Vítkov Prague: The retro exhibition Driving School has started
The first driving school at the Laurin and Klement car factory in Mladá Boleslav was established in our territory in 1907. It was only the third official driving school in the world! Americans had their own educational institutions until 1909.
During the First Republic (hence the second), there were private driving schools in our country, the quality of teaching was not the same. The interruption occurred during World War II, when all excess gasoline was used for war purposes. Under the “socik”, nationalization took place and later SVAZARM began to run the schools. It was not until 1990 that the first post-communist private school was established.
Driving training for “commanders”
After February 1948, private driving schools came under national administration, and district training grounds began to be established. In 1953, the Union for Cooperation with the Army (SVAZARM) was founded, which included all “hobby” activities, including driving schools. It was driven mainly on Škoda cars, although the management tried to find alternative vehicles. These were mainly Moskvich, Lady and Wartburg. But no other vehicle of the brand works to tolerate “abuse” by students in the long run.
In the 1970s, driving schools began to be equipped with driving coaches that looked like toy cars on a fair. Three specimens can be seen at the exhibition and you can try out the guided tours. At the same time, a training ground was being built.
As a result, multi-phase driver training has been introduced. It contained five phases. The first was theoretical teaching in a classroom equipped with a collective teaching machine with an overhead projector (communicator). Pupils answered the exact answers in bulk, recorded the results and then verified them.
Transport fleet for cars
In the end, the students switched to car trainers, of which there were first 5, later 4 per classroom. An introduction to practice followed. A special car training ground with a minimum size of 80 x 100 meters was used to simulate the real situation on the road. Gravel was used somewhere, but where conditions allowed, asphalt roads grew up. Many countries envied our training ground;
She usually drove around the gym three cars at once. Each was driven by one student and the teacher instructed them using a radio control device. The device made it possible to stop any vehicle remotely. The training ground was, of course, used by motorcycle and training, truck or tractor. A passerby could see the three tractors “walking” along the carriageway. This was followed by driving in road traffic and also practical maintenance performed on both vehicles and AKOV training models.
Favorites of the authors of the exhibition
According to the director of the Transport Academy and one of the two exhibitions by the authors Robert Kotál, the most valuable exhibit is the chronicle of driving schools. Its price is estimated at half a million crowns. Along with the chronicle, Robert also likes Vláškovo divadlo, which is a paper cabin in front of which pictures of traffic situations are placed. “I was especially interested in the trainers and the variety of teaching aids for teaching drivers,” tells Bleska the second author of the exhibition, Petra Adámková. The exhibition, together with the National Museum, has been prepared by the Transport Academy for three years.
Legend of Czech driving schools
When the first teaching aids and instructional films for teaching in driving schools began to emerge in the early 1960s, they often did not reach teachers but remained locked in lockers. Jiří Pour, an employee of the driving school directorate, tried to change this trend. At the age of only 21, he became the director of the car training ground. He and his team even designed the first Czechoslovak driving simulator.
He has made many instructional films, written methodologies and is behind the emergence of multi-phase driver training. As a top expert, he also represented our country in the world. In 1998 he co-founded the Transport Academy and until his 89 years he actively worked in it, especially in the commission for driver training. He died only in 2018. As the “founding father”, the entire exhibition is dedicated to him.
New questions in driving school Videohub
The Driving School exhibition will take everyone back to the classroom benches, where they had a hard time before the exam
Author: Jan Dařílek