The important thing about driver's ed is that it's a /professional/ teaching the foundational experience (they also typically use a custom car where the instructor has limited controls in the passenger's seat in case things are going really wrong).

That way you try to bring the quality of drivers up to that of the instructor, not a cargo cult of family members who might be horrid at driving.

And the big thing is dangerous misinformation and misconceptions get passed down without professional instruction - you see it all the time.

> you gain experience by doing things not taking classes.

Sure, but "experience" doesn't have to mean you're out there on the highway with everyone else. You don't start scuba diving in the actual ocean. You get experience in a pool for a while first.

> It's not like the typical driver's ed is some expensive defensive driving course taught by an ex race car driver.

This is a common misunderstanding of what is really needed in driver education to improve the average driver. The average American driver really lacks a lot of skills and a clear understanding of optimal driving behavior. Driving on public roads should be optimized for safety, but most drive as if it ought to be optimized for speed.

It would be a good improvement if all drivers were required to take a Smith system or similar defensive driving course annually in order to retain their license.

You learn bad habits by doing things incorrectly over and and over again too. As a pilot, the rigorousness of aeronautical training compared to the complete lack of training requirement for car driving, is ridiculous to me. The point is you have to learn how to fit into a system, because it's a shared system.

But somehow driving, and the daily experience of it is: fuck you, me first. And it shows. It's an adversarial system. I'm really impressed that it works as well as it does, despite being the #1 killer of teenagers, and 40,000 total deaths on the road per year.

I don't totally disagree with you but people have to work within practical realities. In this case, western countries have pretty much decided that being allowed to drive on public roads so long as you can reach the gas pedal is probably a bit too free and easy. On the other hand, requiring the sort of significant time and financial commitment required to get and maintain a pilot's license--together with medical exams, etc.--isn't realistic to require for something that many people effectively need to be able to function in society.

So you end up with the current system which is fairly similar across states and countries with somewhat greater or lesser rigor depending on the particular place.