It's a pretty effective cycling motivator.
Certainly, when receiving professional instruction, the modified car with at least an extra brake is typical. It's just that most people never get much of this instruction.
If you are under eighteen, states requiring driver's education from a professional driving school (with behind-the-wheel instruction): CA, DL, HI, ID, IA, KS, LA, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MT, NH, NJ, NM (waiver available), NY, NC, OH, PA, SC, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI,
Require the course, but not professional, behind-the-wheel instruction: CT, GA, FL, IL, KY, ME, MO, ND, RI, VA,
Professional instruction not required: AL, AK, AR, CO, IN, NE, NV, OK, OR, SD, TN, WV, WY, DC
So, about half of the country is required to have professional, in-car instruction. Quite common.
Still a huge number of people get no training and even in states that require training, it seems pretty minimal. 6 hours of driving instruction in my current state (WA) doesn't seem like a lot.
I went home and took the family car out on public streets with my Dad.
6 months later, I applied for my license. Simple 15 minute public roads driving test in the same family car.
Driving for the first time was scary -- one of the first streets I went down was one lane with cars parked on each side. Doing that without being used to the car's physical space (it was a large Suburban) is a little crazy.
I felt fairly well prepared for Amsterdam traffic, but still managed to send my car into a spin on a slippery onramp that I underestimated.
Note that we have the added complication that we live in areas with snow, and thus are driving on icy/snowpacked roads for a good portion of the year.
I wondered if it would be cheaper (or more fun!) for dutch residents to take a trip to the US, get a valid drivers license, and bring that back to Europe rather than pay directly for a license there.
I knew one guy who got his license there, and he didn't dare to drive in continental Netherland. He did have a Dutch motor bike license, but he didn't feel qualified to drive a car in real traffic.
I have come to believe that we give out driver's licenses way too easily in the US. One easy, but sadly no longer practical, solution would be to require that the road test is taken on a manual. Driving stick from the beginning gave me so much more awareness and reflexes that have saved me from accidents more than once.
Here in NL, we do distinguish between them: if you learn to drive (and do the exam) in a car with automatic shift, you get an annotation on your driver's license saying you're not allowed to drive a manual-shift car.
A step up is a provisional license that may (depending on state) allow you to drive certain routes (typically to school or work and back, but also sometimes to do essential shopping) unaccompanied.
That makes some sense in areas where traffic is light and distances large.
I think that, in some states, you even can get a provisional license without ever having driven a car (you may have had a learner's permit for a certain period, but they don't check whether you actually used it), but of course, that's extremely unlikely to happen.