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.

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[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.