Things weren't always the way they are today in regard to learning to drive a car or fly a plane here in the United States. At first, people just built something and either drove it or flew it or died or were injured trying. So, at first there were a lot of motorized bicycles and then at Kitty Hawk the first heavier than air powered flight happened. But even then at first there were not laws that were useful for driving cars or flying planes. For example, before cars speed limits were not very important other than saying, "Don't gallop your horses here. You are in the city limits of ----" Or you might have "Don't go beyond a trot on horseback or carriage" or some other such law within city limits around the country. But mostly there were not signs and since most people were local except for a few strangers now and then there weren't signs and you would be told personally by sherriffs, police and Constables and Marshalls depending upon where you were and whose jurisdiction it was then.
But as people died form all sort of reasons like horses spooking and running away with people the first time that they saw a horseless carriage that was motorized by gasoline, diesel, electric or steam liability had to be established. However, at first only the rich drove automobiles but more and more companies had truck drivers and more and more converted from horse drawn wagons to diesel and gasoline powered trucks and used Steam driven trains for long hauls of merchandise until the roads became better during the 1920s and 1930s. Before then there mostly were no roads between large towns that were paved or in most cases even rocked or graveled or packed down with heavy equipment so they stayed smooth so you wouldn't get stuck in the rain.
So, the same sort of thing happened with motorized flight. There was no one at first to look to for proficiency except maybe experienced short distance glider pilots who mostly back then just shifted their weight to turn and bank and glide. So, there were those who survived and there were those who didn't. So, the ones who survived taught what they knew to those that didn't so more and more pilots survived who had survivable aircraft.
Even by the time that my father and his oldest brother flew as in the U.S. Marine Corps. Reserves as Hellcat biplane gunners things had changed a lot from 1903 until then in 1934. And even when their younger brother first flew in 1940 it was still pretty laid back how things were done by the public. For example, my uncle who was Dad's younger brother was watching a man who owned a biplane land at a public airfield. The man asked my uncle if he wanted to fly his plane. My uncle said "yes!" and took off and landed the biplane. The man said, "That was the best 3 point landing I've ever seen." The man asked where he had learned to fly and my uncle said, "Oh. That was the first time I ever flew a plane." The man who owned the plane almost fainted. But my Uncle Tommy was like that and eventually became a military test pilot when World War II began. Even though this isn't what the family was told because his work was top secret and never declassified. My cousin had the documents that were given to him by his mother(my uncle's oldest sister). She was also married to a Naval Air Pilot, a captain who flew Blimps that were submarine Chasers along the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts of the U.S. during World War II.
My father's first experience of driving a car was when he was about 9 or 10. He said that his mother had a medical emergency (likely his youngest sister was being born) and so since their Dad was far away at work (and phones weren't very reliable those days) (around the early 1920s) the three boys ages 7, 8 and 11 had to drive their mother to the nearest hospital never having driven before. So, one boy steered the car and the next boy was driving with the pedals and the next boy shifted the gears to get their Mom to the Hospital. This sort of thing wasn't unusual for those times when regulations weren't as tight as now.
When I came along (born in 1948) things had changed a lot from the early 1900s and even from the early 1930s and 40s. To put this into perspective around the time when I was born Ghandi was assasinated, the Cold War was Beginning and World War II had ended 3 years before I was born and the transistor had been invented a year before I was born and Roswell had also happened a year before I was born.
So, as I grew up in the 1950s I watched kids older than I driving hopped up cars mostly from the 1930s and 1940s that were hopped up and souped up for street racing. A lot of kids also got a hold of 4 wheel drive Willys Jeeps from World War II as they were light and could literally go anywhere. You just didn't want have an accident with one because many people were killed as they turned over without roll bars or were thrown literally through the front windshield and died that way. Remember, there were no seat belts on cars that were required until 1968 at all. And then no one required you to wear them until 1984 in New York State. So it was very common for people to be thrown free from cars or crushed back then until they started to use more aluminum and plastic that would give and make cars generally less fatal below 30 mph. Whereas you could die easily at any speed above 15 or 20 miles per hour if you stopped suddenly or were crushed in a roll over the way cars and trucks were built then before the 1960s and 1970s because they were basically made of steel and iron which doesn't give at all. Whereas when they started to build with unibody construction with aluminum and plastic peopld started to survive crashes under 45 mph or 50 more. Then when air bags were required sometimes people even survived crashes at 70 mph or more if it wasn't a head on crash with a car or truck
Knowing what a car or plane will do in an emergency is very important for any driver or pilot before they learn to drive or to fly. Generally, if you are in an enclosed car or truck you will survive most crashes now under about 30 to 40 mph unless you hit a tree or cement wall in a direct hit because those things won't move at all. So, something like that could be fatal at any speed over about 20 mph even with a seat belt and air bags on board. So, if you see an accident coming try to avoid stationary objects like large trucks, trees, telephone polls or large cement walls. If you are going to have to crash choose (if you can to avoid stationary objects) a glancing blow of whatever you are going to hit if you have a choice at that point. These decisions might save your life.
In a plane if you are within 500 feet of the ground any mistake at all can and will likely be fatal. There was a man with his family taking off at a local airport this last year who was afraid to enter a fog bank with his family because this is illegal for a VFR pilot(Visual Flight Rules) so he turned and banked and stalled the wing and killed his whole family just taking off the plane from the airport. What I think likely happened is that he was used to flying alone and wasn't very familiar with the handling characteristics of his plane with 3 times or more the weight he was used to with his wife and kids and their luggage on board. Or he could have been overloaded because his wife or kids brought too much stuff and he didn't weigh them and all their stuff before he left the ground and didn't think about what a difference in the way the aircraft handled all that could make when he took off. So, like I said if you are under 500 feet there is literally no room for error and any small error can and likely will be fatal during take off and landing. However, if he had either taken off and flown temporarily into the fog bank and then slowly turned out of it he might have saved his family's lives if he had done this or if he had not taken off at all. Like I said taking off and landing a plane is completely unforgiving of mistakes unlike a car. Most of the time in a car you can make pretty serious errors and survive them even if your car doesn't. I think this is the main reason why everyone didn't take to the air over the years with their own convertible planes that convert from planes to cars for driving themselves home from the airport. However, passenger planes are 6 times safer than driving a car or truck anytime or anywhere. I'm not sure that most people who fly as passengers know this. Also, to some degree the amount of luggage and or people you are carrying in a a car or truck can greatly affect turning or stopping of any vehicle. So you have to usually slow down more carefully and corner more carefully until you get the feeling of the handling change. So whenever you change types of vehicles or overload a vehicle you are used to it can be scary in some situations if you aren't prepared for the differences in handling.
So, my first experience with steering a car I was about 4 years old and sitting on my Dad's lap while driving out in the country. He was training my senses for becoming a good driver in the future. Then when I was 6 years old Dad had me drive a block by myself in our new Century Buick then in 1956 out in the country where no one was on an abandoned road. By age 12 I was driving fairly regularly on weekends while driving to a desert Cabin through the deserts because at age 12 I already looked like an adult of 16 or 18 and was already 5 foot 8 or 10 inches tall. So, the day I turned 15 1/2 I got my learners permit and got 100 on it and learned to drive all the time I could and the day I turned 16 I got my driver's license and got 100 on the test again and almost 90 on my driving test because I forgot to signal when I left my parking spot after taking a parking test in my parent's 1960 Mercury Stationwagon. I will never forget the first time I drove a car alone at age 16. It was a pretty scary feeling that no one was there to back me up. I also felt this way only moreso when I first soloed in a Cessna 152 near San Francisco when I was 39.
However, within a few weeks worrying about driving alone was overcome by testosterone and 16 year old bravado. But I almost died on Glendale Freeway within 2 months of getting my driver's license. One month after getting my driver's license at age 16 I bought myself a surf wagon because my friends and I were Surfers from Glendale then in Southern California. So, the first time I took my best friend out in it to show it off as to what it could do I got the accelerator pedal stuck in the carpeting and didn't know what to do so we wouldn't die. My friend who had built up street racers with superchargers and slicks and big engines simply turned off the ignition so we didn't die on a curve that couldn't be done at 90 mph. However, don't do that now because now steering wheels lock when you turn off the ignition so doing this now would often be fatal. Instead if your pedal gets stuck to the floor shift your car into neutral. I know the engine might speed up until it blows up but if you want to survive along with everyone else in the car this is what you have to do to survive this situation. Your lives are much more important than your engine at that point.
So various times I got embarrassed by running out of gas with friends until their peer pressure made sure that never happened again. It was more expensive to always fill up the car at 1/4 or 1/2 a tank but people didn't want to beat me up because they had to push the car 1/2 to 1 mile to the next gas station anymore. So, this was better.
About 3 months after I got my license and about 2 months after I bought my car I asked a beautiful girl from my church who sang like an angel to go to a political rally with me. We decided to go to a movie instead and she showed me how to kiss like an adult which was pretty amazing for a 16 year old then. So, getting my license and buying my car made me an adult in many ways then at age 16.
However, now things are very different because gas is no longer 17 cents a gallon and minimum wages are no longer 1dollar and hour and you can no longer buy a brand new VW Bug for 800 dollars or my new 1968 Chevrolet Camaro in 1968 for 3500 dollars. So, now teenagers like my daughter have a lot more hoops to jump through than I did. But I worry more for her because she didn't have all the experience before to benefit from to be a good lifelong driver like I did. But now in my state they make drivers take lessons with a policeman an hour or two before their parents can sit with them as they drive. I think she has to spend a total of 9 hours driving with a policeman for her to get her provisional license and can't get a real license until she is 18 at the youngest. So everything has changed now and driving seems to be a reward for getting good grades now more than ever. But since my daughter gets at least a B+ average or better at her private school she can easily jump through all the hoops to get her license in my state here in California.
One of the most important things I can say to new drivers is that you need to be afraid enough not to accidentally kill yourselves and your friends or pedestrians. Not being afraid enough is a good reason not to be driving. Being afraid to the point of panic isn't any good either. You need to respect that any car or truck is a potentially much more lethal weapon than any gun or pistol. You could liken the potential danger to a sub machine gun in actual danger to people in your car or around you. If you don't understand this you shouldn't be driving a car. So, if you know a car is a potentially lethal weapon then you will respect both what it can do for you and just how potentially dangerous it really is.
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