Online Driving

The world stood still as everybody headed inside to stop a virus but while many were loathing or enjoying their time inside, the teens of the world worked tirelessly to learn how to drive before they emerged from their homes and the pandemic. I myself am one of those people studying and working tirelessly to earn my ability to drive freely. I already know my own experiences with driving so how about others? How much has changed from somebody who completed driving school and became a legal driver before COVID-19 and somebody who had to work inside and online for a majority of their training?

The quarantine began on March 22nd when the Ohio Health and Safety Department issued a stay at home order and this would be lifted on May 1st, a whole month of staying at home. This all proceeded along with a multitude of student drivers transitioning to online learning, beginning online learning, or finishing their driving right before disaster struck. For a long while schools were closed and the state government agency, the BMV. I remember I was affected quite heavily by the quarantine, I recall being unable to schedule anywhere for driving school as in-person classes were simply non-existent due to enforced quarantine. So I was forced online with an online course and online learning, which was very weird to put the experience into words.

Ohio Law states that “(a) Driver must complete a driver education class at a licensed driver training school, which includes 24 hours of classroom or online instruction and 8 hours of driving time.” which I have only finished the online portion of the twenty-four-hour classroom, I haven’t even finished my driving lessons so what about those who have in these trying times?

My first interviewee over COVID driving is Nathan Specht, a Licking Valley High school junior. Nathan after being asked on his preference between online school and in-class school stated “I would have done online driving school even if there wasn’t any COVID” and he expanded on why by saying “I could multitask it, I could read and do something else at the same time… I wouldn’t have to sit in a classroom”. Another high school junior, Ben Little shares the same line of reasoning, he stated “it's just a lot more convenient for my parents… It’s a lot more convenient for me”.

Overall students actually seem to prefer the online driving course as it gives more independence to the student and overall is less hassle on the parents who would of had to take them to school pre-COVID. A drawback from this style of learning might be that the time that one takes to finish the lesson cause now that is entirely in the student’s hands until the six month period. Another problem of severely more risk is how much attention students are paying towards their lessons, no matter how much “common sense” is involved in driving there is still knowledge to learn and the independence provided by online school leads to lacking attitudes and studious nature. Just like the deadline, online schools have some measures to make sure students pay attention such as timeouts, time limits, high amounts of questioning, etc.

In the area of driving lessons both interviewees had experiences which were almost synonymous with what would’ve happened pre-Corona. Nathan stated that “the only thing I thought was different that we just had to wear masks… we just had to wipe down everything that we touched.” Ben shared the exact same limitations mentioning he “just wiped everything down before and we wore masks.”

Nearly nothing has changed then, like always the world continues to turn and teens still learn how to drive. The biggest change came with online schooling, something that seemed to become the majority way of learning already. The students decisively choose online school over in-person classes and the driving barely changed. Even though progress was halted for those preparing to drive during the quarantine afterwards nothing changed. Hopefully this is for the better, as everybody deserves the right to drive.