Safe Young Drivers: A Guide for Parents and Teens

Tommy

FOREWORD

Being the author of Safe Young Drivers remains a rewarding and surprisingly challenging experience for me, now 15 years after I first completed the manuscript. Originally I had intended the book to be a relatively straightforward self-help tool for parents to give their teens a good start behind the wheel. Now it has evolved into a lifelong personal campaign to combat highway fatalities, which remain alarmingly high.

Consider just this one fact: During the five years beginning in March 2003, when the U.S. military invaded Iraq, until March 2008 as I write this new foreword, almost precisely 4,000 soldiers were killed in combat and related actions. But over that same time period, approximately 32,500 teenagers—more than eight times as many—died on our highways. A death on the road is just as sudden and just as violent as anything experienced in warfare, so we are talking about the violent death of children and young adults.

There are many reasons for this continuing tragedy, but one primary fault lies in the fact that our roads remain dangerous for everyone, and despite this environment many parents give in much too easily to pressure from their teens to obtain a driver’s license on or near their 16th birthday. Reluctantly or eagerly, many parents hand over the keys to their inadequately trained kids. They also give in to pressure to buy vehicles for teens right away—often, flashy and too-powerful vehicles.

Some parents even support beginning the teaching process as early as age 15. They rationalize that they’re giving their kids extra time to learn, and therefore it will make them better young drivers, even though no evidence supports this view.

To the contrary, after 12 years, the facts remain undeniable: Vehicle crashes still claim more teen lives than any other cause, and for the youngest drivers—the ones for whom I wrote this book—the toll remains the highest. Each day you spend using this book, 18 more teens, on average, will die on our highways. About 1,500 will be injured, some disabled for life.

Even worse, teens riding with teens constitute a recipe for disaster. A study by Johns Hopkins University revealed that a 16-year-old driver carrying one passenger is 39 percent more likely to die in a crash than when driving alone. That figure jumps to 86 percent with two passengers and 182 percent with three or more. Seventeen year olds fare nearly as badly.

Such information confirms that Safe Young Drivers is needed now just as much it was the day it was published. It is more than useful information—it is potentially life-saving information.

Since the original publication of the book, I have changed some of the instructional guidelines to reflect improved technology or the results of new research. For example, I now recommend a way of steering favored by driving-safety experts to reduce the chance of injury if the vehicle’s air bag deploys. Based on other discussions, I have changed my advice about where to position the rearview mirrors. I also have adjusted some of the recommended speeds for certain lessons.

I hope you will find this book useful, and I hope you will visit our Web site, www.safeyoungdrivers.com, and I welcome you to email your questions and comments to me at askphil@safeyoungdrivers.com.

Please tell others about Safe Young Drivers. Let’s all keep working to make our highways safer and keep our teens safer on the road.

Drive safely. Be a Lightfoot!

How to Use This Book

In this age of the Internet, cell phones and Blackberrys, books seem to occupy a less-important role in our daily lives. That’s sad, though it’s a reality of modern society and a matter of personal preference. But sometimes books can be very useful, and driving instruction is one such time.

The best place to learn how to drive is on the road, not in front of a video screen or computer monitor. Good skills and road sense develop only through repeated and lengthy exposure to real situations and sensations. And information about driving is most valuable when it can accompany you.

You the parent and you the teen should read this book before getting started, and you should keep it—this being an electronic edition, via your reading device—in the vehicle during the lessons.

Certain sections of the book are intended for parents, while other sections are for teens. There’s also a crossover. Teens can’t use the book while driving, so they should study the relevant sections ahead of time, and parents should help teens through those sections during the lessons.

I have broken down the lessons as much as possible into simple steps, but there is a lot to remember. You both should refer to the book often. There’s an effective way to do this. It’s called Brief/Perform/Debrief. Here’s how it works:

—Before beginning a driving session, both of you should read the relevant text.

—During the lesson, the parent or instructor should refer to the text frequently to make sure the teen covers all of the material and performs the exercises correctly and well.

—After the lesson, both parties should spend a few minutes talking over how the session went. Did the teen understand everything? What went well? Were there difficulties?

Though the paperback edition of Safe Young Drivers contains a Lesson Log, meant to help you record the individual sessions and the teen’s performance, you can compensate by bringing a small notebook with you, or by creating a file for your notes on your handheld device. Use it to keep track of the material covered, the progress made and the problems that appeared.

Last, when all of the lessons have been completed, keep the book handy for quick reference whenever necessary—you never know when it might be useful.

TEN STEPS, FIVE THEMES

This book is about acquiring driving skills, but it’s also about learning and maintaining a good driving attitude. In fact, as we’ll discuss later, good attitude might be even more important than good skills.

This is true particularly during the early driving years, when those skills are still developing. Inexperience can be dangerous on today’s roads, but good attitude can compensate for the lack of skills. That’s why, in addition to 10 steps, there are five basic themes—approaches—to driving the teen should learn. I have introduced them at appropriate times and they appear at various places in the text.

The five themes are:

—CLEAR THE WAY

—LEARN THE LIMITS

—SHARE THE ROAD

—THINK AHEAD

—FEEL THE ROAD

The themes will appear in capital letters whenever they are included in the text, because they represent important information. As the specifics of the individual lessons fade into the past, the themes should linger in the memory. Parents and teens should try hard to retain them.

INTRODUCTION FOR PARENTS

If you’re like most parents, you’ll encounter a moment sooner or later when your child makes a declaration of independence. Through word or deed, your offspring announces that your parental preeminence is over.

A typical statement:

Mom, Dad, you’re so 20 years ago!

Or:

You just don’t understand me!

Or that ultimate insult:

You’re so uncool!

Whatever. The message is clear: No more idolizing parents, no more public displays of affection; in fact no more public anything—unless it’s absolutely necessary.

That inevitable and traumatic event usually arrives when kids reach age 12 or 13, sometimes earlier. It’s a natural part of the process by which a child matures, sooner or later, into an adult. During that period—within which teenagers seem to occupy a universe unto themselves—the parent-child relationship becomes a frequently tense, occasionally explosive tug of war. Try as you might to teach and guide and lead, just as you have been doing all along, suddenly your child isn’t listening. You might even begin to wonder whether he or she has been secretly kidnapped by aliens and replaced with a look-alike monster!

I was constantly reminded of this phenomenon, not only in my own household, but also during the seven years in the 1980s when I taught seventh and eighth graders. It was a great time, some of the most fun I’ve ever had. I liked my students and, mostly, they liked me.

Once in a while, one of them would even confide, Mr. B., (they used to call me) You’re so cool. Not like my parents. They’re awful!

Whenever I’d receive such a compliment, I’d politely thank my young suitor and reply with an invitation:

Come over to my house, I would say. I want you to tell my kids what you just told me.

The remark usually created an expression of befuddlement on the student’s face, but any parent would understand the irony immediately. My own children, of course, were not congratulating me on my coolness. To the contrary, it was all I could do to get them to listen to me. Worse, being seen in public with me would lead to their profound embarrassment. After all, I was their Da-yad!

There is a brief time, however, when this seemingly endless ordeal subsides. It usually happens around age 15. That’s when your child seems suddenly not so defiant, argumentative or stubborn. In fact, he or she begins to pay a little more attention and even respect to you.

It might take you a while to catch on, but your teen has been thinking ahead. He or she has realized that those dreaded parents now possess something very desirable: permission—permission to begin driving.

Among modern teens, the quest for a driver’s license is the equivalent of The Holy Grail. They can pursue it with fervor. At last, no more being driven around by a parent! Besides, all of their friends are driving. At least, that’s what they claim.

So begins a new wrinkle in the parent-child relationship. Kids cajole, promise and bargain, and perhaps they even argue logically and responsibly. Other common tactics include sulking, moaning, pouting, stomping, crying and maybe yelling—whatever it takes to obtain a learner’s permit at the earliest possible time.

In too many cases, the strategy works. Parents get worn down by the constant barrage. Children have the desire and lots of time, a powerful combination, and so they often win against a parent’s better judgment.

I just can’t take the nagging is a common excuse.

All their friends are driving is another one.

I’d rather have them driving than their friends is yet another.

Then there’s the old standard: I just don’t have the time to chauffeur them everywhere.

Sorry, but I don’t sympathize.

Many issues can bring parents and teens into conflict. Drinking, drugs and sex are common flashpoints. All require a high degree of parental responsibility, guidance and even courage.

Driving is different. It is the one area of modern life over which parents have been granted absolute authority. No one under age 18 may obtain a learner’s permit or driver’s license anywhere in the United States without parental permission. Children can protest all they want, but they may not operate an automobile without the written consent of a parent or guardian.

You might dread the issue, but you must make the decision. You are legally responsible, and state governments have been wise to make you so. Consider just this one statistic: Sixteen-year-old drivers are likely to be involved in vehicle crashes up to 12 times as often as any other age group. Although traffic deaths have declined substantially over the past 40 years, 16 is still by far the most dangerous age for drivers.   

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which has studied the subject for many years, motor-vehicle crashes represent the single largest health problem between ages 16 and 19 in the United States. They account for more than one-third of all deaths in this group—about 6,500 per year—and a similar share of injuries.

None of this should come as a surprise. Anyone even moderately aware of the issue knows that the youngest drivers have the most crashes. Back when I was writing this book, one rainy spring afternoon a 16-year-old kid in a light pick-up truck smacked into my parked car. The damage was minor and he was not injured, but the experience is very, very common.

A few years before that, I was driving near my home in Northern Virginia. As I approached an intersection, another teen the same age swerved around a corner and smashed into me. He had lost control of his car. He had been driving only a few months. I ended up with a sore neck and a bump on my head, and he was somewhat traumatized, but otherwise we both were okay.

Others have not been so lucky. The news too frequently contains tragic stories involving young drivers. The challenge is how to get them through their first years unscathed. After age 18, the odds begin to improve—though slowly.

In the United States, teens can obtain drivers’ licenses at a younger