Scientific studies of high school driver training with behind the wheel components emerged in the 1960s amongst considerable controversy about the ability of such driver education to deliver net road safety benefits. In 1977 the DeKalb study was commenced as the largest and most comprehensive of all driver education studies. The study found that there was no net benefit from the courses offered when compared to no training at all, and follow-up studies concluded similar findings. Many other studies exist criticising high school driver education. Very little evidence has emerged to support driver education and training in high schools and the bulk of scientific literature is damning of the ability of high school driver education and training to deliver net road safety benefits. Such education generally leads to increased licensure rates and younger driving ages, causing problems which far outweigh any benefits achieved. Such education should generally be acknowledged as providing driving skills and therefore its consequent limited ability to make an impact acknowledged. There is also overwhelming opinion in the scientific community that driver education and training is not the 'silver bullet' that the community intuitively expects it to be and arguing this point is often extremely difficult. The expectation that driver education and training can have a dramatic impact on road safety outcomes needs to be played down to the extent where it performs a supporting and reinforcing role combined with broader social approaches. There is growing acknowledgement that non-skills based factors are a key to resolving road safety problems and there is no conclusive link between skills based training and crash involvement. Instead, the social context for motivation and risk taking propensity of a person is a far more important component than any type of skills based training. (A)
Abstract