Found a book from my childhood...

[JCHansen1]

Purging some books from my collection the other day and stumbled across this treasure I forgot I had. "Let's Drive Right", third edition. A 1964 revision of a book I think may have been first written in 1953. (?) It belonged to my aunt who gave it to me as a 10 or 11 year old car nut in the late '80s. I read this thing cover to cover as a kid. I marked up many of the pages of chapter seven, What makes your car run, and the glossary in the back of the book trying to learn everything I could about driving a car and cars in general. I had a good time thumbing through it again the other day. I took drivers ed in 1995, and I gotta say, it was nowhere near as informative as this book was. I can only imagine how dumbed-down drivers ed classes might be today, and I hope I'm wrong in that suspicion. In addition to all the basics, there are great lessons in here about driving psychology, the science of motion and physics, automotive mechanics, how to buy and care for a car, and even a section about how cars and our roads were designed and engineered. A lot of it is very relevant even today. Pretty neat. I may pay my daughters to read it before they take driver's ed in a few years. I imagine a few of you here may have taken driver's ed with a book like this.    

[JamesR]

My brother gave me a copy of that book a long time ago. I believe my copy is a different edition, maybe a few years earlier. Whatever the edition, it predated my driver's education experience by a fair bit. (I graduated from HS in '76.) Nevertheless, it's very much in the vein of those dated instructional books we used to encounter in elementary school, so it does conjure up memories of the past. Thanks for posting.

[John_S_in_Penna]

It would be interesting to see early versions

of driving instructions, wherever they could be

found.  They might include the proper way to

hold the reins, what gaits to use, keeping the

women passengers dry and dust-free, and

how to stop a runaway horse!

[Bloo]

I didn't take driver's ed with that book, but I had an old copy of it, or something with a very similar cover. I believe my copy was from the early 50s.

 

[wayne sheldon]

I do remember seeing that book from when I was in high school. Pretty sure I never read more than a couple pages of it. Of course, I only read four pages total out of my 300 page high school biology text book. Got a B in the class. (Boy, was my teacher frustrated with me!)

[JCHansen1]

I'm slightly amused by the little pictogram of people who've consumed various amounts of alcohol. 4 bottles of beer, and we're 'delightful and devilish'. Double that, and we're 'delinquent and disgusting'... Don't say they didn't warn you.

 

[JamesR]

5 hours ago, JCHansen1 said:

I'm slightly amused by the little pictogram of people who've consumed various amounts of alcohol. 4 bottles of beer, and we're 'delightful and devilish'. Double that, and we're 'delinquent and disgusting'... Don't say they didn't warn you.

 

 

I've definitely seen that chart before, in multiple places in my youth. The "Dead" level on the chart is hard to forget. I think there are some people who can drink a quart of whiskey without dying, though...and no, I'm not basing that on personal experience. 😄

[CHuDWah]

Was that book issued by a particular state?  When I took HS driver ed, my state at the time published a similar book that was used in classroom instruction before practicing in a dual-control car.

[John348]

I heard the term my "dead drunk" my whole life, been even called it a few times but never knew the roots of the phrase

[Bloo]

1 hour ago, CHuDWah said:

Was that book issued by a particular state?  When I took HS driver ed, my state at the time published a similar book that was used in classroom instruction before practicing in a dual-control car.

 

I was about to ask if this edition still had the picture of the Plymouth with 2 steering wheels.

 

[CHuDWah]

2 hours ago, Bloo said:

 

I was about to ask if this edition still had the picture of the Plymouth with 2 steering wheels.

 

I never understood how those dual steering wheels work.  The teacher's one must have an override.  Our car had two brake pedals but only one wheel - guess they figured they could stop it before we steered into anything.  The coaches were the ones who taught driver ed.  I suppose it satisfied the classroom instruction requirement of their contracts.