Near the end of freshman year, most of us are given the option to get our license early and have the full privilege of driving anywhere at the low age of 16 years and three months. Deciding it would be best to get my driver’s license as soon as possible, I applied for the Central Indiana Educational Service Center (CIESC) Online Driver’s Education Program. However, what I was met with was something much different from what I was expecting.

The first problem I found was the first few lessons of every unit, which contain a video about someone getting into an accident that relates with the lesson. It’s quite depressing to have multiple friends and relatives talk about how sad they are that the person in the video is now deceased. Secondly, the program requires that you take a quiz on the video right afterwards, which would be fine if it didn’t test you on irrelevant questions. Most of the questions are “On what street did the crash occur?” or “When was the last time the mother saw her child before he got into an accident?” This forces me to sometimes refer back to the video in the middle of the quiz because I wasn’t listening for what the victim’s favorite pizza was.

The 30-hour requirement is also a problem, and an unneeded one at that. Most of the units are built on common sense, allowing you to skip over many lessons. I have talked with many others on this subject, and most people end up leaving their computer open on the course pages, so they can rack up hours they were unable to receive while doing the problems. This could be solved if the time requirement were removed because even if we are going through the lessons quickly, we still have to pass the quizzes with a 100 percent. This means that even if we did speed through, we would need a basic understanding of the topic at the very least.

The questions you can’t common sense your way through are impeccably precise. Some questions ask how long you should brake for and give you the options of two to three seconds and three to four seconds. If you had barely skimmed through and saw a three somewhere inside of the lesson, it would cause you to take a 50-50 chance and pick one. Sometimes, points in their lessons don’t coincide with what the videos say. For example, the lessons say you are supposed to put your hands at two and ten, but the videos say you need them at three and nine.

Other than those reasons, driver’s education is still beneficial to take, especially when you need to get places in junior or senior year.