"Advanced" driver training for teens...worth it?

A poster on the forums on edmunds.com recently posed the following questions:

[I] drove back from MA with a couple from Europe the other day - (Germany and Holland). Trip was about 250 miles, and we got to talking about driving.

Their perception was that in the US driving is more haphazard... no lane discipline, erratic speeds etc, when compared to what they are used to in Europe.

Soooo, I'd like to ask about others' perceptions, and I hope we can do it without the whole "It's my right to drive as fast/slow/in between as I want in whichever lane I want" trip.

Do you feel that we are inherently safer on the roads, are you comfortable with your own skill, do you feel that driver training does anything for our young people.... those kinda questions.

As an example, Mr. 16 just got his driver's license, and I am not happy. To put it bluntly, the kid can't drive! He had driver's ed. at school, I paid for a few sessions with a driving school, and I did a lot of seat time with him, along with conversations about driving theory... however, the hand/eye coordination is not there yet, and I am concerned.

I plan taking him to a real driving school, something like Barber, Bondurant, or the equivalent, and (as much as it will increase my stress level in the short term, I'll be teaching him to drive a stick.

What other thoughts are out there?

I responded with the following:

My advice is to forget the "advanced" driving schools (I know this is heresy to some). I attended AutoWeek's Teen Driving Safety Summit in late August in the Detroit suburbs. In connection with Dodge and the Richard Petty Driving Experience, they provided an afternoon's worth of hands-on instruction in skid control, hard braking, and shoulder recovery for the attendees.

It was interesting to be able to experience skids and learn how to correct them (although I pretty much knew what to do from when we had something called "snow" back in the old days).

What amazed me was how hard it was to get the cars to skid in the first place, and this was on pavement liberally sprayed with soapy water. This confirms why in almost 40 years of driving, I've never skidded on dry or even wet pavement except briefly in a straight line for making hard stops. And I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've had to swerve sharply into another lane or partway off the road.

Rather, it's by learning to pay attention to your surroundings, drive at a prudent speed for conditions, anticipate what other drivers may or may not do, and act accordingly. If you drive in this manner, chances are you won't have to make an emergency maneuver in the first place other than a little hard braking.

As a parent, you're in the ideal position to give your son as much experience behind the wheel with you at his side. It's only through repetition that the above skills will be learned, and one day's worth of "advanced driving school" won't do the trick.

Now it wouldn't hurt to show him how to handle skids, but this should be icing on the cake, and you'll have to wait until there's snow or ice on the ground to do it safely at low speeds in a large empty parking lot (assuming security guards won't shoo you away).

If only, if only...

Enthusiasts bewail the dearth of effective driver education. Send everyone to those "advanced" driving schools, they say, where the techniques of skid control, evasive maneuvering, and finding the best line through a curve will make everyone a true expert on the highways.

Unfortunately, as much as I personally would very much like to take such a course, mandating such training is highly overrated, IMO. No one has yet devised a proven method to keep drivers from crashing. I know that Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia has recently released a study saying that their training "works" in reducing crash rates. As much as I believe the school does its best at training, I remain skeptical of their expertise in conducting a valid scientific study, a possible conflict of interest notwithstanding.

As for how drivers really behave, just look in the mirror. Many of you boast in your articles, blogs, chat rooms, and letters to the editor of driving at insane speeds, "stretching it" when traffic lights turn yellow, "brake checking," and purposely damaging others' cars (keying). You know better of course, but you do it anyway.

It's attitude more than knowledge that counts, IMO. Sure there are some truly clueless or incompetent drivers out there, but my guess is their numbers are small in comparison to those whose number one priority is ME ME ME, so get out of my way or let me alone in the left lane while I yak on my cell phone!

So...we should put our bucks where they would do the most good. Every year, over 16 million new vehicles are sold in the US. Why not continue to equip them with the latest safety features that are shown to be effective, such as electronic stability control?

As far as enforcement, we can't afford to have more police on the roads, so why not use red-light cameras and speed cameras? They've been shown to be effective as well. And before you scream "Big Brother," why is it okay to be videotaped when you're in a bank, Wal-Mart, or 7-Eleven but not on a public street? (And if you obey the law on the street, you won't be videotaped, unlike the private businesses.) No one should expect a right to privacy when you're in plain view with a means of identification (your license plate) every time you venture out of your driveway in your car.