Ace Driver’s Ed with Aceable

Things My Neighbor Has Given Away on ... Commencing the Next Phase

Ace Driver’s Ed with Aceable

This post is sponsored by Aceable.

Maybe it’s because I’m the passenger and not the driving student now, but it seems to me that almost everything about learning to drive in 2016 is less convenient and safe than it was back in 1986.

Back in the proverbial day, learning to drive meant taking Driver’s Ed. In school. For credit. From a gym teacher who probably wore polyester coach’s shorts and had an unflattering nickname that he/she was aware of but pretended not to know, because why should those damn kids get the satisfaction.

Anyway, as soon as you were old enough to have your Learner’s Permit, that coveted slip of paper tucked in the glovebox that said you had the right to veer all over the road while you figured out what “Yield” really means, you signed up for Driver’s Ed. For a whole semester in high school, you spent part of your day in a dim classroom driving “simulators” which were fake half-cars that gave you a chance to practice steering and using the brake and gas pedals before you ever hit the open road.

Later in the semester, once the gym teacher felt you were no longer a menace, you got to pile into a car with a few fellow students and careen around town. I don’t know about you but I spent much of that time in prayer, whenever the girl with frighteningly slow reflexes who never checked her blindspot was behind the wheel.

At my school, the training ended with the infamous “no brakes” maneuver down Cobb’s Hill, when the gym teacher yelled “No brakes!” at some point in the steep drive downhill, and you had to pull the car to a complete stop using the emergency brake and your own flop sweat before the car could careen onto Highland Avenue. The day Slow Reflex Girl drove us down the hill took ten years off my life.

The point is, you got a lot of driving time in before your parents ever had to sit in a passenger seat sucking air in through their teeth while you practiced your skills.

How times have changed.

In California at least, in school Driver’s Ed has gone the way of in-school Art and Music, i.e. offered sporadically if at all. Here, once the kid gets the learning permit, you hire a private driving instructor for six hours of instruction. Then, far too early in the process if you ask me, the parent climbs into the passenger seat for the requisite 50 hours of practice driving, gripping the dashboard, praying that the time your kid spent behind the wheel with Safest Driving School or Miss Anita’s Driving School was sufficient training to let him/her merge onto Highway 880 along with every long-range trucker in America.

Which was why I felt relieved when, days after our younger daughter told us she had already circled the date for late June 2016 that she can get her Driver’s Permit, I learned about Aceable Driver’s Ed.

Aceable is fully accredited by the state of California (they tailor the programs to the Drivers’ Ed requirements of each state in which they offer the app) and offers an online learning course that can be accessed on iOS, Android, and the web.

My daughter downloaded it and has been steadily working through the program on her phone, using it after she’s done with homework, or the kids she’s babysitting have been tucked in. She says the interactive nature of the course keeps it interesting, and she really likes that there are unlimited free practice tests. I like that it’s comprehensive and thorough, and that she can pick up where she left off on whatever device she’s using. Now when I am driving her somewhere, she knows enough to ask a LOT of questions and make unsolicited observations about my driving, which is a Hole Nuther Topic (HNT) that we don’t need to cover here.

Aceable has graciously offered a discount to Midlife Mixtape readers who may have young drivers in the family – click here for California, here for Texas, and here for Ohio to get your discounts.

And if you see me tooling around this summer in the passenger seat with my youngest daughter at the wheel, know that it is only my confidence in Aceable that keeps me sitting there so serenely.

Well, that and not wanting anyone to see me in my polyester coach’s shorts.

One of my all time favorite roadtrip soundtracks: Tied to the Tracks by Treat Her Right. What’s yours?