The document contains a comprehensive historical review of the field of driver education, now called driver and traffic safety education, which has been taught in the public schools for more than 30 years. The first of eight chapters traces the early history of safety education from colonial times through the 1940's, including the beginnings of driver education in the mid-1930's. Chapter 2 focuses on contributions to the growth and development of driver and traffic safety education up to 1965 when more than 13,000 schools were giving this type of instruction to over 1,700,000 students. Teacher preparation and certification are discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents the local organization, administration, and supervision of driver education programs which led to the development of State-level policies. The remaining chapters deal with measuring student progress (through knowledge and skill tests, driver attitudes, psychophysical testing, and comparative studies), research, support organizations, and the future outlook (from a 1966 perspective). Appended are a list of high school textbooks, and founding dates of 44 State Driver and/or Safety Education Associations. A 152-item bibliography (with a notation that many of the references are out of print) concludes the document. (Author/MS)