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. (more…)