Driver education has long been the butt of many a joke. When Mary Sue Terry campaigned for governor of Virginia a few years ago, she was fond of saying that her hometown was so small that driver ed and sex ed were taught in the same car. And it seems as though every baby boomer can recall a stout football coach screaming into a bullhorn and chasing after the one student who couldn't get his white Ford out of reverse until every orange cone in the high school parking lot had been flattened into the gravel.

These days, driver education is less an object of ridicule, but that's because fewer people are taking it.

At the peak of DE's popularity a generation ago, 14,000 high schools in all but a few states were teaching more than 2 million student drivers each year. However, its effectiveness wasn't evaluated until 1978, when federal transportation officials undertook a longitudinal study of 18,000 student drivers in DeKalb County, Georgia.

Periodic project reports indicated that not only did DE courses appear to have little positive impact on safety but also they might actually be harmful to students, who often became overconfident in their driving ability and exercised less caution. Parents of those taking driver education also tended to spend less time practicing with their children and were more likely to let them drive at night - a key factor in accidents.

Given this evidence, as well as the expense associated with the programs, DE was an easy target when states went looking to trim budgets during the early 1980s recession. Since then, nearly 20 states have removed DE from licensing requirements, and about half of all school districts dropped the courses after losing state funding for them. Many of those that still require driver education have modified it --keeping classroom instruction, for instance, while reducing or eliminating on-road training - or left it up to the private sector to offer courses.

But point to recent statistics that show the overwhelming cause of teen accidents is driver error, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety have begun a crusade to resurrect driver education. "When you realize that 40 percent of 16-year-old males have been involved in police-reported crashes, it is obvious that something needs to be done," says Stephanie Faul of the FTS.

Even if that figure seems disputable, citizens and policy makers alike are well aware that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15-to 20-year-olds, and few would disagree with Faul's conclusion. Of course, there are no simple answers to the problem. But the current angle of attack focuses on implementing driver-training courses that place as much emphasis on reducing risky behavior as on perfecting parallel parking.

The first National Conference on High School Driver Education, which convened in 1949, recommended that students receive 30 hours of classroom learning and six hours of driving instruction. This formula is still the norm across the nation, even though safety experts say nearly 5,000 miles of driving experience are necessary for a student to become an "average" driver. And the textbooks used in DE courses - typically a summary of the state's driving laws, not a handbook for safer driving - have come under fire as well.

"DE has had its problems," acknowledges Allen Robinson, president of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association. "The way it was taught was not done correctly." Indeed, learning how to operate a car is only one facet of overall training: addressing teenagers' inexperience, inattention and sense of invincibility is now widely considered to be an even more fundamental issue.

Michael F. Smith, a research psychologist at the NHTSA who authored a 1994 report for Congress about DE, notes that teens are more likely than other drivers to speed, run red lights, make illegal turns and tailgate. They also perceive that they have less to lose by engaging in reckless behavior and more to gain in the way of peer approval. He believes that DE should focus on two objectives: improving the skills teens use to estimate risk and reducing teens' willingness to take risks.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which aims to "reinvent" DE, has distributed a model curriculum outline to lawmakers and educators. Recommended reforms include less emphasis on mechanics such as turning and traffic laws. Instead, safety issues - identifying a safe distance between cars, road hazards and vehicle defects, as well as speeding and driving while intoxicated - are given equal weight.

Although states have yet to make sweeping revisits to driver education, legislators are showing increased interest in providing better ways to introduce young drivers to the skill. At least 14 states considered DE-related bills this year.

A measure introduced by state Representative Terry Haskins of South Carolina, for example, would have required 16-year-olds to take a DE course in order to obtain a license, as is the case in half of the states. But "there was not enough of a feeling that this is something we should do," he says.

Although his bill was "dismissed" at the subcommittee level, Haskins is determined to rekindle the issue next year.

In Nebraska, state Senator LaVon Crosby proposed a study of driver safety and DE after a string of accidents last spring resulted in teen fatalities. DE is not mandatory or publicly funded in Nebraska, so students are responsible for paying for a course if they want the training. "Teens are not getting the right kind of education about driving," Crosby says, "and driver's ed is a big part of understanding safety."

The most interesting legislative activity occurred this fall when Michigan repealed its requirement that public schools provide DE classes. But the move was not as against the grain as it might seem. While achieving their goal of reducing education mandates, lawmakers changed the letter but not the spirit of the state'' driver training law: Students must still take lessons in order to obtain a license.

Starting next April, schools that offer the service will get an $80-per-driver reimbursement from the state, but are responsible for making up the difference - roughly $100 - until 1998. At that point, while local schools must match the state's contribution, they can charge students a fee to cover the remaining cost of the program. In places that scrap DE, students can receive an $80 voucher from the state to offset a portion of the cost of private driver training.

In the same bill, Michigan followed the lead of about a dozen other states that have implemented "graduated" licensing programs, which extend the amount of time it takes to qualify for full driving privileges. Michigan's three-tier process begins with a learner's permit for those at least 14 years, nine months old. They must take a training course with road instruction, pass written and vision exams, and cannot driver without an adult.

At age 16, a restricted license can be issued after students complete at least 50 hours of driving with a parent (including 10 hours at night) and pass a road test. Driving unaccompanied between midnight and 5 a.m. unless commuting to or from a job is prohibited.

Finally - and most notably - to get and keep an unrestricted license, a driver must be 17 and not cause an accident or be ticketed for a moving violation for at least six months. "This makes Michigan the leader in the nation in comprehensive driver's training," declared Representative Dan Gustufson, as the bill he sponsored was signed into law.

Kentucky, which began a graduated licensing program October 1, requires all new drivers to practice with a permit for six months, up from 30 days. Permit holders can only drive when accompanied by a licensed adult over 21, and they are banned from driving between midnight and 6 a.m., except to or from work or school or in emergencies. The new law also has a zero-tolerance provision related to blood-alcohol levels and requires all students to take a four-hour safety course or high school DE by age 18.

Several states have seen marked results from graduated licensing laws. California, Oregon and Maryland all have reported decreases of between 5 and 16 percent in crashes involving teens after their programs began. Still, the new approach is not without its detractors.

Last year, Virginia's General Assembly reviewed a study of graduated licensing in other states. The report concluded that such programs were effective in reducing teen accidents, and recommended a minimal crash-free period before a full license is issued. However, Richard Holcomb, the Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner, strongly opposed graduated licensing as an intrusion upon parents' right to regulate their own children. The graduated licensing bill that lawmakers passed this spring became law without the governor's signature.

In a separate effort to curb teen crashes, Virginia lowered the minimum age for a driving permit from 15 years, eight months to 15. The idea was to give students more time to practice driving with adult supervision before they obtain their full licenses. But while acknowledging the good intentions of the measure, some question why the additional handsome question why the additional hands-on-the-wheel experience needs to come at the younger end of the driver-training spectrum, when students are less mature.