What Do You Wish Other Drivers Learned In Drivers' Ed?

Photo: Don Mason (Getty Images)

Driver education in the United States is a mixed bag. Some states require hours of training and weeks of on-road experience before a new driver can get their license, while others just ask that you survive a mild obstacle course in a parking lot before letting you loose on the Jersey Turnpike. Clearly, the system needs to be addressed.

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Drivers’ Ed should, in a perfect world, give teens all the knowledge they need to become upstanding drivers out there on the roads. Clearly, though, some key points have been getting muddled — just look at any roundabout in the U.S. to see that we haven’t gotten everything right. If you could change how Drivers’ Ed works on a national scale, what would you add to the curriculum?

As a New York resident, I’m sure many of the people around me have never actually taken driver’s ed. It’s the ones who have, however, that are the problem. New York drivers are terrible about intersection etiquette, but the worst of it comes in a single form: Blocking the box.

If you can’t clear an intersection by the time the light turns green in another direction, don’t enter that intersection. All you do is back up traffic in multiple directions, causing cascading effects for the streets around you, in exchange for the slightest bit of expediency in getting to your destination. It’s barely a benefit to you, and a massive detriment to everyone else on the roads. Stop it.

That’s the topic I want added to curriculums across the country, blocking the box. You, I imagine, have different priorities. What do you wish other drivers learned in Drivers’ Ed? Leave your responses below, and I’ll collect my favorites later in the week.