Photo by Clay Schuldt Pike Driving School owner Darrin Anderson stands outside with one of the three instructor vehicles. The instructor vehicles are equipped with a passenger side brake for the teacher and a second rearview mirror. Anderson said instructor vehicles are typically chosen for visibility. He prefers students learn on a vehicle with no blind spots.

NEW ULM — In Minnesota, to attain a driver’s license a student is required to take 30 mandatory hours of class and six hours behind the wheel before taking the road test.

Many school districts will offer driving instruction in-house, but in New Ulm, a separate institute called Pike Driving School serves this need. Pike Driving School has been located in New Ulm since the 1990s. Darren Anderson took over managing the driving school in August 2007. The school has six instructors who provide driver’s training in the classroom and behind the wheel.

The Pike Driving School recently relocated. On June 1, it moved to 206 N. Minnesota Street a few blocks north of its previous location. The new site offers more classroom space for the students.

Anderson said he tries to keep each class to 30 or fewer students. Classes are offered almost year-round. Anderson said sometimes they skip January as there is less demand for driver’s training that time of year. In the summer, Pike School can run two separate classes each day. During the school year, driver’s training needs to be scheduled after school.

Anderson said scheduling classes can be one of the greatest challenges because kids have busy schedules. With extra-curricular activities, even after-school classes are hard to schedule.

There is a high demand for driver’s training that goes beyond New Ulm. The Pike School offers classes in Nicollet, Sleepy Eye and even Comfrey when enough students are available. The high demand for driver’s training is one of the things that makes teaching classes a little easier than a normal class.

“It is not difficult to keep the students focused,” Anderson said. At a normal school, students will sometimes lose interest or not pay attention because they do not see the value of what they are learning. That’s not an issue at driving school. “They want their licenses. They understand the value and it makes the class easy to manage.”

Anderson describes his driving class as a student’s first college course. The state is not required to teach them driver’s training. The students are paying to take the class. If they don’t want to be in the class or listen, they can leave. Students rarely want to leave the class.

Over the years of teaching driver’s training, Anderson said the basics course work has not changed a lot. There are updates to the driving manual every year, but most changes are minor. He said one of the biggest changes in recent years was the increase in roundabouts. Previously, there was not much training for roundabouts but as they have become more common the course work has included information on how to drive through them.

Anderson said each class he asks the student how their parents feel about roundabouts. Their parents hate them. He said it is about experience. People who do not use roundabouts regularly tend to be uncomfortable with them, but if you drive in the larger cities you can see how a roundabout speeds up the flow of traffic.

Anderson said another change is how reliant kids are on backup cameras. Most new vehicles have backup cameras as a standard feature. Many kids do not turn their heads when backing up. This is a problem because students do need to turn their heads when taking the road test.

Another change with the latest generation is a preference for SUVs. Many of the students taking driver’s education come from families that never own a sedan-style car. Some are not comfortable driving anything other than an SUV. Fortunately, Pike’s Driving School does have an SUV training vehicle.

Despite the changes to driver’s training, Anderson said the one thing that has not changed is the overall ability of student drivers.

“In all my years as a driving instructor, kids don’t get better or worse at driving,” Anderson said.

The previous generation of drivers was not superior or worse. With each new class, is a set of new drivers. The main goal of driving instructors is to instill responsibility.

“I am here to educate the students about the consequences,” Anderson said. “they need to know the responsibilities of driving. A 10-year-old could technically drive, but they don’t have the maturity.”

One of the common classroom activities is traffic observation. Every Pike School class spends at least one-day observing traffic on Minnesota Street. The students are asked to observe the drivers and what they are doing.

“It can be an eye-opening experience for the students,” Anderson said. They see people not paying attention to the roads and breaking all kinds of traffic laws. It can be an effective method of warning students about the dangers of driving and how easy it is to become complacent.