What did you or your kids learn in drivers ed?

[Flybye]

I truthfully can't remember learning much about cyclist in drivers ed. I remember learning about pedestrians but not cyclists.
What are they teaching your kids that are driver's ed age right now?
I would like to see them have to do a drive with a cycling club involved somewhere along the drive to cement the idea that cyclists have the same rights as other vehicles.
It seems like it would clear up a lot of misconceptions that drivers have about where cyclists belong (like on the sidewalk).
I have had this thought many times while I am out riding and getting honked at. I like to pretend the honking is because I look hot in my spandex but I am pretty sure that it is because I am ticking someone off! Darn!

[KnottedYet]

I was taught bikes are vehicles, just slow ones. Mind you, I grew up where folks would ride horses along the road or drive slow farm equipment; so most of us grasped the concept that bikes fell into the same "watch out for it" category.

Now the town I grew up in is 3x it's original size, so I don't know if the town kids still encounter horses and equipment... probably not.

[Zen]

They don't get driver's ed. in school anymore.
Not here, anyway.

I learned that a Ford LTD is one bigass car.

[sgtiger]

The Oregon driver's manual actually has a chapter about cycling. It not only addresses what are expected from cyclist but also how drivers should regard cyclists on the road. I'm sure there are many drivers who skip this section thinking it doesn't pertain to them, but at least it's there.

When we moved to Washington, I saw many riders on the sidewalk(not allowed in Oregon unless you're a kid) and was curious if the cycling laws differed here. So when I went to get my Washington driver's license, I checked out this state's manual. There was only one or two measely paragraphs(Not easy to find! I had to look through three or four times to find it. ) on cycling and it didn't even cover very well how cars and bicycles should interact. I don't have it in front of me, but I believe it said that if a bicycle is on the road, treat it like a vehicle. If it's on the sidewalk then treat it like a pedestrian. But that cyclists needed to stay as safely to the right as possible, which IMO most vehicle operators just read it as bicycles should stay to the right out of their way.

As cyclists, most of us try to gather information about laws that pertain to us, but what incentive do drivers really have?

[OakLeaf]

They don't get driver's ed. in school anymore.
Not here, anyway.

I learned that a Ford LTD is one bigass car.

+1, and same with a '71 Chevy Impala.

On the bicycling front, I learned that I couldn't drive with a shoulder sprained from a bike wreck

I assume that the drivers' ed curriculum varies by company - I have no kids and no reason to know. But it's an idea, anyway: I wonder if LAB has worked with AAA on their curriculum, for instance. Anybody here involved in a national bicyclists' organization?

Ohio just did a major revision to their traffic laws to standardize the laws regarding bicycles. I wonder how many states haven't even done that yet?

[Tuckervill]

Arkansas law for bikes says they have the same rights and responsibilities as a car, and that we have a 3-feet passing law. My son recently took the driver's test and read half the book (passed the test anyway). There is a section about bikes and other "slow moving vehicles" that just addresses how you safely pass them (the 3-feet law is new, so I don't believe it was in our copy of the book). I think it assumes that everyone knows that bikes can be on the road, so it doesn't question whether bikes should actually be on the road. Just sort of lumps them in with tractors, if I recall.

My son said there were no questions on the test about bikes or slow moving vehicles, but there were only 25 questions. There was a LOT left off.

Karen

[Melalvai]

I heard that Kansas (where I grew up) just added a question about bikes to their driver's test, after 2 years of lobbying. It's nice when Ks does something I can be proud of instead of for example banning evolution. I guess there was an article about it in Bicycle magazine (the driver's test, not evolution).

[Xrayted]

I finally went into the DMV last week to take my computer test to earn my OR state license. (Moved here from PA this year.) They actually have an entire book, besides the one for autos, for bikers and what the rules are. Full diagrams for the cyclist and what they can and should be doing for many situations. From using the crosswalks to make a turn at a busy intersection to taking the entire lane. It's really comprehensive. We have it here at home and I've looked through it a couple of times now. Very cool. I wish all states did something like that. As for in the regular manual, they do a great job of explaining the laws but I'm sure most skip over that part. I did however have a bike question on my driver's test. It was about sharing the road as a cyclist takes the lane and what is correct. I wonder how many future drivers miss that one...

[Mr. Bloom]

They don't get driver's ed. in school anymore.
Not here, anyway.

I learned that a Ford LTD is one bigass car.

I think they do it here...but we paid for SilverDaughter to attend a special driving school that we well worth it.

BUT, you've really provoked me to think about the importance of stressing that the driving instructors address the issue of cyclists....This is "Share the Road" at a new level!

[Flybye]

What keeps spinning around in my brain as I get honked at while I am riding my bike is not so much that people are #@$%^& but that they must not know that it is fine for me to be riding where I am -that legally I am doing what I should be doing.

When I first started riding somewhat seriously about two years ago, I felt more comfortable riding on the left side of the road . My reasoning told me that I would rather see a car coming from the front so that I could react and move if need be rather than to be hit from behind. I also rode on the sidewalk whenever I could. It wasn't that I was some kind of dumb @ss either, it is just that I had no idea that as a cyclist I belonged on the road. I learned a lot from other cyclists and have changed my wayward ways.

Now, if I didn't know the rules of the road as a cyclist, I can tell you for sure that I had no idea as a driver that cyclists were to ride on the road - I missed out on some education somewhere.

I really get ticked off when people assume that we should be just be born knowing everything. That's a soap box for another thread entirely, though.

If people are driving by honking at me to get out of the road, they might have missed something somewhere as well. I guess the most logical place that occurs to me is driver's training.

If it is the fault of poor teaching either in the schools driver's training or in a private instruction training, then, as cyclists, THAT is where we need to start focusing our energy. We need to be sending groups to ride in coordination with driver's training instructors so that all the kids who pass the training not only know how to parallel park because they have done it before, but also know how to drive around cyclists because they have done that before too.

I know it isn't a cure all - but it would have been a huge benefit to me both as a cyclist and as a driver.

Whatdya think?

[Running Mommy]

I learned that a Ford LTD is one bigass car.

HA! That made me chuckle!

I think my friend Staci had the worlds largest Buick! It was MASSIVE, and she was a petite little thing.
I'm sure it's no coincidence that her father was a big wig at a major Insurer in CA. And she was a HORRIBLE driver.

We used to sing the words from a talking heads song "do you ever find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile" and just crack up...

--sidebar-- YES, I was a child of the 80's! Or worse yet- a TEENAGER of the 80's...
Explains my Jon Bon Jovi fetish now doesn't it!!

[Melalvai]

We need to be sending groups to ride in coordination with driver's training instructors...

That's a super idea. I'd volunteer. At least I'd know if a trainee driver hit me s/he would have consequences--hitting a cyclist is surely an automatic fail on the driving test!

[aicabsolut]

All I remember about bikes and driver's ed is that it's possible to get a BUI.

[Triskeliongirl]

I was shocked to find out we paid good money for the instructor to tell our son "I know they are a pain in the ***, but bicycles are legal vehicles in the state of texas."

[Aggie_Ama]

Trisk- Why am I not surprised?

I took Drivers Ed at a private Austin based school, pre-Lance. I remember a brief discussion about bicycles more in the context of children though. It was lumped in with the slow moving vehicles like horses and tractors (which were common in the county I lived in at the time).

Hehe- I chuckle at the big cars comments. My parents gave me my Nanny's 1986 Cutlass Supreme for my 16th birthday. It was a tank!! I still wonder why I can't park when I had practice with that behemouth.