Instruments recorded their performance, and issued a printout assessing their abilities. Students sat in this boxy simulator, watched an instructional film projected in front of them, and attempted to move the wheel, pedals and gear shift as necessary. In the early '50s, only about one percent of them were getting on-road instruction to solve the problem, insurance company Aetna invented the Aetna Drivotrainer which was introduced in Brooklyn in 1953. Neyhart's instruction used his own 1929 Graham-Paige (that's a car) for demonstration and test driving, but getting kids on the road one at a time was inefficient given the number of students. Neyhart began teaching driver's ed at State College High School in the mid-1930s, and authored the first textbook, The Safe Operation of an Automobile, in 1934. Following an incdent in which his parked car was hit by a drunk driver, Neyhart began advocating for safety, and landed on the revolutionary idea that instilling safe driving habits in kids would make them better drivers for life, and thus decrease accidents on the road. Why pay to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the theater when they're showing Death on the Highway at school for free?ĭriver's education, the concept, was the brainchild of Amos Neyhart, a teacher of industrial safety at Penn State University. Over time, these films grew increasingly intense in their attempts to scare safe driving habits into young drivers. So-called "scare films" included stern warnings, tales of lives ruined by carelessness, scenes of twisted wreckage, even graphic bloody imagery from real crashes - nothing was out of bounds in the quest to keep teenagers from injury or death on the road. There was also driver safety, and back in the day, the "safety" component was all about scaring the bejeezus out of the kids. But mastering the mechanics of steering, shifting and braking wasn't the only reason teens were taking driver's ed. The simulators were contraptions that were supposed to approximate driving conditions, and many vintage simulators are still in use today. Though it has a longer history, driver's education since the '50s has two components nobody can forget: driving simulators and scare films.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |