When Something Is Hard, Dumb It Down

When Something Is Hard, Dumb It Down

The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets

2015-06-01 06:00 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 109 references

When Something Is Hard, Dumb It Down

 

Any time too many people fail at something the problem is that the test is too hard, not that people are unprepared for it.

Maryland has become the most recent state to drop the parallel-parking requirement from its road test, sparking debate about whether the next generation of motorists will be adequately prepared to safely navigate streets.
Buel Young, a Maryland Motor Vehicles Administration spokesman, said the requirement was officially removed May 19 after state officials had determined the maneuvers and skills required to parallel park -- which include backing up, using mirrors and depth perception -- were already being evaluated in other parts of the test.

Uh huh.
Parallel parking is one of those things that you have to be able to do if you're ever in a town or city.  It's an acquired skill that many people these days simply don't have, but where does this leave you when the parking available is all of that form?
There is also a misperception that this is a "big city" thing; it most-definitely is not!  Virtually all towns of any sort of size have their street parking set up this way for good reason -- it's economical to do and is safer (by quite a bit) than angled parking.  I personally hate angled-in parking in cities as if someone with a vehicle higher than yours and/or without windows on the sides you can see through parks to your right it is impossible to see oncoming traffic as you attempt to back out, turning your exit from said parking into a dance with the unknown truck that might be headed straight for you.  Columbus, GA can you hear me now?
I don't understand why this is hard.  You set up a line of cones to denote the curb and two on the outside delineating the outer boundary of the parking space.  Draw a line with chalk between the two outer cones and at 90 degrees to the line of cones so the test-taker has the outline of the space to see (which he or she will when actually parking.)  If you hit any of the cones while placing the vehicle in the middle of the marked space you fail.
That's all.
I had to do this when I got my driver license at 16, but I got to do it right in front of the actual DMV building; they had a "parallel parking" space that was marked off "No Parking" for this explicit purpose with a real curb; they just placed two cones at the outside corners when they gave a test.  If you hit either cone or stuck a wheel up on the sidewalk you failed.  Simple, quick, and 30 seconds consumed in the test -- if you passed, of course.
Florida got rid of this requirement too -- and that's stupid.  My kid, when she took her driver test, had to pull straight into an angled parking space but neither had to back into a parking spot or parallel park.  I was astonished, to put it mildly.
C'mon folks, the response to people being unable to complete a common requirement isn't to get rid of that part of the test!