New Twists and Turns in Driving

Just as driving has become more complex, so has educating drivers. There was a time when the novice learned to drive from mother, father, big brother, or high school teacher. And, once a license was issued, no one tried to teach an old driver new tricks.

Those also were the days when there were far fewer than the 400,000 car trips taken on North County freeways every day. And although many drivers have learned to negotiate all that traffic on their own, many have turned to experts for training.

Today, novice and veteran are quite likely to have attended a driving or traffic school. Teen-age drivers have turned to the driving schools as driver education courses have been dropped from high school curricula. And hundreds of experienced North County drivers each week attend traffic school in an effort to erase traffic tickets from their records.

LEARNING TO DRIVE

In some places, young people hurl themselves off wooden towers with vines attached to their ankles. In others, youths hunt animals with poison darts. Anthropologists call these events rites of passage.

Sixteen-year-old Keri Brown of Encinitas was about to begin her own rite of passage. She was about to drive a car.

Her family knew it was a special event. Her little brothers gathered on the stairs of their spacious tract home. Keri was impatient. She had had her fill of driving with mom and dad. Her mother, Karen Brown, would never let her turn on the radio. “Mom thinks I can’t concentrate,” Keri said, smiling and flashing her braces.

Perhaps that little incident when Keri broke the station wagon’s headlight was lodged in Karen’s mind. Keri had run into the wagon while trying to back the other family car out of the driveway.

Maybe that’s why Karen was shaky when her daughter drove. “I had to do some Lamaze breathing,” she said.

By the time her instructor, John Stapley of Teen Auto Club, knocked at the door, Keri was ready. Six hours of driving with a private instructor would be the only hands-on training Keri Brown would get before joining the ranks of North County drivers.

In the past, Keri would probably have completed driver training at her high school. Although she was able to take the classroom portions of her driver education at school, state reimbursement for behind-the-wheel training was cut last year. Keri’s school, San Dieguito High, dropped the driving program.

Some schools, like those in Escondido, made driver training an adult education class and charged a fee.

Next year, San Dieguito will follow Escondido’s example.

But Keri Brown was not thinking about those things on this day. The honors student was too busy remembering every good driving habit she had been taught.

Before she and her instructor pulled away from the curb on a street that had not seen a car in over five minutes, Keri put on the turn signal, looked in her blind spot, checked her mirrors and then left gingerly.

She made a “full and complete” stop at every stop sign. She slowed down at intersections to look for oncoming traffic. These were all steps the state Department of Motor Vehicles examiner would look for when Keri took the test.

The need for seat belts was impressed upon Keri by the bloody video, produced by the California Highway Patrol, called “Red Asphalt 2,” the sequel to “Red Asphalt.” (A new tape, titled, yes, “Red Asphalt 3” has recently been released.)

After Keri’s first formal driving lesson, her instructor complimented her on how she handled the car. It was a Monday. On the following Monday, she would take her written and field driving tests at the Oceanside DMV office.

According to Jim Ramos, manager of the DMV’s Oceanside office, most people taking the test pass it. Out of 862 applicants--including those seeking to renew their licenses--tested at his facility during one month this summer, only 24% failed.

Keri, who took the test last month, was among those who passed. She is now a North County driver, joining the ranks of 444,800 new drivers between the ages of 16 and 18 who were licensed in California last year.

Would Keri Brown remember all the good habits she was taught?

“Well, probably not everything, but I am going to wear my seat belt all the time,” she said.

OUT ON THE ROAD

After one academic quarter of classroom instruction and six hours of formal training behind the wheel, new drivers join a pretty fast crowd.

According to Robert Triplett, who keeps track of such things for the California Department of Transportation, the traffic volume on Interstate 5 at Encinitas was 162,000 cars a day in 1990. In 1981 it was 86,000.

On Interstate 15 between Via Rancho Parkway and Pomerado Road, the 1990 daily average also was 162,000 cars. In 1981 the average was 61,000 cars. Similar increases occurred on highways 78 and 76.

And a lot of those drivers have a less than cordial attitude.

“People are more prone to violence than they were in the past,” CHP Officer Dave Ellison said. Ellison, who normally patrols I-15, thinks volume has changed the face of North County drivers from a smile to a scowl.

But, says Triplett: “The highways aren’t dangerous. It’s the people driving on the darn things who are dangerous.”

Speeding seems to be the most common transgression, and efforts to catch speeders are more intense today than they once were.

“There is no question in my mind that drivers get more tickets now,” Sergeant Rich Hendrickson of the Sheriff’s Encinitas office said.

“It is not just because Encinitas and Solana Beach are now city streets, but the cities contract with us specifically for traffic enforcement. We field traffic units whose primary function is traffic enforcement.”

There are a lot more speeding tickets, Hendrickson said, because sheriff’s deputies use radar guns.

In the first six months of 1991, 321 citations were issued in Del Mar, 2,790 in Encinitas, 854 in Solana Beach, 4,022 in San Marcos and 4,769 in Vista.

In addition, the CHP is doing its part to ticket violators, although it generally does not use radar to check speed. It clocks speed by pacing the suspect with the patrol car.

Some would argue that getting a speeding ticket is the best lesson a driver can learn--it’s expensive, time consuming and if the citations add up, can result in losing the license to drive.

TRAFFIC SCHOOL

Traffic schools, those six-hour penance sessions traffic violators sit through to wipe a ticket off their records, have become a popular fixture in North County.

Among the scores of schools taking on errant drivers is Mary Jane Atencio’s Pickwick Traffic School in Encinitas.

Atencio’s school educates 250 to 300 people each month. Students must pay a $24 court administrative fee, plus a fee to the school, $25 in Atencio’s case. In addition to those fees, the driver must pay the fine associated with the ticket, which averages about $100.

Before Aug. 1, traffic school participants were not obligated to pay the fine. That’s no longer the case. But attending traffic school still allows drivers to clear their records.

The 25 students in a recent Wednesday night class at Atencio’s were there for a variety of violations.

One woman about 20 years old was caught going 85 m.p.h. in a 55 m.p.h. zone. A small, middle-aged woman was stopped for driving 68 m.p.h. on Mission Avenue in downtown Oceanside. Others failed to stop at stop signs, crossed double yellow lines or made illegal turns.

Housewife Diane McManus was cruising along at 50 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone on Elm Avenue in Carlsbad. She was angry at the Carlsbad police.

“I had my foot on the brake but they clock you before you can get your speed down,” she complained.

McManus’ neighbor, Teri Olsen, was caught in the same area. She, too, was irate at being stopped.

In fact, nearly every one of the 25 people in the class insisted they should not have been given a ticket. They argued that they had done the best they could given driving conditions.

Atencio believes people in North County are not used to receiving tickets.

In the past, she said, driving in North County was much more of a free-for-all. Encinitas and Solana Beach were not yet cities with city speed limits. Pacific Coast Highway was known as “Blood Alley,” after the hot rodders who used to scream beneath the shady eucalyptus trees.

“It used to be you had to chase a cop down, beat him up and steal his ticket book to get a ticket,” she said.

Atencio’s students, of course, could avoid tickets altogether if they heeded the safety message she preached.

Get out of the two fast lanes on the freeway, she advised. Stay in the third lane. It moves faster and is safer than the fast lanes.

“Oh, I hate that lane,” a young woman interjected after flipping through pages of Vogue magazine. “It’s sooo boring!”

When Atencio showed a video on safe driving techniques, most students found it impossibly idealistic. The tape showed a van cruising University and El Cajon boulevards in San Diego-- miraculously devoid of traffic--as the driver practiced a host of safe habits.

“To be realistic and say ‘I’m going to really do this’ is ludicrous,” said one student.

“I bet less than two of us will be doing that one week from now,” said another.