Classes Driven by Need or Tradition?

* I really appreciated your article (April 2) regarding driver education and the problem that is facing all drivers in California. I have been teaching driver education in Orange County since 1961, and I feel ashamed of what the state of California has done in considering the safety of drivers on our California highways. Gov. Deukmejian can be blamed for the downfall of some outstanding programs in California, and now the present governor has simply fallen in line with the “I don’t care” attitude concerning California’s thousands of teen drivers.

The money is there and years ago the public stated that a portion of that money must be used to train young drivers. The penalty-assessment fund generates about $40 million a year in California and only about $25 million of that was being used to see that our state’s teens were professionally and properly trained while in high school.

What is needed is someone to push for a ballot measure that will give the people of California a chance to express their opinion. The public must be aware that it is not “tax” money that is being spent on driver training, but rather penalty assessment money. I think that the public would vote for driver training to be returned to the schools. Public support is needed. The courts have failed to consider our need to train our teen-agers.

RON SCHWANDT

Chairman, Driver Education Department

Los Alamitos High School

* I read with interest your article “Teen Driver Education Is Taking a New Course” (April 2). The article was rather straightforward and accurate as far as it went. However, I believe you did your readers a disservice by virtue of what you omitted from the story. The bottom line is that abundant empirical evidence exists to show that high school driver education bears absolutely no relationship to the subsequent violation and accident record of those who complete the course versus those who do not take driver education.

This issue was brought to a head by my research carried out at the University of California. As you might guess, this work stimulated a great deal of public response, especially from the high school driver education teachers. However, subsequent research by a number of groups, including the California DMV, USC, and universities in Great Britain and Scandinavia produced identical results. The USC study, financed by the state Assembly, also showed that when compared with driver education offered by private driving schools, the two groups produced identical results--namely that both groups did no better than a non-trained group. However, the same study showed that the private school produced these non-results at a cheaper price!

There are no financial, academic, or reasons of safety that justify the support of high school driver education. The efforts of driver education teachers to force the state to offer these courses is a blatant gesture of self-interest, in violation of abundant scientific evidence, and a waste of public monies.

FREDERICK L. MCGUIRE

Professor emeritus of medical psychology

UC Irvine