Remember the excitement of taking driver’s education in high school? For most teenagers, this class is an important rite of passage and a major hurdle to gaining the privilege of driving that is so coveted in our society.
Today, there is a movement to redefine driver’s ed. Instead of just teaching 15-year-olds how to drive, the idea is to teach them how to get around. Sure, driving is part of it, but there’s more: biking, walking and transit.
This is what students learn from mobility education:
Alternatives to Driving
Simply teaching students about how others get around will make them feel more comfortable exploring those options themselves.
A Skill-Set to Use Other Modes
Mobility education includes bike skills training, which means safer cyclists and more of them. It could also include lessons on how to use a bus tracker, find a transit stop, read a transit map, signal a right turn on a bike, cross a street correctly and take a bike on transit.
Perspective Education
Cyclists tend to be careful when they drive a car past a fellow two-wheeler. And everyone is a pedestrian at some point. Therefore, giving students the opportunity to experience the road from different vantage points will make them more considerate of bicyclists and pedestrians.
The idea behind mobility education is to take advantage of the captive audience in driver’s education classes in order to reach teens at the time the car keys are being handed over to them. The short-term goal is to develop a pilot project that will most likely revise the curriculum with supplemental materials – the program would involve 12 additional hours of broad-based mobility education. The ultimate goal, however, is to redesign driver’s ed into a holistic transportation education course that will produce well-rounded students who are well-versed in various forms of mobility.
Active Trans has pitched this idea at national, state and local levels. They have presented it to Ray LaHood, secretary of the US Department of Transportation, and he was very interested. They’ve also applied for state money that would fund a pilot program. The Chicago Department of Transportation won federal money to pilot a Safe Routes to High School program that may include a mobility education component.
This idea is already taking hold at Curie Metropolitan School. Members of one class have taken on a role of safety advocates to educate their peers and community on safe driving. Active Trans’ Lina Hoffman visits this class as part of the Drive With Care program, which aims to stigmatize reckless driving the way health and safety advocates have stigmatized drunk driving and cigarette smoking.
Mobility education could change the way we teach teens how to get around. It would lead to safer – and fewer – drivers.
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