Right Turn: The Coastal Academy for Driver Education Training and Safety

By Michael Wayne Templeton

Right Turn Provides
The latest advances in driver education policies, procedures and driving techniques for drivers of all ages and vocations

How technology has changed driver education since you were trained to drive

How to determine whether your teens high school driver education program or a private driving school is the right choice for you to make for your teen

How to partner with the driver education program of your choice to minimize risk; not only for your teen but other drivers on the road

How to become a safer driver and a better role model for your children as they watch you drive and learn from your behaviors


During your teens driver education, you will also be armed with the following knowledge


Objectively asses the progress of your teen through each critical stage of development

Apply a performance standard developed by professional instructors

Recognize when your teen is ready for more advanced driving and when he/she is not

Minimize risk when your teen is in the drivers seat and you are in the passenger seat

Bonus Chapters

College Students verses The Cyclops
The Super Seniors
21st Century Driver Education and Training

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514436059

Book preview

RIGHT TURN

The Coastal Academy for Driver Education Training and Safety

MICHAEL WAYNE TEMPLETON

Copyright © 2016 by Michael Wayne Templeton.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015920885

ISBN:   Hardcover       978-1-5144-3607-3

             Softcover         978-1-5144-3606-6

             eBook              978-1-5144-3605-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/23/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Background

Introduction to CADETS and Right Turn

1 How to Select a Driver Education Program for Your Teen

2 How to Develop Your Knowledge and Skill

3 Alternate Driver Education Philosophies, Procedures, and Techniques

4 The Classroom

5 Basic Driving Skills

6 Perpendicular, Angle, and Parallel Parking Behind-the-Wheel Grid No. 2

7 The Advanced Driving Grid for Beginning Drivers

8 Full Performance Driving and Minimizing Risk

9 Aggressive Driving and Road Rage

10 Young Adults versus The Cyclops

11 The Super Seniors

12 Driver Education for the Twenty-First Century

APPENDICES

1 Basic Driving Skills Grid No. 1

2 Intermediate Driving Skills Grid No. 2

3 Advanced Driving Skills Grid No. 3

4 The Coastal Academy for Driver Education, Training, and Safety (CADETS) Full Performance Grid

5 Parallel Parking, So Easy Even a Caveman Can Do It!

6 The Super Senior Performance Grid

7 Acknowledgments and Accolades

PREFACE

I knew that Albert Francis* was going to be a special challenge. The office manager of the driver education company I was employed in had called me and asked for a special favor again. He told me another driving instructor had conducted a first lesson with Albert and had pronounced him to be untrainable.

After I had conducted my first driving lesson with Albert, I very nearly agreed with my coworker. During that lesson, Albert had used his own unique, walking-the-wheel technique to turn the car around corners not very successfully. I also noted that while his hands were on the wheel, he fidgeted with his fingers constantly while attempting to drive … again, not very successfully. He also seemed to be extraordinarily preoccupied with other matters going on in his young brain other than the immediate task at hand, which was driving a three-thousand-plus-pound automobile.

During that lesson, what did strike me was that Albert was trying desperately to please me. He just didn’t have a clue how to do so. During our entire first lesson (his actual second overall lesson), we never left the parking lot. During that two-hour period, we worked and worked on his steering, turning, and consistency of the application of foot pressure on the gas and brake pedals. It isn’t completely uncommon that beginning drivers require additional time, training, and care in parking lots. However, it also was apparent to me that Albert had a learning disability.

During Albert’s third lesson, I decided to determine the level of Albert’s learning disability by training him to Parallel Park. Up to this point, my employer had not informed me that Albert suffered from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). His mother had not informed me of this fact either. If they had informed me, I’m not sure I could have taken a different approach for Albert’s behind-the-wheel training other than the one I chose, but I certainly would have put it into action sooner.

At the start of the lesson, I set up our parallel parking cones and poles. As always, I drove around the parking lot and demonstrated the parking procedure as I had been trained by my employer. Albert got behind the wheel and pulled up near the spot I had indicated.

As he backed, Albert (like many teens, even those without learning disabilities) became confused and turned the wheel in the opposite direction he should have. Albert didn’t just bump the front left pole—he ran completely over it!

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The second time we prepared to parallel park, I patiently explained which way to turn the wheel as we approached the critical spot, and I helped him turn the wheel as we backed in. As we backed toward the back poles, I asked him to stop the car within a foot of the poles. After all, they represent the bumper of a car. Albert misjudged the distance badly and completely ran over one of the back poles. After I had him pull forward, I set the poles up again and asked him to pull out of the parallel parking space. On the way out, he clipped the left front pole again and then somehow managed to run over it with the right rear tire, scoring a rare trifecta during his first parallel parking lesson!

I supposed that if someone from America’s Funniest Home Videos had been recording this lesson, they would have scored big with it. However, I looked over at Albert, and I can state with absolute certainty that it wasn’t funny to him. His face reflected that his dreams of successfully learning to drive a car were beginning to evaporate. Since I was his second driving instructor, one given the special assignment to train him, he knew that if I gave up on him, his parents just might give up on him too. At the end of the lesson, I asked to speak with his mother privately out of earshot of Albert.

We left the parking lot and went into the hall of a shopping mall where we had agreed to meet, and she sat down on a bench facing me. Marshalling all the diplomacy that I could muster, I explained to his mother what had happened. His mother’s eyes welled up. I could tell she was about ready to lose it. She looked up toward the ceiling in exasperation and said Oh Albert and dropped her head down toward her knees. She had obviously heard this sort of thing about her son before from other sources. Now she was faced with the prospect that her son might never learn to drive a car safely, let alone that little matter of passing a state driving test. This was a public place, as much as she wanted to break into tears; she somehow kept her composure and looked up at me.

She asked me, Are you going to give up on him?

I looked at her, swallowed hard, and said, No, I’m not going to give up on him. If you will partner with me, I think we can teach Albert to drive, but I need your help. First, we need to talk about the medication he is or isn’t taking, when he takes it, and how it affects him. Then I need to coach you on how to watch Albert as he is learning and how to reinforce our techniques.

I was already aware that, like many families today, Albert was in a broken home. Albert’s father was not going to be a partner in this process. She said, I’ll do whatever it takes as long as you don’t give up.

The graduated licensing program in the state where I reside and teach is not like the graduated licensing program in many states. I will discuss just which states have graduated licensing programs later. However, in several states, a fifteen-year-old can obtain a permit, receive state certified driver education, and obtain a provisional driver’s license with several restrictions. Our state driver education program requires a minimum of eight hours of classroom instruction, six hours behind the wheel with a state certified driving instructor, and at least forty hours of supervised driving with a parent or legal guardian. Some parents need to be reminded of that last part.

Later in the book, I will expand further on our state requirements and the requirements of your state, but let’s get back to the training of Albert Francis. Between Albert’s third and fourth two-hour lesson—yes, we had already exceeded the six-hour minimum without departing the parking lot—I developed a new parallel parking procedure for Albert. It really wasn’t all that much different than the old S procedure that I had learned in high school decades earlier, still being used religiously by the driver education company that employed me now.

During the early minutes of lesson no. 4 with Albert, I demonstrated my new procedure, just as I had practiced it and written out the steps. Albert watched me and processed the baby steps in the order I had provided them. Then he got behind the wheel, and I coached him through each and every independent step.

After an additional coaching sequence, I said, "Now do it on your own, Albert, and tell me each step you are going to execute before you do it." Yes, Albert successfully parallel parked that day, and he didn’t touch a cone!

Of course, parallel parking is just one of many requirements for learning to drive a car. Some parents and almost all students believe that parallel parking should no longer be included in DMV driving exams.

As a professional driving instructor, I conclude otherwise. Parallel parking requires judgment, timing, execution, and a degree of precision which reveals more about the capabilities of a driver than many parents and students realize.

Now that Albert had conquered parallel parking, it was time to teach him how to drive. The process of teaching teens to drive will be covered in detail in this book. Albert required twice as many lessons as an average student.

During his final lesson, we drove on four of the busiest highways in our county. We also entered the expressway, changed lane several times, and exited safely. As we drove the last five miles of our fifty-mile drive that day, I still wasn’t entirely convinced that Albert was ready to obtain his driver license and drive safely on the road.

As we rounded the final corner, we approached the mall rendezvous meeting spot previously arranged with his mother, and then it happened.

A reckless driver pulled right out in front of Albert from our right, violated our space cushion, and threatened immediate collision. I lifted my foot to hit the brake on my side of the car, but before I could do so, Albert had already slowed, expertly shifted lanes early to avoid collision, and prepared to make a safe left turn into the mall.

Unlike previous episodes, this time he was cool, calm, confident, and in charge of his vehicle. He even signaled that he was turning left after danger had passed, and he cleared oncoming vehicles properly. When I met his mother, I signed his training certificate and his provisional driver’s license application. I informed her of the episode that had transpired just a few moments before. I told her how proud I was of Albert in the way he had handled it. That critical moment was the moment, more than any other that convinced me that he was ready.

People ask me all the time why I got into the driver education business. The first reason was the look on Albert’s face. The second reason was the look on his mother’s face.

*All personal names referenced in this book are fabricated in order to protect the privacy of the innocent and the not-so-innocent. However, we assure readers that each and every anecdote in this book is factual.

FOREWORD

In my opinion, Right Turn is a gold standard for written text in the field of driver education. It looks and reads like a fine textbook with first-rate illustrations, diagrams, photos, and graphics. While many books have been developed about driver education, driver training, or both, virtually none of them include specific guidance about how to train another instructor, how to improve the driving of an adult, or how to train a student driver in a training car. This clearly was and is not the intent of most driver education and training textbooks. This is where my friend, fellow driving instructor professional, and now author, excels.

This book provides extensive details, performance grids, training aids, and instructional guidance revolving around the science of teaching driver education and training, not only for parents and grandparents but also for any professional or private driver education instructor as well as those who are charged with oversight of them. This makes this book unique among all current driver education books and especially those that have preceded it. It is essentially a train-the-trainer type textbook for professional educators and for parents who wish to gain that level of driver education knowledge.

Michael Wayne Templeton may be unique as a pro-driving instructor. He has had the opportunity to attend several different pro-driving academies and compare their policies, procedures, and teaching practices. He also has trained several professional driving instructors.

I was a corporal of the Surfside Beach Police Department when I attended Mike’s Coastal Academy for Driver Education, Training and Safety’s 40 forty-hour course. Later I became the lead driving instructor for the Affordable Driving Academy and lead driving instructor for recruits of the Surfside Beach Police Department where I eventually became chief of police.

During the past several years, I have also researched many driver education books textbooks and/or training aids such as those referenced above. Some of these references offer conflicting viewpoints or alternative driver education instruction philosophies.

By definition, the requirements for teaching high speed pursuit law enforcement driving and the requirements for teaching beginning drivers to drive for the first time are different. However, if another current or former pro-driving instructor has compared differing teaching philosophies in an attempt to improve driver education, I have not yet read a comprehensive comparison of these differing driver education training/teaching philosophies published within the same textbook. Under normal circumstance, which is 99 percent of the time, safe driving practices remain safe driving practices and the rules of the road remain the rules of the road.

A current deficiency within the field of driver education that professional instructors are faced with every day is that few parents are even aware of their own role in the driver education process. For example, many parents are not aware that if their child attends professional driver education training, in order for driver education/training to be effective, the parent must supplement the professional instruction. This supplemental training should begin during preteen years (before the teen actually begins to drive) and should continue throughout the entire driver education process.

Many parents admit that they were not professionally trained, that their training is obsolete, or that they have simply forgotten some of the basic rules of the road. Of course, all these parents should read Right Turn. Meanwhile, many parents who sincerely believe they are qualified to teach their own children to drive simply review their own state DMV manual and then begin the awkward teaching process. Right Turn should convince parents that this is a very poor choice.

If professional instruction is not reinforced, parents’ unsafe driving practices or the teen’s friends’ driving habits are reinforced. In addition, even in the small percentage of cases when a parent actually provides appropriate beginning driver instruction to their teen, many of these techniques and the rationale for them are often not clearly understood by the teen until they are defined properly by a professional instructor.

This text provides hundreds of nuanced details about the science of safe driving. Any preteen or teen between the age of ten and seventeen, legal immigrant, or senior driver (not to mention parents again) could benefit immeasurably by reading Right Turn, especially if the parent or grandparent understands the contents sufficiently to reinforce the material in your own words.

In doing so, you will become essential in assisting the professional driving school of your choice while providing the very best training in this field available today.

We, your driver education and training professionals, don’t think you can’t put a price tag on saving a human life, especially if that human life is a member of your own family.

Sincerely,

Rodney Keziah,

Chief of Police, Surfside Beach Police Department, South Carolina

BACKGROUND

Knowledge may be gained as a result of formal training, informal training, experience, and through a variety of other related means. The owners and operators of the Coastal Academy for Driver Education, Training and Safety Inc. accrued knowledge, skills, abilities, and an education in the field of driver education. However, we also brought training and experience from other safety related fields. Throughout the chapters in the book, when you read the pronoun I, you are reading a personal account from Michael Wayne Templeton. When you read the pronoun we, you are reading about the policies, procedures, and practices developed by CADETS Inc.

I believe that three different phases of my life have contributed to my understanding of driver education and to the development of this book. The first phase was (and still is) my experiences while driving. I have been driving for over forty-five years now, beginning with my first extended drive at thirteen years old. No, I’m not going to tell an anecdote about every driver who cut me off over the past forty-five years, but there are some milestone events that have contributed to my current knowledge of driving as related to driver education.

I also feel I need to highlight at least some of these driving experiences, lest you conclude that since we opened our driving academy in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we know nothing about driving in the rest of the country. During my adult life, I have lived in California, Missouri, Georgia, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Virginia, and now South Carolina. During that time, I have crisscrossed the United States via rural roads, super highways, and expressways more times than I can count, even if I wanted to.

Perhaps my greatest driving experience gained (while not teaching) was earned while living, working, and commuting within the Southern California road and highway system. During more than twenty of my forty-five plus driving years, I drove on Southern California freeways and roadways. Those commutes were within Los Angeles County, Ventura County, Orange County, and San Diego County, or a combination of the above.

When you drive daily in Southern California rush hour traffic, you either learn to drive properly, or you get run off the road. The drivers will give you a semi-smiley face as they drive past your dead carcass. In Southern California, the term rush hour is an inside joke. It is used for tourists, vacationers, and Hollywood stalkers who were hoodwinked into believing that the chaos they now find themselves driving in really just lasts one hour. On Southern California freeways, rush hour begins at about 2:00 p.m. and ends at about 7:00 p.m., only if there are no collisions on one of the thirty-five freeways you happen to be driving on and it isn’t Friday.

Friday’s are even worse, and it’s probably worse now than it was then. For every fender bender that occurs during a two-hour commute, a driver must add at least another half hour or more to the commute. This of course depends on how many of the eight lanes on your side of the median are occupied by emergency vehicles.

Other states I have lived in had their own unique set of road and highway issues to deal with. For example, I lived and commuted on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii, for four years. It wasn’t uncommon to get behind a driver on the H1 expressway leading into Honolulu and find yourself screaming along at the astonishing speed of twenty-five miles per hour! Later I found out that there were several reasons for this phenomenon.

For example, I made the mistake of owning a red Corvette during first year in Hawaii. That first year on Oahu, I got a ticket for doing twenty-seven miles per hour in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone! Yes, I guess I was technically speeding, so I was guilty as charged. Then a few months later, I jumped into the Corvette to drive exactly one block to our neighborhood tennis court. Since it was only one block away, I didn’t put on my seatbelt. Since that time, I have learned that that was a bad decision for more reasons than just the obvious one. You guessed it; another ticket! It wasn’t long after that that we sold the red Corvette. I also changed many of my driving behaviors.

Remember, I wrote that knowledge may be gained through training or experience. I haven’t had a ticket since that seatbelt infraction in Hawaii in 1991. Now I’ll probably get one for doing something equally stupid the day after this book comes out.

I have also driven through about forty of the mainland states to visit family, friends, or for the requirements of my chosen career field. If you spend enough time driving through deserts, mountains, and plains and through rain, sleet, and snow and over ice, you begin to learn what to do. More importantly, you learn what not to do.

You also learn a bit about how to coexist on the highways with commercial vehicles like giant eighteen-wheel trucks. Contrary to popular belief, all eighteen-wheel truck drivers are not necessarily nice grandfatherly types. This is especially true if you do not merge properly; you force them to downshift unnecessarily, lane change abruptly, or force them to attempt to stop their vehicle in less than the length of a football field while moving at highway speed. There will be more about merging in front of eighteen-wheelers later.

The second phase of my learning experiences as related to driver education involves training delivery, training development, and training administration. The United States army introduced me to training delivery, training development, and training administration at Signal Corps, School Brigade, Fort Gordon, Georgia, after I returned from a year serving in Vietnam. The army essentially said, You will report to Fort Gordon, and you will teach other United States army soldiers everything you know about aircraft Avionics. And so, I did as I was told by someone that knew more than I did. While I was in the army, I discovered that works pretty well when you try it.

After honorable discharge, I also did some formal training development and delivery for the United States Marine Corps as a civilian. You might be wondering: What is the difference between formal training and informal training? Well, in my vernacular, formal training is classroom training with a lesson plan. Informal training might be show and tell with a group of guys standing around looking at a broken machine. During this period of time, I taught digital logics and Boolean algebra. Picture a group of Marines sitting in a classroom learning that from a twenty-three-year old civilian!

The Federal Aviation Administration picked me up when I was twenty-five. I spent the next twenty-nine years there. During the middle part of my career, I completed several training development and delivery courses while employed at the FAA Academy as an instructor.

Examples are Basic Instructor Training, Curriculum Development, Instructional Testing, Computer Based Instruction Development, etc. From 1982 to 1985, I served as an academy instructor teaching automated radar to specialists and engineers. During that period, I also gained valuable experience as a computer-based instruction developer and programmer.

During my final year at the aeronautical center, I served as a staff technical specialist for the FAA Academy Superintendent. Basically, my job was to write persuasive letters for the FAA Academy Superintendent to sign. Once in a while, I was able to do something that was fun. At least, I considered the following project to be fun. My best FAA buddy Ken McCall and I joined forces and transformed our FAA Academy Examination, Control Center from a paper society to a fully automated operation during 1984 and 1985. Ken and I picked a team of superstars to serve on our team, and we completed automating an examination control center process that had essentially had been using the same twentieth-century testing procedures for the previous fifty