Ride: Rules of the road seem to fade with age
Based on the findings of a survey by LeaseTrader.com, it seems that drivers fail to retain the basic rules of the road after passing their first written driver test. The more time that has passed since a driver first took a written exam, the survey found, the less he or she remembers.
"It's a little bit alarming," said John Sternal, vice president of marketing communications for LeaseTrader.com. "Some of these questions are really, really serious issues as far as driver safety."
Because so few people retain the information, Sternal said, the results raise questions about the effectiveness of written driving exams.
Sternal said LeaseTrader.com is always doing research and has gotten more involved with safety in recent months. Someone in the office came up with sample driver test questions and shared them with co-workers. Some people in the office wrestled with the questions.
"It prompted the question of how would others fare if we offered the questions to them," he said.
So LeaseTrader gave its members — who varied widely in age — a shot at 10 questions pulled right from multiple-choice drivers tests across the country. Seven correct answers, or 70 percent, was a passing grade, Sternal said.
Here's how the results broke down: Drivers ages 25-30 got 64 percent of the answers correct, followed by those age 31-40 (58 percent); drivers 41-55 (46 percent); and those age 56-65 (42 percent). The Ride Guy took a stab at the questions and scored nine correct out of 10. Then again, I write about this stuff for a living. And my third child just got her license in the past year.
(I whiffed on this question: You may not park within how many feet of a stop sign? The answer was 25 feet. I guessed that it was 15 feet.)
What it shows is that drivers — particularly those who are farther removed from their first written test — which may have coincided with their high school science, civics and algebra classes — should bone up on the rules from time to time.
Because you apparently don't retain it through osmosis alone.
Q. I have to travel daily on Skinker Boulevard from Clayton Road to Enright. At least a month ago, Skinker was stripped from Delmar northward. Since then, nothing has happened, and I'm sick of driving over this mess. Do you know when the city is going to finish this job?
— Wendy Clark
By the end of the day on Friday, the St. Louis Streets Department expected to have three of four lanes of Skinker repaved from Delmar to Page. The fourth lane should be finished on Tuesday, and the left-turn lanes and cut-throughs by Wednesday, said Todd Waelterman, St. Louis streets director.
The city's contractor has done more grinding and milling of Skinker south of Delmar to Clayton.
The work you are seeing on Skinker is part of a $2.9 million federal stimulus project that also takes in a good piece of Goodfellow, Waelterman said.
Q. The new diverging diamond intersection at Dorsett Road and Interstate 270 is wonderful, but a dangerous situation exists at the bottom of the I-270 exit ramps. Exiting traffic from I-270, for example, comes down two lanes of the exit ramp and meets two lanes of westbound traffic on Dorsett. Both streams of traffic converge at this point in a gradual curve where there is an electric signal. The trouble happens when the exiting I-270 drivers encounter a red light at the bottom of the ramp. Some drivers honor the red light and wait for green. Other drivers stop (sort of) and proceed through the red light as if making a right turn on red, even though this situation can hardly be called a "turn." Still other drivers don't bother stopping at all and just blow right through the red light. As a result, there are two lanes of traffic with drivers reacting three different ways to a red light. This is chaos. Can some signage be put there so everybody can understand the proper response to a red light here?
— Fred Houska, Maryland Heights
The Missouri Department of Transportation wrestled with that idea but decided not to put a sign there, said Lee Hillner, MoDOT's project director for the interchange at I-270 and Dorsett. The state wanted to make sure only those drivers who are comfortable making a right turn on red — which is legal there — do so without being pressured by more aggressive drivers who may be stopped behind them (pressure here being a euphemism for someone laying on the horn or making colorful hand gestures to the car in front of them).
Hillner said the lights are set on "very short" cycles, meaning nobody should have to wait too long to make a right turn on a green light anyway.
This story posted by LeaseTrader.com, the automotive service company that lets people transfer out of their Car Leases early. If you're looking to swap a lease or transfer out of your car lease, please visit www.leasetrader.com