Feasibility studies were conducted to provide a comprehensive review of the status of driver education and its relationship to traffic safety. A plan is designed for the overall evaluation of driver education and training programs. The following aids are being developed to summarize material in the following areas: (1) development of instruments to gather relevant information regarding characteristics of driver education programs, student driving ability, driving behavior in the real world of the highway traffic system and the cost to society as such real-world driving behavior, (2) intermediate evaluations of driver education and training programs: in terms of program content, student performance on driver proficiency tests, and driver and driver performance in real-world driving, (3) research to determine how various characteristics of the driver education programs relate to and influence the driving ability of students and how the driving ability of students relate to their driving performance in the real world, (4) ultimate evaluation of driver education and training programs, as judged by their products' driving behaviors in the real world and the cost to society of these behaviors, making possible decisions regarding the relative merits of different programs. The introduction is recommended of a "cost-of-driving-performance" criterion into this overall evaluation, which could provide an even more valuable kind of external evaluation. The overall plan summarized has promising potential for evaluating higher-level systems as well as driver education programs for which it was designed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract