Do you remember how to twiddle your thumbs? Do you know anyone who still does it?

Sadly, I think this pastime has gone the way of the Macarena. (VH1’s #1 “One Hit Wonder” of All Time, by the way.)

I would guess that some teens these days don’t even know what thumb-twiddling is. Odd, isn’t it? I almost wish they did. Maybe it would improve teen driving, as an alternative, handy activity for their thumbs besides texting on their cell phones.

There has been a lot of publicity lately about teen driving and texting. Congress is working on a national ban, not just for teen driving but for everybody. With good reason. Read these teen driving statistics:

• Eighty percent of teens surveyed by AAA said teen driving and texting is a dangerous distraction.
• Half of the survey group said, even if there were a national ban, it wouldn’t stop their teen driving and texting.
• Teen driving is a risky activity. Studies show teen driving and texting causes more accidents than teen drinking.
• Teen driving and texting is twice as likely to cause an accident than teen driving and talking on a cell phone.

What has me most concerned is that teen driving and texting seems like an addictive habit. Receiving or sending text messages while teen driving is not necessary; they just do it without thinking. I’ve read reports of teens admitting to sending and receiving hundreds, if not thousands of texts daily. Do you want your teen driving with a cell phone in their hands?

So, back to the thumb twiddling: That is a habit too, but one much less likely to kill a teen driving. Think about it: Do you think you’ll ever read the newspaper headline:

• “Teen Driving While Thumb-Twiddling Dies from Carelessness”

Substitute “Teen Driving While Texting” and it’s a much more likely scenario.

There’s no denying thumb-twiddling is safer than teen driving and texting. First, you don’t really have to concentrate. Teen driving and texting requires the full use of one and sometimes two hands. With thumb-twiddling really all you need is your thumbs. You have the remainder of the hands free to – however awkwardly – grip the steering wheel.

Second, thumb-twiddling doesn’t require a lot of concentration. Most people can do it without thinking. That’s not the case with teen driving and texting.

Here are my top strategies to stop teen driving and texting:

Top 5 Ways to Avoid Teen Driving and Texting

1. Thumb twiddling
2. Nail biting
3. Finger snapping
4. Sign language
5. Wear mittens (Teen driving is possible with mittens. Teen driving while texting is not)

Of course, it’s all avoidance therapy; keeping a teen driving smarter by making them do something less distracting.

The teen driving game on this website might be more effective.

This brief game off the New York Times website simulates the teen driving/texting experience, without the danger. Plus, the teen driving gets a rating at the end to see how they faired. FYI: I failed horribly.

In the battle against teen driving and texting, we may be making some progress. An annual survey in Texas showed teen driving and texting is actually down slightly in that state. Almost 20,000 teen drivers living in urban areas were asked if they combine teen driving and texting. 47 percent “Yes” last year. 42 percent “Yes” this year.

Teen Driving and Texting: Baby Steps

Set an example. Be a parent.

• Do you drive and text or talk on the phone at the same time?
• Did you see the graphic British-made public service announcement about teen driving and texting on YouTube? Would you make your kids watch it?
• What ground rules have you set down about your teen driving with their phone? Is it effective?
• Would you have the courage to take your teen driver’s phone away?

Share your teen driving story, and maybe save a life.

And while you’re at it, let me know if you can text with mittens on.

About Teen Driving, Texting Video

A short, but violent, video about the dangers of teen driving and texting has become a top viral video, and has kept both the media and social network sites chattering, since it was first posted on YouTube in early September.
The film, which includes a graphic, but realistic auto crash reenactment, was contracted by a British police department and was originally 30 minutes long. It was produced last year. The movie was shown to high school students as a public service announcement. And, according to its producer, it was meant to shock and elicit a reaction.

As it stands now on the Internet, the teen driving video is edited to four minutes long. But some would say it’s long enough to make a teen driver or a worried parent ill.

A girl, driving two friends, is texting and sways off the road, eventually involving three autos in the chain reaction accident. There is bloodshed, the sounds of crushing bones, and suffice it to say an unhappy ending for the teen. Within minutes, the mood of the teen driving goes from giggles to stunned silence as she is airlifted from the scene.

Peter Watkins-Hughes, the writer and director of the video, is not backing down from the controversy. Young people, he said, because of television and video games, are desensitized in many cases to the sight of blood and death. It will take a hard hit, in a place where they are vulnerable, to make teen driving and texting an important topic of daily discussion.

Watkins-Hughes seems to be getting his intended reaction. A sampling of on-line comments:

·         Some viewers are commenting that the clip is so graphic it’s laughable.  Then again, a lot of teen driving videos are violent, and teens don’t want to let on that an adult has hurt or deceived them.

• Some bloggers are convinced that the whole thing is real and the individuals really died. It looks real enough, except for the multiple camera angles, expert sound quality and slow motion segments.
• Many are complaining that the teen driving and texting habit is foolish. Some teen drivers are promising never to text while teen driving again and appealing to others to make the same pledge.

Car crashes are the number one cause of death in youth. Any accident that you see, there’s close to a two-thirds chance there was a teen driving.  Controlled road tests of teen driving and texting showed that, the average text, takes 4.7 seconds. When the teen driving is taking his eyes off the road for 4.7 seconds at 55 mph, that’s the length of a football field.

Of course, not all texting accidents are the result of teen driving. Adults do it too.

There is a massive campaign growing on the federal level, to outlaw driving and texting. It’s a matter that the individual states must decide. Several states have already passed laws to the effect. It probably won’t be long before driving-and-texting laws will be in effect across the nation.

Perhaps then the teen driving statistics will begin to change.

I was visiting my sister in Pensacola the other day, because her 18-year-old son was on a break from college. Jesse is my godchild and my pride and joy. And Jesse – at least by my personal standards – is a teen driving novice.

She had invited the two of us to stay for a grand Italian dinner of lasagna and, let me tell you, I was looking forward to it. While Jesse spent the afternoon as any college boy would – teen driving to visit old friends – my sister and I shopped for ingredients, spent an hour or two with her card club, then returned to her home to prepare for the feast.

About 4 p.m. Jesse called to check in and – oddly – this teen driving out there on the roads for only an hour or so, asked what was for dinner. I looked at his Mom puzzled, and she quickly responded with that nimble smile: “It’s that damn ADHD.”

With all the publicity today focused on the dangers of teen driving, including teen drinking, teen drugs, teen texting; where’s all the talk about the dangers of teen driving and ADHD?

I knew my nephew’s Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was a problem in grade school, when daily homework lessons were a test of patience. But now I wondered: how is this teen driving with this condition?

Learning how to drive is an important lesson in teen safety. Teen driving in general is a challenge, what with the horrendous distractions of cell phones and text messages these days. We worry about teen drugs, teen drinking, teen speeding. We can lecture and avoid these, but what about when you have a teen driving under circumstances he cannot control? In essence, a disability, a handicap: ADHD, combined with teen driving, can be a deadly combination.

Road accidents are the top cause of death of young people, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and distractions are the cause of more than half of teen driving crashes. A teen driving without focus is a date with disaster. A teen driving with ADHD just can’t help himself.

ADHD is the result of an over stimulated brain. Suffers have described the feeling as though their minds are going all over the place, like a strobe light at some psychedelic disco. Would you want a teen driving under those conditions behind you on the highway at 70 mph?

It may be a fault, but I am not one to keep my feelings to myself. I told my sister we should get Jesse some guidance and education about teen driving distractions. I looked up ADHD and teen driving on the Internet and found some very informative articles. It seems we can improve the odds of disaster with teen driving and ADHD.

ADHD is a lifetime disorder, almost sure to show its symptoms beyond the teen driving years. Parents: Read below for some helpful tips about teen driving with ADHD.  Seek a support group. You can get help at CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) at www.chadd.org.

Keep Your Thumbs on the Steering Wheel!

Text messaging is a nationwide teen driving menace.

Eight out of 10 of all teen driving crashes are attributed to driver distraction, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. There’s no telling how many of those teen drivers specifically named texting as their distraction, but consider this.

Last year, 900 children, ages 15 to 19, were surveyed about teen driving. Nearly 75 percent of them admitted that cell phone texting was their biggest threat to safety while driving. Even with that knowledge, almost half of the group said that they still text and drive simultaneously.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out, that adds up to big trouble. Teen drivers are aware of the dangers associated with texting-while-driving, but they are unwilling to stop.

Government Intervention

Someone wants to make teen drivers keep their hands on the wheel and off their keypads. It’s the government.

First there was President Barack Obama’s “beer summit,” just a friendly conversation between guys about race discrimination. Now his administration is proposing a “texting-while-driving summit.”

No question, in both cases everyone would agree something needs to be done, but no one is quite sure of the grand plan that will accomplish it.

Here’s what the government is thinking:

Fourteen states have passed some sort of texting while driving ban. But, considering the sobering teen driving statistics (Mile for mile, teen drivers are four times more likely to have an accident than older drivers), that’s not good enough. So the federal government wants to take matters into its own hands.

One possibility is that it will strongly encourage states to make it illegal to text or e-mail while operating a motor vehicle. The carrot at the end of the stick is federal highway funding. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggests the feds cut, by 25 percent, a state’s annual allotment of road funds if it doesn’t comply. Hello, national drunken driving ban, reinvented.

Parents recognize this little game of mind aerobics. We may have even tried something like it in our home, for teen driving. The authority figure responds to undesirable behaviors with the threat of withdrawing support. Parents also know that this tactic often works. Read the rest of this entry »

Study Asks Teens About Risky Behaviors

I hate it when people spend a whole lot of money on a study, and the results just restate the obvious.

In the July issue of the respected magazine “Pediatrics” is the synopsis of a recent survey. Researchers tried to figure out why teens get involved in risky behaviors, like erratic teen driving.

Don’t waste your time running down to the bookstore. I’ll share the conclusion: It turns out some of them just might be depressed.

Duh! Like teenagers aren’t supposed to be susceptible to emotional/psychological disorders like everyone else in humankind?

Researchers interviewed more than 20,000 kids in grades 7 through 12, and 15 percent of them had a bleak view of their futures. They said they did not expect to see the age of 35. As a result of this black-cloud thinking, the article suggests, they got into fights, had unprotected sex, drove recklessly, abused drugs or alcohol and/or contemplated suicide.

What a narrow and naïve concept. What this article is not saying is what is significant to me.

One: All teens get involved in risky behaviors.

Two: Do the math. One-hundred percent, minus 15 percent. That leaves 85 percent of young people who don’t have depression to blame. They are simply willful and ignorant. Know-it-all teens who think they’re 10 feet tall and bulletproof.

I’ve got 18 years as an educator; twelve, by choice, teaching in the high schools. I like these kids because they keep me on my toes. I do my research, talk with colleagues and try to get in the heads of these 14- to 18-year-olds.

Anyone who thinks they’re going to pinpoint some medical phenomenon, some protein deficiency, some specific reason why kids make bad choices is chasing shadows. Brilliant men and women have walked this road before us and haven’t been able to figure it out, other than to conclude that it’s immaturity. Read the rest of this entry »