Mercedes-Benz Recent History: 1993 and a New Product Strategy

The Mercedes-Benz passenger car range in 1983. It comprised (front, from left) the intermediate-class Sedans (W 123), the luxury class (W 126) and the compact class (W 201) as well as (middle, from left) the R 107-series SL Roadsters, the S-Class Coupés of the C 126 series and the intermediate-class Coupés (C 123) backed up by (rear, from left) the Estate models of the intermediate series (S 123) and the long-wheelbase S-Class Sedans (W 126).

From traditional manufacturer of luxury cars to leading-edge full-line provider: this was the path upon which Mercedes-Benz embarked 25 years ago for the development of its passenger car range. In January 1993 the Stuttgart-based brand went public with its decision to launch a strategic product initiative. It took the oldest automobile manufacturer in the world through an expansion of its portfolio to new strength – across all segments and markets. The first effects of the new strategy became apparent even over the course of 1993 in the form of a new design and a reconfiguration of the model designations.

Stuttgart. To follow new paths – and to talk openly about them: this was the decision taken by Mercedes-Benz 25 years ago, when the Stuttgart brand presented its strategy for the development of its passenger car range to leading international journalists.

The information was given to the German media on 22 January 1993 and subsequently to the international media on 26 January 1993. These are the dates that now mark the official start of the strategic product initiative that would proceed over the ensuing years. The press conferences represented a public signal that a time of change and upheaval was about to begin. One of the envisaged outcomes from this process was a major expansion of the product portfolio: more differentiated than ever, technologically innovative, trendsetting and supremely successful all over the world. At the same time the brand would gradually move towards offering a fresher and younger appeal. Or, to put it another way: January 1993 was when the Mercedes-Benz brand began to be cool.

Here is a quick and compact summary of what came out of the initiative: at the beginning of 1993 the brand was active in five segments. In the luxury class with its S-Class (Saloon and Coupé) vehicles, in the intermediate category with what would soon come to be known as the E-Class (Saloon, Estate, Coupé, Cabriolet) and in what at the time was still known as the compact class with the 190 model series, renamed the C-Class in May 1993. In addition there were the SL Roadster models and the cross-country vehicles with the distinctive G in their name.

By ten years later the picture had changed significantly, with eleven passenger car model series and further derivatives in the portfolio: by 2003 there was the A-Class, while the C-Class had acquired an Estate and a Sports Coupé and the SLK (now: SLC) had been added to the range along with the M-Class (now: GLE), the SLR McLaren, the Maybach and the V-Class. On top of these came a whole series of variants from AMG.

Subsequent years saw vehicles such as the B-Class, the CLS, the GL (now: GLS), the R-Class and the GLK (now: GLC) join the product range. From this one can perhaps begin to see how we got to where we are today, when it’s easier to talk about the new categories of vehicle added rather than about segments. Whether it’s the large, medium-sized or small saloons, estates, coupés or cabriolets, or the numerous variants of SUV, a shooting brake or even a pickup: the Mercedes-Benz brand has today become a leading-edge full-line supplier.

Launch of the strategic product initiative

Back in 1993 the picture was not quite so clear. How exactly would the brand present itself from this point on? Customers did not have to wait long for an answer: in that same year, Mercedes-Benz began to provide an important outlook on the forthcoming product initiative. One of the first waymarkers was the design study for an elegant four-seater coupé, shown at the 63rd International Motor Show in Geneva (4 to 14 March 1993). This was the first sighting of the distinctive four-eyed face for Mercedes-Benz that would ultimately go into series production in 1995 in the E-Class (model series 210) and in 1997 in the CLK (model series 208).

In late March 1993 the Board of Management of the then Daimler-Benz AG resolved a radical restructuring of the model nomenclature for the Mercedes-Benz passenger car range, to take effect from the summer of 1993. Following the example of the luxury saloons of the S-Class, the vehicles in the intermediate category (model series 124) would be known henceforth as the E-Class. With the launch of the new model series 202, which also came out in 1993, the compact class became known as the C-Class. The designations for subsequent families of vehicles would also follow this pattern.

Parallel to all this, the commercial release of the C-Class also brought changes to the model designations of all other Mercedes-Benz passenger car models: from now on, a letter or combination of letters – such as C or SL – was used as a prefix to the three-digit number to indicate the class of vehicle, while the letters at the end of the string, such as D, E, T, S, etc., which had hitherto indicated the engine or body variant, would be dropped.

In September 1993 Mercedes-Benz showed its design study for a compact vehicle, the Vision A 93, which would go on to become the A-Class. The production version (model series 168) made its debut in 1997 at the International Motor Show in Geneva.

Within this wealth of variants, we should not forget AMG. In the wake of the cooperation agreement with Mercedes-Benz in 1990, the German Patent and Trade Mark Office recognised AMG as a brand name in its own right in 1993. The C 36 AMG appeared in the autumn of that same year and soon ensured that its presence was clearly felt in terms of numbers: between then and 1997, more than 5,000 vehicles of this powerful four-door sports saloon were built. The important part played by AMG in the strategic product initiative is therefore clear and the course of growth for the performance brand has continued unabated ever since.

Strategic product initiative brings dynamic push

The evolutionary process towards becoming a premium brand of such diversity continued to gain momentum. In April of 1994, for example, Mercedes-Benz showed its first design study for the compact SLK sports car, featuring a vario roof in metal. The R 170 model series went into series production in 1996. The trendsetter with the distinctive three-letter name played a major part in enhancing the youthful appeal of the brand.

Mercedes-Benz was pursuing two important objectives with the “ AAVision” design concept shown at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January 1996. This forerunner to the subsequent M-Class (now: GLE) represented the Stuttgart brand’s first foray into the future-orientated SUV segment.

Need for a new perspective

At the same time Mercedes-Benz took the opportunity presented by this vehicle to implement its strategy of stronger globalisation, introducing new production locations. Indeed, the M-Class (model series 163), launched in 1997, was built at the company’s new production plant in Tuscaloosa, in the US state of Alabama. This location marks a milestone on the brand’s journey from the quality mark “made in Germany” to the predicate “made by Mercedes-Benz”. Looking back, the strategic product initiative was an extremely successful course for Mercedes-Benz to take. The process of transformation that began in 1993 did, however, have very serious roots: from the late 1980s on, the motor industry in Europe became a cut-throat environment. The boundaries between the market segments of luxury-class, intermediate and small car were becoming more and more indistinct. Customers, meanwhile, were asking for more opportunities to individualise their vehicles.

With the introduction of its compact class (W 201) in 1982, Mercedes-Benz had already taken a decisive step towards extending its product range beyond its traditional focus on the intermediate and luxury classes. Nevertheless, a summary of the latest developments in the early 1990s revealed a distinctly critical situation: 1992, for instance, was characterised by a reduction of 13,000 in the workforce and by short-time working in the German passenger car plants.

A press release from the summer of 1993 quotes the Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler-Benz AG, Helmut Werner, as follows: “Without a reduction in our workforce we shall be unable to achieve sustainable improvement in our market position in an intensely competitive environment such as that in which we currently find ourselves. The steps that we are now taking have therefore proved unavoidable.”

The Stuttgart-based brand resolved to extend its range of products significantly and to move very consciously to occupy niche areas. The company also set itself the objectives of reinforcing its international reach, lowering production costs and, despite the significant increase in vehicle variants, reducing component diversity. In this way, the objective of more economically efficient production could be combined with the growing demand of customers for new driving experiences.

The key elements of the new strategy were summarised by Helmut Werner on 28 October 1993 in a presentation to company managers: the challenges faced by the brand lay in devising “a combative policy for our products that addresses these needs” and a “global, strategic basis for the company” as well as in achieving higher productivity and cost efficiencies.

The further course leading to today’s broad product portfolio did not always prove straightforward, but was certainly complex, bringing with it a wealth of experience. The overarching challenge of transforming the brand is long deemed to have been overcome. Mercedes-Benz offers an all-encompassing range of passenger cars covering all important market segments, while ever higher sales records serve to underscore the continuing appeal of the products. They also provide the scope for the important transition of the brand into a new age of mobility – with networked, autonomous and electrically powered vehicles as well as cutting-edge mobility concepts.

A 1955 Porsche 550 and 2 Forever Friends

Lew Bracker carefully opens the door of the silver Porsche 550 Spyder, slides smoothly into the seat, and places his hands on the wheel. He looks out over the racetrack on the grounds of the exclusive Thermal Club in Southern California, his gaze continuing out toward the Mecca Hills in the distance. “I feel like I’m home,” he remarks. Then he takes a reminiscent look back.

Although Bracker’s last race as an amateur driver was sixty years ago, those six decades seem to have collapsed into a second. The car, which belongs to Costa Mesa’s European Collectibles dealership and is worth millions of dollars, has catapulted him back into the 1950s. Now eighty-nine, Bracker spent his younger days driving sports cars from Zuffenhausen on the roads of Southern California together with his best friend Jimmy—otherwise known as James Dean.

Bracker and Dean loved to talk about racing and cars

On September 18, 1955, Bracker was driving home when he spotted a 550 Spyder for the first time at Competition Motors in Hollywood. He told Jimmy about the featherweight silver racing car that same evening. Bracker and Dean, who were both in their mid-twenties, loved to talk about racing, cars, and especially Porsches. Three days later Dean drove up to Bracker’s home in that very same silver Spyder. Dean had traded his white Porsche 356 Speedster for it. “I promptly traded my red 356 Speedster for Jimmy’s,” says Bracker.

Nine days later, on September 30, 1955, James Dean was dead. He died in the Spyder as he drove from Los Angeles to a race in Salinas, about six hundred kilometers to the north. That was just six months after Dean’s first movie, East of Eden, had made him a star. Now he would become a legend, and the Spyder, in contrast, would acquire a tragic renown.

The friends planned to open a Porsche dealership

In June of 1954, before Dean’s leap into fame, he and Bracker had met at the Green Room, a restaurant on the grounds of Warner Brothers Studios. Bracker is convinced that if Dean were alive, the two of them would still be best friends. In addition to their love of cars, they shared many other interests, such as music and movies. And they were busily hatching plans. Dean, who did not trust many people in Hollywood, wanted Bracker to produce his films. They were also planning to open a restaurant and a Porsche dealership. They already had a name for it, recalls Bracker: James Dean Motors.

Dean and Bracker chatting with their colleague and Speedster driver Dale Johnson

Bracker had been enamored of big American cars. His first automobile was an Oldsmobile convertible, and his second a Buick Century. But then he became inspired by Dean’s enthusiasm for the uncompromising sports cars from Germany. The two often took their Speedsters on nighttime joyrides along Los Angeles’s winding Mulholland Drive and through canyons outside the city, which saw little traffic in those days.

Bracker’s first contest was at the Santa Barbara Road Races

Dean was also responsible for igniting his friend’s passion for motorsports. Bracker’s first contest was at the Santa Barbara Road Races in early September 1955—in his red Speedster and wearing Dean’s helmet. “He loaned me his helmet, but it was clear that it was a gift—he signed his name on the left-hand side,” says Bracker. Dean himself was a newcomer to motorsports. Because a clause in his contract with Warner Brothers required him to refrain from the sport for several months, he would enter only three races in his life. Bracker would go on to enter a good forty of them until 1957, in different Porsche models that always bore the starting number 113. “Jimmy and I wanted to drive with the number 13, but both the California Sports Car Club and the Sports Car Club of America were superstitious and wouldn’t issue number 13 to anyone. So Jimmy settled for number 130 and I for number 113,” Bracker says.

Bracker won six races, posted second- and third-place finishes five times each, and for a while was the driver with the best record in the West Coast racing scene.

Bracker did not officially drive for Porsche but was supported by local Porsche dealers who were eager to raise the young brand’s profile in California. “The Carrera had to win, because it wasn’t winning; it was a dud, really, when they brought it out. In those days, the cars that won on the road-race circuit sold. That was the best advertising.” Bracker did his best to help, such as when he convinced Porsche to offer the Carrera Speedster in black. “The Porsche people didn’t want to, but I insisted,” he says with a smile. “I just kept saying, ‘I want black; it’ll be very striking and distinctive.’” The walls of Bracker’s apartment in Palm Springs are lined with framed photos of him as a young man in action on various tracks, driving a black Carrera and wearing a black racing suit and helmet. “It goes back to Jimmy, as my whole racing thing does: before he died he had bought a black racing suit. I thought, ‘Boy, that’s really dramatic.’”

Bracker wanted to emulate Juan Manuel Fangio

The race-car driver that Bracker most wanted to emulate was Argentina native Juan Manuel Fangio, who won a series of Formula One world championships—and Bracker succeeded in doing so. “I always went deeper into corners than other drivers, but never hit the barriers, never spun out. I felt the fastest way was the smoothest way,” he says in describing his style. And Dean? “The opposite—he raced like Stirling Moss. His style was to go hell for leather. He was pretty hard on the machinery.” But, Bracker notes, Dean never had a chance to develop a style.

In 1957 Bracker entered his last race in a 356 Carrera and ended his career. “I stopped racing cold turkey because, when my wife became pregnant, I felt that as a father I wouldn’t be the same driver.” Over the years to come, he worked as an insurance salesman, stockbroker, and investment banker. In 2013 he wrote Jimmy & Me, an account of his friendship with Dean. He hadn’t talked about it for fifty-eight years. “I locked it all away,” he says. News of Dean’s death reached him at what was their favorite local watering hole, the Villa Capri in Hollywood.

Lew Bracker’s memories come flooding back at the Thermal Club racetrack in California

Bracker pulls a dust-covered attaché case from the closet, opens it, and pulls out mementos of his friend Jimmy. There’s a yellowed interview from the Los Angeles Times in which Dean expresses little enthusiasm at being compared with Marlon Brando. And an edition of the Fairmount News with articles about Dean’s death and his funeral in Fairmount, the small town in Indiana where Dean grew up with his aunt and her husband following the death of his beloved mother. Bracker attended the funeral on October 8, 1955. In the spring of 1956 he drove the 3,500 kilometers from Los Angeles to Indiana in a new 1600 Speedster to visit Dean’s foster parents. It was a memorable event for Dean’s cousin, Marcus Winslow Jr. “I was twelve at the time, and Lew took me around the area in his little Porsche Speedster. That was the first time I’d ever been in a Porsche,” Winslow recalls.

Winslow Jr. still lives on his parents’ farm and is still in contact with Bracker. “Lew is like us,” he says. “He’s never forgotten Jimmy—nor have we.”

Making a Nation of Drivers: Driver Education and Sportsmanlike Driving, 1936-1975.

This is a draft of a paper I plan to present at the Driving History Conference in Allentown PA in April, 2018.  Comments and criticisms are welcome!

John

Making a Nation of Drivers: Driver Education and Sportsmanlike Driving, 1936-1975.

John Heitmann

Department of History

The University of Dayton

300 College Park

Dayton, OH 45469-1540

Following Clay McShane’s seminal Down the Asphalt Path, historians Peter Norton, David Blanke, Cotton Seiler, Jeremy Packer, and Katherine J. Partin have recently examined the complexities associated with driver responsibility and traffic safety during the Interwar period.[1] Norton made a convincing argument for a paradigm of power and control centered on an organized group of government elites and manufacturer interests whom he tagged as “Motordom.” Accordingly, Motordom’s efforts led to the shifting of responsibility for vehicle and highway from the automobile to the driver. This institutional framework and its persuasive ideas held sway to the 1960s, as reflected in Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed pity phrase “Damn the driver and spare the car.”

In a recent essay, political and social historian Stève Bernadin took issue with Norton’s interpretation, asserting that a more complex cluster of constituencies and power centers contributed to the traffic safety movement.   Consequently, causation came not only from above, but also from below. For Bernadin highway safety was a complex story involving both elites and commoners as causal agents.  Bernadin went on to ask “who supported the claim that traffic control was achievable, at what time, and in what manner?   Was it presented as morality or science? What sources of legitimacy had to be mobilized to make traffic control a public problem worthy of political attention?” [2]

In the following essay, I shall shift the discussion from traffic control to “power under control,” or driver education that first became a major issue during the 1930s in the United States. [3]Specifically, I wish to examine changes over time in the training or educating young drivers. How did the content of public high school driver education emerge and evolve between the 1930s and 1970s?  To answer that question and to raise a host of contextual ones that will demand further study, I will compare and contrast 1936, 1947, 1955, 1966 and 1975 editions of the primary text in the field, Sportsmanlike Driving.[4]

Much of my work is autobiographical in nature, and such is the case with this study. As a teenager I often read bits and pieces of Sportsmanlike Driving while visiting an older cousin, who just happened to be a Driver Ed teacher along with his primary duties in the school shop. Later, I used this book as I prepared to get my learners permit and then license. Did this book and training make me a safer driver? I would like to think so, but my record suggests otherwise!

Public school Driver education flowed out of a safety movement that began immediately after WWI with the elementary school safety patrol.  In response to horrific pedestrian and highway death statistics, in the 1930s attention shifted to youthful drivers and their disproportional fatality rates. [5] Sportsmanlike Driving first appeared in 1936 as a set of five pamphlets: “The Driver;” “Driver and Pedestrian Responsibilities;” “Sound Driving Practices;” “Society’s Responsibilities;” and finally “How to Drive.” Only later, in 1947, was it collated into an American Automobile Association hardbound textbook.  Initially bearing the strong imprint of Pennsylvania State College Professor Amos Neyhart, nevertheless it was the product of a complex collaborative effort involving many educators, psychologists, engineers, and automobile industry representatives. [6] For example, the AAA’s Peter J. Stupka was credited with overall responsibility for the original draft, and Penn State psychologist Carroll D. Champlin rearranged the manuscript and “did much original work…and made practical tests of its suitability.  Champlin also “rearranged and rewrote the material so that it would be effective from the educators point of view.”[7]

In glancing through the first five pamphlets printed 1936 and then reprinted several times before WWII one has to be duly impressed with its comprehensive sweep of the topics of automotive history and technology, social responsibility and consequences, legal issues, and highway and traffic engineering. The massive detail in this and at least of the future editions would overwhelm many of today’s students.

Most significantly in the pamphlets the importance of habit formation in the process of learning how to drive. There was no doubt that William James and his 1887 short treatise entitled “Habit” was at the heart of Sportsmanlike Driving.[8]  Indeed, “Habit” was cited as suggested reading at the end of one of the chapters. James thought in terms of neuroplasticity before that concept became fashionable, asserting that ingrained information patterns could be formed by repetition. He wrote: “Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself, so we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results.”

Thus for James, education has the responsibility of instilling habits. He wrote  “The great thing then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy…. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us…. The more the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.”  James’ ideas were translated systematically and repetitively into Sportsmanlike Driving. In the section “How to Drive,” it was stated “If you have ever broken a bad habit, you know how hard it is to do. One of the basic principles in learning how to drive is to learn the right way first and to learn each step in proper order.”[9] 

Driving was also to be seen as a sport, one of fair play for all involved. It was remarked “Like every other skill and ability, the skill of the driver depends on preparation, training and practice. It is a skill of a high order. Coaching is needed if you are to win the game.  When you drive with a no accident record, you win the automobile driving game. When you have an accident, you lose the game and are heavily penalized besides.”

Simple mechanical operations were linked to habits – starting an engine, shifting gears, using the accelerator, clutch steering wheel and brakes. A conditioned nervous system linked human muscles with the machine, and “through practice, muscles working together come to act with an exact degree of force, in an exact direct, for an exact amount of time.  This is skill. “

Of course, the authors of Sportsmanlike Driving recognized that proper habits could be undermined, by both physical and mental personal factors. In the 1936 pamphlets those enemies could be everything from epilepsy, mental illness, heart trouble, syphilis, fatigue, alcohol, drugs, and worry or distractions. Further complicating matters were undesirable psychological types, from the egotist and the show-off to the emotional and the frustrated. In contrast, a top-notch driver had balance and self control, or power under control. The best drivers accepted responsibility, practiced good sportsmanship, had forethought and controlled attention, good judgment and finally humor!

The 1936 pamphlets contained considerable material on pedestrian safety from both perspective of the automobile driver and the person on foot. Just as drivers needed to be courteous and sportsmanlike to walkers, ‘the man on foot  [also] needs a change in attitude.” Thus problems were addressed associated with a once rural America now urbanizing. Consequently citizens needed to change their customs and habits on streets increasingly dominated by automobiles.

The comprehensive scope of the first iteration of Sportsmanlike Driving was also reflected in a third pamphlet entitled “Society’s Responsibilities.”  Authored by distinguished urban sociologist and Yale professor Maurice R. Davies, this major section reflected Davies expertise on the scientific study of social problems.  Davies more than an acquaintance with automobiles, as he subsequently authored an essay entitled “On Motoring in Europe in 1938-9.” Maintaining an academic rigor, Davies covered a broad spectrum of topics, beginning with a chapter on “How the Automobile Changed our Lives.” He followed with a variety of diverse discussions on traffic engineering, legislation, the observance and enforcement of traffic laws, and finally “Educating Individuals for Living in the Motor Age.” Davies saw the task of education as urgent:

Many adults who grew up in ‘horse and buggy’ days have many fixed habits which are not suited to modern conditions. For the most part, they are not in organized groups where they receive organized instruction in correct traffic actions. They are often ‘set” in their ways, and resentful of efforts to change them. Many of them think they are better drivers than they really are. Here is a difficult task for society.”[10]

To deal with this situation Davies suggested a mass education program that drew on Newspapers, Radio, films, so-called safety Sabbaths where sermons one Sunday a month would deal with safety, and finally a broad range of community efforts. It was an endeavor both ambitious and perhaps equally unattainable.

The first four Sportsmanlike Driving booklets were preparation for a capstone entitled “How to Drive.”  Finally the student was to get behind the wheel and go. Based on Amos Neyhart’s experiences that were codified as a “standard learning method,” it was as step-by-step process that began with the would-be driver getting situated, then learning instruments and controls in proper order. Only then was the student permitted to start the car, use the clutch and shift, and negotiate basic maneuvers including turns and parking. Neyhart cautioned that “Basic is the principle of doing each step correctly from the first time and never allowing a wrong way to be used. Correct habits develop most rapidly when this principle is used.”[11] The final topic is one that is rarely taught to high school students today – automotive technology and car care. In a chapter entitled “Giving the car a Square Deal,” Neyhart emphasized both fundamental technological systems and how to maintain them to the end of control and safety. In sum, his course on how to drive was holistic, as was Sportsmanlike Driving in its entirety. It was a remarkably coherent product given the number of contributors and institutions involved.

Two other pedagogical elements of the 1936 pamphlets are worth mentioning. Curiously, there was a fascination with various gadgets used to test the physical abilities of student drivers. Blueprints for these devices – a field of vision apparatus, “glarometer,” hand-grip tester, brake reaction timer – were available from the AAA to school districts for free. A commentator on the course remarked that “It is a human trait for one to have primary interest in himself…. A gadget to test your resistance to glare or muscular coordination – there was an activity, adventure, achievement!”[12] An additional exercise involved student self evaluation of both personal characteristics which could be measured and general personal characteristics – health, disability, nervous stability control of attention, reliability, courtesy habits observation, presence of mind and sportsmanship.  An AAA public relations writer exclaimed ”Almost by accident, the approach that has proven so successful in teaching driver education and training to high school classes, was discovered by the Association.  This approach involves making each student, through a self inventory process, aware of his own physical, mental and emotional characteristics that are related to driving.”[13] But would that student make an honest and accurate self-assessment?

The set of five pamphlets formed the core of first (1947) second (1948) and third (1955) editions. Successors reflected the concerns of post-war atomic culture, as the first inserted photographs in the 1947 and 1955 texts depicted the detonation of an atomic bomb and a nuclear power plant respectively.  The 1955 opened with  “A Power Age,” where it was asserted that “The important question of our age is not how to produce more poser but whether or not man’s purposes in life are worthy of the power he now can summon to make his wishes and purposes come true. Man must accept the moral responsibility of properly using the power machines he has devised.”[14] Overall, however, little in terms of content was new, although the actual sections on getting behind the wheel were moved up in the manuscript in 1947 and automatic transmissions were described in 1955. Additionally, the sociological analysis a along with pedestrian safety was moved toward the back.  Additional pages were more the result of much better photographs and graphics, as the visual component of learning was improved dramatically.

Viewing the graphics in editions published to the 1960s reveals that Sportsmanlike Driving was decidedly written for the male novice driver.  While young women were not totally excluded, they certainly were underrepresented by a large margin. 

The consensus view that driver education programs were effective in making for a nation of better drivers held sway to the mid-1960s.[15] But then this interpretation began to fall apart, as first journalists and then as educators began to argue that driver education had little or no effect on student drivers’ outcomes. On the eve of his retirement in 1964, Neyhart steadfastly maintained in that driver education had value, citing two studies in Massachusetts and Michigan that suggested the courses’ success.  But, he also backed off of previous statements made in Sportsmanlike Driving concerning students becoming expert drivers, hedging that “It really takes 100,000 miles of driving, spread over a number of years, before a driver really becomes superior.”[16] Journalist Michael Lamm countered Neyhart’s basic argument, asserting that “Is it true that teenagers who have taken high school driving classes aren’t any better at driving (and perhaps are worse), than those of have learned on their own? Some people have come to that conclusion on the basis of two studies – one in Mississippi, the other in California – which show a slightly higher rate among school-trained teenagers than among other teen-aged drivers.”[17] By the late 1960s, other critics joined in with Lamm, including academic researchers. Joe Shively and William Ascher applied statistical methods to demonstrate an overall ineffectiveness of the program, and thus Sportsmanlike Driving was radically revised and rewritten.[18]

Consequently, the 1975 7^th edition of Sportsmanlike Driving eliminated much of  the traditional material and an educational philosophy going back to the five pamphlets first published in 1936.  The details characteristic of early editions were cut to the bone – so that “the body of information, when properly interpreted and applied, maximizes student interest by presenting essential information in an accurate, clear, and interesting manner.”[19] Driving no longer centered on the formation of habits but rather

information processing, an area that has heretofore received insufficient emphasis….Emphasis is given to the concepts of developing an organized search and to separating and minimizing risks through the management of time and space. A procedure is developed for arriving at a compromise when multiple threats exist. Another outstanding feature of this approach is its stress on true high-performance driving ---not in the racing sense, but in the decision-making sense. Drivers are not presented merely as manipulators of vehicles but as rational beings who think and make complex decisions in a constantly changing traffic environment.[20]

This new way of teaching driver education focused on selective identification of potential threats, analysis, and evaluation with the aim of minimizing risk. Thus decisions are made that prepare for the unexpected, pay close attention to collision potential. Ultimately by simplifying the situation at hand, the best compromises were purportedly made. In pressing situations, then, habits become secondary to a risk adverse response.[21]

A revised curriculum could not save public high school education, however. During the late 1970s and early 1980s a well-designed and ambitious comprehensive study of driver education took place in DeKalb County, Georgia that conclusively demonstrated that “driver education was not found to be associated with reliable or significant decreases in crash involvement.” [22]   The DeKalb study has come under intense scrutiny and has held up numerous times since then. These negative studies, combined with reduced public funding, and emphasis on college preparation has led most states and localities to surrender their role of driving education to the AAA and private companies.  No longer is driving connected with citizenship the way it was in the Interwar and Cold War eras. While still a privilege, it is now as much a commodity as a right of passage.

---

[1] Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path: the Automobile and the American City (New York, 1994); Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (Cambridge, MA, 2008);Norton, “Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street,” Technology and Culture, 48 (April, 2007), 331-359.  David Blanke, Hell on Wheels: The Promise and Peril of America’s Car Culture, 1900-1940 (Lawrence, KS, 2007); Cotton Seiler, Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America (Chicago, 2008); Katherine J. Parkin, Women at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars (Philadelphia, 2017).

[2] Stève Bernardin, “’Taking the Problem to the People:’ Traffic Safety from Public Relations to Political Theory, 1937-1954,” Technology and Culture, Special Issue, 2015, p.421.

[3] For a general historical overview of the period under study, see Herbert J. Stack, A History of Driver Education in the United States (Washington, 1966).

[4] American Automobile Association, Sportsmanlike River Series: The Driver Washington, DC, 1936); Other pamphlets were entitled Driver and Pedestrian Responsibilities; Sound Driving Practices; Society’s Responsibilities; How to Drive.  The “official” collated first edition was published in 1947. Third, revised edition, 1955. 7^th edition, 1975.

[5] On the 1930s background to the driver education movement, see ”To Reduce Traffic Casualties: National Safety Council Presents ‘Balanced Program,’” NYT, May 22, 1832, p. XX5; “Safety Urged on Youth: Chrysler Official Asks Early Education in Driving, NYT, November 7, 1935, P.12; James Waring, “Higher Education for Drivers,” Readers’ Digest, 28 (May 1936), 51-3; Albert W. Whitney, Three E’s in Auto Safety,” NYT, October 31, 1937, p. 197; Reginald Cleveland, “At the Wheel,” NYT, November 21, 1937, p.196; “For Safe Drivers,” NYT, June 19, 1938, p.60; Whitney, “Safety Education Vital: Training of Youth to Drive Cars Properly,”, NYT, November 13, 1938, p.204;Whitney, “Safety Education Gains,” NYT, October 15, 1939, p.171

[6] On Neyhart, see “Amos Neyhart, 91; Originated Courses in Driver Education,” New York Times, July 13,1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/13/obituaries/amos-neyhart-91-originated-courses-in-driver-education.html; John Peatman, “Drivers Education – Putting It in Gear,” Spring, 2011, The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, pabook2.libraries.psu.edu.

[7] “The Driver,” Introduction, n.p., 1936.

[8] On William James, habits and learning, see brainpickings.org, accessed January 18, 2018. “The Driver,” 1936, pp.11-20.

[9] “How to Drive,” 1938, Introduction.

[10] “Society’s Responsibilities,” 1937, p.95.

[11] “How to Drive,” Introduction.

[12] Forest R. Noffsinger,”The American Automobile Association and Safety Education,” The Phi Delta Kappan, 21 (January 1939),  p.170.

[13] Noffsinger, p.170.

[14] Sportsmanlike Driving, 1955 edition, p.3.

[15] For example, see Herbert J. Stack, “The Case for Driver Education in the High School,” The High School Journal, 30 (November-December, 1947), 253-4; “Urge all Students Be Taught How to Drive,” The Science News-Letter, 59( June 23, 1951), 386; Ralph C. Preston and Estoy T. Reddin, “Status of the Curriculum,” Review of Educational Research, 27 (June, 1957), 250-61; Arthur Bestor, “Social Studies and Citizenship: The Responsibilities of the Public Schools,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 104(December 15, 1960), 549-557.;Paul W. Kearney, “Driver Education Pays Off,” Parents Magazine and Better Homemaking, 39 (October, 1964), 64,94,96.

[16] Amos E. Neyhart, “The Need for Driver Education,” Motor Trend, Novermber 1964, p.102.

[17] Michael Lamm, “Driver Education: Are We Getting Our Money’s Worth?” 48-9.

[18] See “Driver Education in Schools: How Good? Changing Times, (October, 1967), 43-7’ “What Driver Education Teaches You,” American Home, 70 (December, 1967), 74-5; Alice Lake, “Does Driver Education Save Lives,” McCall’s, November, 1969), 153-7; Joe Shively and William Asher, Characteristics of Students Who Could Not Take and Schools Which Did Not Offer Driver Training,” The Journal of Educational; Research, 64 (December, 1970), 185-189.

[19] American Automobile Association, Sportsmanlike Driving (New York, 1975), p. T 1.

[20] Ibid., T 1.

[21] 7^th edition, pp. 92-105.

[22] See Daniel R. Mayhew, Herbert Simpson, Allan F. Williams and Susan A. Ferguson, “Effectiveness and Role of Driver Education and Training in a Graduated licensing System,” Journal of Public Health Policy, 19, no. 1 (1998), p.53.