Who better to teach young people how to be good drivers than the first company to roll a Model-T off the assembly line? In 1940, the Ford Motor Company hosted the finals of the first "Ford Good Drivers League" competition at the New York World’s Fair Ford Pavilion. Edsel Ford, then-president of the company, created the league and its national competition to teach teens safe driving skills. Young men from each state competed in the finals for a $5,000 prize (the competition was opened to young women in 1941). In addition to testing drivers’ abilityto brake, back up and park, Ford and his team gave the competitors a battery of 18 psychophysical tests developed by psychologists at the Iowa State College Driving Research Laboratory, along with researchers from the Ford Motor Company, the American Automobile Association, and the University of Michigan. Below, three finalists examine the "Drivometer," a simulated driving experience that measured reaction times, created by Iowa State industrial psychologist Alvah Lauer and University of Michigan engineering professor Bruce Greenshields.
The competitors also completed tasks measuring both vision and reflexive response time, a battery similar to assessments being given to World War II pilots making their way to the European and Pacific arenas at that time.
Charity Smith and Vanessa Facemire are graduate assistants at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron.
