Things They Teach in Drivers Ed These Days
by Katie Addleman
When I was 16 I went to the Ministry of Transportation office in downtown Toronto to get my driving permit. At the front of the line I was asked for ID, but I didn’t have any, so I couldn’t take the test. I didn’t go back for 12 years.
During that time I enjoyed a kind of prolonged childhood in which I was never asked to pick people up from the airport, take pregnant siblings to IKEA, or stay awake or sober. Sadly, it eventually became clear that exempting myself from these adult chores made me a selfish (but quirky!) asshole. It was time I contributed. So I studied the Driver’s Handbook, passed my written test, and enrolled at Easy Driving School. Here are a few things I learned.
1. Your car is a murder weapon.
The whole first class was dedicated to showcasing the carnage carnival that is the modern highway/school zone/icy patch of residential street. Police cruiser stopped at the side of the highway? Careful, you could kill that cop! Didn’t check around your car before pulling out of your parking spot? There was a small child beneath! No need to signal because there’s no one behind you? Wrong — there is always someone behind you, and now you’re both dead! Our instructor Eduardo didn’t mean to scare us, but did we know how many people were killed in Ontario in 2007 as a result of motor vehicle collisions? I won’t even tell you, because if I did you’d never come snowmobiling with me in Moose Factory again. Suffice to say it was a SHITLOAD.
2. You can’t rely on your boyfriend to stay sober enough to drive you safely home from the bush party.
This was also covered in the first class. I had never heard of a bush party before, but learned in the educational video Braking Point that they take place in remote areas and are only fun if you’re hammered. If you go to one, be your own designated driver! Otherwise you’ll be forced to make the same tough decision Karen did: call your dad, who will be so mad because it’s late and now he has to go pick you up in the bush, or spend the night in your boyfriend’s car in the ditch it’s stuck in because your boyfriend got trashed after promising not to and gave the keys to his trashed friend, who then crashed it on his way to buy cigarettes for everyone.
3. Right of way is an illusion.
This is a huge one. Eduardo could not stress this enough. “Right of way must be given,” he’d hiss, his fists shaking. “Given!” What he meant was that right of way does not actually exist. Even if it’s technically yours, you’re still at fault for driving into the fucker who doesn’t honor it. Also, trains always have right of way.
4. Every collision is your fault.
At the heart of every driving school lesson is one terrible truth: no matter what crazy maneuvers people pull, no matter how few of them follow the rules or remember the Eduardos in their past, if you get hit it’s your fault, not theirs. The Ministry-approved overheads, videos, and interactive exercises all followed the same disturbing blame-the-victim reasoning: Sure, Car A was tailgating, but Car B should’ve noticed and changed lanes to escape him! It’s true that Van A didn’t signal his left turn, but Car B should have seen that his wheels were angled left and anticipated it! On the road, utopian justice prevails — good befalls the good, while the bad shall suffer. Unfortunately, everyone is pretty bad.
Our class learned a lot from Eduardo and his VHS library — not just about driving, but about peer pressure, responsibility, and fun things to do during videos about brake fluid. Every Sunday at 10 a.m., when I slid into my undersized chair-desk and noted again that my peers were adolescents in shitty moods and one recent immigrant from Portugal, I reflected that just a few weeks earlier I might have driven at normal speeds after a light drizzle (when the road is, incredibly, at its slipperiest!), worn sunglasses to cut down on nighttime highbeam glare (just look away — it’s safer), or bought a car without an “anti-lock braking system.” If I’d had my license. Which, if I can learn to operate Eduardo’s Civic with half the facility of the 16-year-old asleep on her desk behind me, I someday swear I will.
Katie Addleman works for PEN Canada. She also writes about books, movies, and terrible things governments do. She’s now had four in-car lessons and is starting to hate bicycles.