Driving Lessons

Like a lot of people who grew up in New York, I found myself turning 40 without a driver's license. So for the last six weeks I've been taking Saturday morning classes with ten other sleepy students at a hole-in-the-wall driving school where we get to sit in simulators. Each simulator has a full dashboard complete with steering wheel, gear-switcher, accelerator and brake. As we watch the film at the front of the room, we signal and change lanes, stop at intersections, and remember IPDE (Identify, Predict, Decide, and Execute) in every situation we encounter on the road. We've driven through the driving snow and sheets of rain, we've driven down peaceful yet danger-ridden suburban California streets where kids on skateboards lurk in the shadows, ready to dart out at any time. We even had a session with distracting backseat drivers (fellow carpoolers) who chatted nonsense and then gave faulty, conflicting directions.

These films are from 1980. I can imagine them at the Museum of Modern Art as part of a performance piece. The cars are as long and flat and silver as sharks. The instructors are upbeat but authoritative, dead serious about safe driving. They wear suits in neutral tones with wide lapels. The voiceover praises us for breaking quickly and avoiding an accident. "Remember IPDE!" we are told, those four letters forming the skeleton key to becoming a good driver.

Every twenty minutes or so, our teacher pauses the film and walks up to the front of the classroom holding a venti cup of tea and gives us the straight dope. Don't sleep and drive. Stay two seconds behind the car in front of you. Did you see that woman dashing across the street? Another thing, always assume the other driver doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

I've had twelve hours of this, and now I've graduated to outside lessons. We'll see how it goes on Saturday morning in a real car in NYC traffic.

We had an amusing time during the mandatory five-hour talk given by a man who appeared completely loony. In his introduction, he told us he also taught firearms. Next came several crazy hours of a car wreck of a monologue. He was the tough-love sergeant you see in war movies. First on his agenda was a diatribe against "aggressive women drivers," with the assertion that if Hilary Clinton had been elected, the number of traffic accidents would have gone up. "I'm a fish in water," he commented at one point. "I keep on swimming."

The class concluded with a couple of old, snowy video tapes. The first one diagrammed how Princess Diana would have lived if she had worn a seatbelt. The next one addressed falling asleep at the wheel. Weeping parents help up photos of their dead children as they recounted the day Billy was mowed down by a sleep-deprived driver. Already apprehensive about driving, this video scared me silly. I only hope I can learn my lesson and someday steer an automobile with plenty of caution and Red Bull.