Teen Driving

I’m as concerned as the next guy about this country’s teen driving problem. Close to a half million teens each year are treated in the emergency room as the result of motor vehicle accidents. Five thousand die.

I wouldn’t want it to happen to someone I love. I wouldn’t want it to happen to a stranger.

But to think that, armed with a “teen driving contract,” you might be able to save even one young person from a wreck and pluck them from the jaws of death, is simply ridiculous.

 You can find all sorts of Teen Driving Contracts on the Internet. They usually include sections with the “dos” and “don’ts” of teen driving, including seat belts, drinking alcohol, obeying the rules of the road and texting while driving (I’ll assume you know which are the ‘dos’ and which are the ‘don’ts). Consequences and rewards usually follow in the teen driving contract.

This is by no means a novel idea. Teen driving contracts are similar to those “say no to drugs” programs in the grade schools, the homework expectations that come home from the high school at the beginning of the year and those purity pledges some kids sign.

At some point, we’ve all had to sign a legal document with $10 words: “I acknowledge that I have read the (fill-in-the-blank) statement of rules and expectations and understand the therein aforementioned…” Whatever.

Rules are important because they promote uniformity and predictability. Contracts are important from a legal standpoint. Should either party breach some fine detail of the agreement, it outlines the means of recovery or compensation. Should someone get hurt or killed, it determines the degree of liability.

So, where’s the “teeth” in a teen driving contract? You can’t sue him, he has no money. You can’t beat him, it’s illegal. You can’t ground him. Well, I suppose you could, but, “Ooohhhh, Scary.”

You take away his keys. Please. I don’t need a document to tell me when that’s necessary.

If a teen driver is going to break the rules, he’s going to do it regardless of whether he has a verbal understanding with his parents or one that is written – and I don’t care if it’s legal, written by an attorney and notarized.

When you’ve got a kid barreling down the road on a Friday night with a car full of buddies, music blaring, do you think he’s going to get a sudden shock of reality and think:

 “Oh my. I’ve got to slow down and pay attention here. I’ll be in violation of my driving contract and I could lose my privileges.”

No. He needs a whack upside the head. He needs the wail of a police siren behind him. Even a frightened shout or the barfing of a passenger might get him to lighten up on the gas pedal. But it’s not going to be that piece of paper.

I’ll put a GPS tracking device on my car. I’ll let my teen driver know it’s there. Going out with buddies? Have a good time. Remember the rules. I’ll check your story when you get back.

One teen driving Web site points out that we need a teen driving contract because it prevents the teen from using the lame excuses: “I thought you said…” and “I thought you meant…”

There’s always going to be ifs, ands, buts and special occasions when you’re raising a teen driver. What about Homecoming night? What if the drive-in lets out at 12:45 a.m.? The game went into overtime?

“Sure dear. I’ll trust you to do that. Here, let’s go draw up an addendum to the contract.”

Sometimes I think parents are so caught up in this group therapy mentality that they doubt their own instincts. Kids aren’t made with cookie cutters. So why try to tackle the teen driving issue with a one-size-fits-all contract?

I am not my child’s dean of students. I am not his employer, his parole officer or his loan originator.

I am the parent. I make rules, you follow. You think they’re unfair? Let’s talk. No lawyers.

Everyday a teenager somewhere in the United States walks into a local Department of Motor Vehicles, completes a written exam, goes through a behind-the-wheel course, then gets a goofy picture taken of themselves. Even if the picture captures a zit-faced and confused looking person it is a day of joy for that individual. The teen goes through all of this so they can receive something that means everything from increased popularity to freedom. A driver’s license. This one little laminated piece of paper provides a teen driver with a sense of independence, but for the parent an additional sense of fear…and increased insurance rate policy. However, the truth is parents have valid reason to be concerned about their teen’s new driving privileges. According to the statistics, when it comes to driving teenagers are dumber than a rooster.

Everyday a teen gets their license, but that same day two teens get into a reported motor vehicle accident. Although most teenage accidents are usually minor accidents, ranging from fender benders to running into or over a curb, they still show that most teens lack some thing called “paying attention”.  Maybe it is from the years of video games, texting, or Red Bull, but it is obvious for any parent of a teen driver that the uncontrollable sense of “worry” has some validation. Everyday, in every state, in every city, you can find a car full of teens driving with the windows down, music up, phones in hand, and eyes on everything but the car in front of them. Then you will run into the occasional semi-responsible teen with just the music up. They are responsible enough to pay attention to the car in front of them but probably are not paying attention to the one behind them. Teens today take multi-tasking to dangerous levels. Never was this more apparent then when I read a story about a teen driver in Arkansas who hit a bus full of nuns. Thankfully, no one was injured, but the fact that a teenage girl, who was texting, and changing a song on her I-pod, and putting on lip-gloss, hit a big yellow bus in front of her is additional proof of the ever-growing lack of “paying attention”. Did I mention the bus was parked?

Not all teens are dumber than a rooster. Occasionally television will show national spelling competitions where 16 year old kids spell words like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” I bet those kids are responsible drivers. …or maybe not. Juiced up on enough Red Bull and Ritalin and I am sure even the most responsible teen driver can get lost staring at a shiny billboard, setting the stage for a possible serious accident.

The bottom line is nobody wants to see their child, their teen driver, or their loved ones get involved in a potential serious accident. Everyone should live to be 100 years old so they can see their picture on the morning news and get that letter from the President that says “Your 100..congratulations!”. it is clear that there are many dynamics involved with safe teen driving. Some school programs are effective. Some are not. Sometimes parental influence is helpful. Sometimes it is viewed by the teen as over-bearing. Sometimes a “How is my teen driving” bumper sticker is effective. Sometimes you receive prank phone calls at midnight about how your car was seen driving into Mexico at dangerous speeds, and of course you hear teens laughing in the background during the call. The technology era has definitely added more hazards for teen drivers to obstacle around and it does not appear things will change. Unless you are Amish then none of this applies to you. However, if you were Amish you would probably be in a corn field or building a barn, not online viewing teen driving BLOGs.

Any parent who knows of any great programs or strategies to promote and sustain good driving habits with a teenage driver please feel welcomed to leave comments and suggestions. The goal is to have safe teen driving everywhere.

Speeding and Driving. There are plenty of other “action” verbs that are dangerous when combined. But when it comes to teen driving, for me, those are plenty fearsome.

I’ve got a teen driving at home, a novice driver, and a boy. Put any boy behind the wheel of his newly-acquired wheels, peers beside him, Mom and Dad in the rear-view mirror, and the open road ahead. It adds up to big-time temptation to see how fast she’ll fly. While you’re at home fretting, the kids are out bragging to each other about how fast they got the odometer to reach and the close scrapes they had with police.

I don’t know if there’s any evidence to bear it out, but I did a little teen driving survey with friends and most of them back me in my belief that boys are more likely to speed and deliberately drive recklessly than girls. Forgive the stereotype, but it was true in my family. I think girls are more interested in chatting on the phone, or singing along to the iPod with passengers, than showing off brawn and power.

Little nuances of X and Y chromosomes make men confident and aggressive and women the great communicators. It carries on into adulthood. Why should teen driving be any different?

 Adults have been preaching to teen drivers about driving too fast ever since there have been teens, and adults, and wheels.  In our own time, we’ve all known of a teen driving way too fast for conditions, who either killed or injured himself or someone else. Eventually you grow up. You realize you’ve got some important people to go home to at night, and speed isn’t so cool.

I don’t know what to do except to nag to my teen driver about obeying the speed limit. As soon as my back is turned, he’ll be planning his next outing with his buddies.

I wonder, are there still laws against “burning rubber”?

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Teen Driving is a Phase We All Must Survive

When I was a young and only semi-responsible gent in the late 1970s, there was one sure way to get my palms sweating and my ego deflated at the same time -  and it had nothing to do with getting rejected by a pretty girl on the disco floor (although that would work too!)

It was seeing those red flashing lights in my rear view mirror, and the impromptu meeting that inevitably followed, between nervous teen driver and a not-too-friendly community traffic enforcement officer.

Some 30 years later, my perspective about teen driving has changed dramatically, (and so has my social life). Now I fear that scenario with the police officer is happening with my teen driver behind the wheel. Read the rest of this entry »

GPS Tracking via Cell Phone, Self-Contained GPS Unit, or Bumper Sticker?

Count all the drivers involved in fatal automobile crashes in 2007, and 13 percent of them will have been young people, age 15-20. In that same year, teen drivers accounted for 15 ercent of all motorists involved in police-reported crashes. These are teen driving statistics that should frighten any parent into action.

There are three primary devices available on the market today that parents are using in their crusade to raise safer teen drivers. All three are meant to accomplish the same things: make their children accountable for their teen driving decisions, realize the dangers of unsafe driving and show that they can responsibly operate a powerful vehicle with precious cargo. Read the rest of this entry »

Shortly after a teenager earns their first driver’s license, a sad reality sinks in: Car insurance costs are sky-high.

It’s no secret that new drivers in their teens and 20s have the highest rates of insurance. All the major insurance carriers base their rates on risk factors, and statistically, teen drivers are poor drivers. Read the rest of this entry »

During the non-politically correct era of my teen driving experiences, the National Safety Council launched an advertising campaign that cautioned drivers to “Watch Out For The Other Guy”.  The message was pretty straightforward:  while you may be a safe driver who obeys all the rules of the road, there’s always some dauntless dude who believes to be above them.

Over the decades, adult apprehensions surrounding the issues of teen driving have changed as little as teens themselves.  And although cars today come with more safety features and although rules about teen driving are more rigidly enforced, millennium teens are bombarded with far more electronics to divert and distract, especially while driving.  It is not surprising, then, that driving distractions are becoming as serious a threat to teen safety as drugs and alcohol when it comes to inhibiting driving abilities. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve heard the term “helicopter parents”, right? Well, for those of you who haven’t, a “helicopter parent” is a parent who constantly hovers over her kids, whose blades, so to speak, are always in rotation mode a few feet above her child’s head. “Helicopter parent” is a millennialism made possible by technological breakthroughs like cell phones and something called GPS tracking.

We all know how cell phones work, so let’s focus on GPS tracking, and one of its many tentacles, teen tracking. Without getting too technical, GPS (Global Positioning System) is governed by satellite signals that track the precise position of a location. GPS tracking is available in different applications called passive and real time, and the Tracking Key, a passive GPS tracking device, is an especially helpful tool when it comes to monitoring teen driving habits. Read the rest of this entry »

Call me too practical, call me too sensible, but I would never have considered a bag of cat litter an appropriate Holiday gift for a new teen driver.  Like—where have I been?

Then I got to thinking about cat litter.  Besides the obvious purpose it serves, cat litter provides traction on a slippery, snow covered surface—an essential component to any emergency road kit!

Holiday Gifts For Teen Drivers:

The items that teen drivers like to bring along for the ride are generally distracting:  cell phones, iPods, MP3 Players and the like.  So is there anything out there we can give our teenagers drivers, items that encourage, rather than undermine, driver safety precautions this winter? Read the rest of this entry »

NewsChannel5.com, Nashville, TN, recently aired a feature about parents resorting to something called GPS tracking  to keep tabs on their teen drivers.  The verdict issued by parents seemed to favor the increasingly popular GPS tracking devices.  The teen jury, however, is still out on this one.

To plant the seed of suspicion in the problematic subject of teen driving, the commentator poses the question to parents:  “Ever wonder if your teenagers are somewhere they shouldn’t be?  Are they telling the truth?”

This is followed by a hearty reassurance: “Now, if they’re driving the car, you can check!”

So here’s this little GPS tracking gadget that gets installed somewhere in or on her car.  She informs the parental units that she’s going over to Nicole’s house to work on their history project, but instead she heads for the mall and all the good sales that await her.  Under more primitive circumstances, your teen driver might get away with it, but now—BUSTED!  Thanks to the mapping capabilities of the GPS tracking unit, Mom and Dad can access a detailed report that not only shows where their teen driver’s vehicle has been, but how many miles were driven and at what speed!  And unlike cigarettes, alcohol or other contraband, this device can be purchased right off the shelf at just about any auto parts store—no I.D. required.

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