of driving. We'd go to a disused air force base a couple of miles from where we lived -- he figured I couldn't do much damage in a little Austin Mini on a runway! But I did have some formal lessons from a local registered instructor, presumably to make sure I hadn't picked up any bad habits from Dad, who learnt to drive in the Army during WW2.

Mind you my instructor, the wonderful and slightly eccentric Mrs Potts, could be some driver when she got behind the wheel of a car. At one tìme she'd been a delivery driver for Morgan -- say no more, other than when in a hurry she didn't hang about.

 

I took driver's education in high school, as part of the required "Health and Safety" class. Most people took H&S as freshmen, just to get it out of the way. I took it as a junior, IIRC.

Driver's training I took from California Driving School in Monterey Park, CA. Wayne Nickerson was my instructor. He was awesome.

"Driver's Education" was a classroom course, and taught in public school. It was all about the norms and rules of the road – i.e. what you needed to know to pass the DMV's multiple choice test...which is what you needed to get a permit.

Once you got your permit, you could take "Driver's Training." It was behind the wheel – a completely separate thing from Driver's Ed, and private...but three classes were required by the state, and you needed to have your permit for six months, before you could take your DMV road test to get your license.

In short:

1. Take Driver's Education (provided in public high schools)
2. Get permit by passing DMV multiple choice test.
3. Take at least three 2-hour Driver's Training classes.
4. Have your permit for at least six months before being eligible to take DMV road test.
5. Get license by passing DMV road test.

 

Where did I take drivers ed? A hayfield in Mississippi when I was 12. Also a golf course fairway in Eagleville, PA in my mother’s stolen Galaxy 500.

 

We had the '70 Chrysler T + C, black on black, vinyl wood siding delete, also with that Torqueflite and 383 2 barrel. The big difference was my dad ordered the heavy duty suspension and it really did serve well and for a very long time.

Yeah, today people just don't seem to appreciate that Pickup Trucks were I would say "rare" unless it was being used on a dairy farm or in a lumber yard or something. I really don't know why but it was considered very bad manners to drive around day to day or to tote your kids to school in a pickup truck. It would be the equivalent of a 30 year old guy, having quit school in the third grade and having only one sound tooth left in his head.

The lead guitar player in the last New York State band I was in, found himself driving a pickup truck his last year of high school, and he took all kinds of abuse for it. Handsome guy, girls wanted to say yes when he called for a date, but they told him no unless he borrowed a car of some sort for the evening.

 

Yup, Dad ordered his with the heavy duty suspension too. He liked to build stone retaining walls and would fill that back up with bags of cement!

 

I find it quite interesting that Driver's Ed is offered as a part of US high school education, as if driving a car is essential to becoming a functioning member of American consumer society.

In England, when I was learning to drive in the mid 90s, I just drove my dad's Peugeot 306 to and from school every day for a few months. My dad is an excellent and very skillful driver and he was a very patient and encouraging teacher. I also used to go to an abandoned airfield with my brother in his Mini and drive all around the perimeter roads at high speed. Great memories!

Passing the driving test in those days was actually very difficult, and my local test center had a fierce and teenage-boy-hating head examiner who was brutal. Everyone failed their first time.

When I moved to California I just booked a test w/ the DMV, answered some very simple questions, and took a ten minute driving practical with a very pleasant El Salvadorian man who just wanted to chat about soccer. It remains among the easiest tests I have ever taken in any subject...

Currently teaching my 16 year old son to drive. It's a little different when you're the father...

 

Proud to have been taught Driver's Ed by the great Ray Juricich. He was a basketball coach and a former major in the Battle of the Bulge (no one knew this until his obit). He looked like a cross between Lee Marvin and Jimmy Durante. He was completely gruff and deadpan in his classroom teaching. Whenever idiocy occurred (daily), he would go "Aw, geez."

My friend and I would walk past his house on our way to the music store. We were terrified he would see us and make some comment or go "Aw, geez," so we would be as silent as possible as we tiptoed past his house.

But he could relate to the students, telling us one Friday to enjoy the weekend, "getting hopped up or whatever it is that kids do these days."

He he had the coolest presence of anybody I ever met.

 

"Where Did You Take Driver's Ed?"

In a trailer full of driving similators sitting next to my high school in Oklahoma, East Cental HS in east Tulsa. Circa 1973 or '74.

Had my motorcycle driver's license 4 yrs. before that, in 1970. Required the same written test as auto drivers, and a little ride out of the DMV parking lot, then back in, I guess they figured if you made it back alive, you were "proficient"........

 

Driver's Ed. Another great example of my parents parenting.

Forced to take it in high school. It took up a class slot which I could have filled with something useful. Like the only science class my school offered that I didn't take.

Passed with flying colors.

Parents would not allow me to have a drivers license. Big waste of my time.

 

I took driver's ed at my high school, a mere thirty years ago. My instructor was a man named Denver Bell, a football coach who played high school ball with my dad when they were young. If anyone got too rowdy in class, he would threaten to pull his knife and cut them.

 

Started out with my father teaching me in the big parking lots at Hollywood Park Race Track. He worked there part time, and later on I worked there. Drove in his big green 1953 Chrysler Saratoga.

Polished off my skills at a drivers ed course at Washington High School in South LA. After school program. Four of us novices at a time in the car plus instructor, three in the back seat. Best part was holding hands in the back seat with a lovely girl.