A trivia question in the category of automobile history could be: “Who created the world’s first high school driver education course?” The answer: Professor Amos E. Neyhart, director of the Institute of Public Safety, Penn State University. In 1933, Prof. Neyhart became known as the founding father of driving education.
In the 1930s, as part of his push for driver education, Prof. Neyhart created the first college course for teachers to learn driving instruction. By 1968, according to Ford Motor Co.’s Traffic Safety and Highway Improvement Dept., he had personally trained almost 20,000 driving instructors.
At that point, in support of his efforts, Prof. Neyhart stated, “In 35 years, survey after survey has shown that drivers trained by professional educators before taking the wheel have 50 to 60 percent fewer accidents and serious violations than untrained drivers. No one has ever demonstrated the contrary.”
In 1936, The Travelers Insurance Co. released statistics that supported Prof. Neyhart’s assertion that driving instruction in schools was lacking. That year, 30 percent of all automobile accidents involving fatalities were caused by drivers ages 16 to 24. This age group also accounted for 22 percent of accidents causing non-fatal injuries. Most startling, this age group, overall, consisted of both the least amount of vehicle ownership and miles driven, yet ranked among the worst for causing injury- and fatality-inducing crashes.
While it’s logical to blame the young and/or inexperienced drivers for much of the chaos on the road in those pre-World War II years, a 1946 study by the American Mutual Liberty Insurance Co. (AMLI) of Boston, Mass., showed older, more experienced drivers could also create havoc on the highways, but for a different reason.
Due to World War II rationing restrictions for both gasoline and rubber (tires) to support the war effort, vehicle use became limited from 1942 to mid-1945. The saying “practice makes perfect” defines the decrease in driving skills as vehicle use declined until wartime restrictions were lifted. An AMLI comparison study of the early months of 1946 (unrestricted) versus early 1945 (restrictions in place) show both automobile personal injury and property damage accidents increased nearly 45 percent among drivers of all ages.
Partial blame for this increased accident rate could be assigned to the overall poor condition of vehicles in use in the immediate postwar months. Many vehicles were at or past the end of their roadworthiness for multiple reasons. Mainly, they were improperly maintained due to the wartime lack of replacement parts, or were a last-resort use until a new(er) vehicle could be obtained, which were unavailable to most drivers during World War II.
Whether this postwar carnage was due mainly to rusty driving skills or rust-bucket vehicles, AMLI called for a reeducation of all drivers as well as more effective programs of traffic regulation by law enforcement.
By the 1960s, driver education had become mainstream, and often part of the high school curriculum. One of the more controversial teaching tools in widespread use were films such as “Red Asphalt” and “Signal 30,” which relied on shock value to make their case against unsafe driving practices. Both “Red Asphalt” (1964, produced by the California Highway Patrol) and “Signal 30” (1959, produced by the Ohio Highway Safety Foundation) featured actual aftermaths of violent vehicle collisions. Nothing was held back, including scenes of mangled, burnt or lifeless bodies being extracted from twisted remains of crashed vehicles.
“Signal 30,” the police radio codename to describe a fatal traffic accident, won a National Safety Council Award. It also spawned two sequels: “Mechanized Death” and “Wheels of Tragedy.” “Red Asphalt,” which was the first in a series of five like-named films created over many years, went unrewarded. It drew harsh criticism from the LA Times newspaper, which referred to it as “…the ‘Reefer Madness’ of driving. Forget trying to reason with teenagers, just scare ’em.”
Competition, rather than shock value, was the teaching tool provided in a different type of driver education offering named the National Safe Driving Road-E-O. Begun in 1952 and held annually, by 1966 it had attracted more than three million entrants, all under age 19.
The 1966 Road-E-O, held in Washington, D.C., and co-sponsored by the Lincoln-Mercury Division of Ford Motor Co. and the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, was won by 18-year-old John Gearhart of Bethany, Mo. He was one of more than 300,000 entrants that year. The Road-E-O consisted of a regional series of events comprised of a written exam, obstacle course drive and an observed drive in city traffic. For his victory, Gearhart earned both a new Mercury Comet and a $2,000 college scholarship. He was also named a Road-E-O ambassador, and had some advice for future entrants.
He said, “There’s no reason in the world why teenagers shouldn’t be good drivers. We’ve got quick reflexes. We have the chance to learn good driving habits—how to be aggressively defensive.”
As driving education has evolved since founding father Prof. Neyhart began it all in 1933, the type of aggression he forewarned about still resonates today.
He cautioned, “Be a good motoring citizen. Just imagine what roads would be like if everyone tried to ‘cowboy’ the other fellow out of the way.”
We now refer to that as road rage!
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