John Rosemond, the parenting-advice columnist, recently posed this question to parents of teens: Would you allow your son or daughter to participate in an activity that had a one in 10,000 chance of death? To a person, the parents said no.

Then Rosemond revealed that the activity he was talking about was driving.

The government, insurance companies, and highway safety analysts and advocates have collected mountains of data about driving, and the numbers they report vary somewhat, but I think I’m on safe ground to say that there are approximately 9,000,000 teen drivers in the United States, and annually about 6,000 die in crashes and 400,000 are seriously injured (and that is just drivers; passengers, other drivers, and pedestrians are hurt also, but let’s stick with drivers for the moment). These numbers equate to a one in 1,500 chance of death for teen drivers and a one in 14 chance of a serious injury.

But, as Mark Twain alluded to when he wrote about “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” these averages tell an incomplete and misleading story. As the saying goes, if I have one foot in an ice bucket and one on a bed of hot coals, on average I am comfortable, but that’s not the whole story. Applied to teen driving, these calculations of average hide the fact that even the best-trained, law-abiding teens are at risk (maybe Rosemond picked one in 10,000 to represent the most careful teen drivers) but there are several factors, behaviors while driving, that elevate the risk far above these scary-enough-as-is averages.

Teen driving always involves what experts call “baseline dangers” – see my 9/15/09 post entitled “There Is No Such Thing As A Safe Teen Driver.” The brains of teens do not yet fully appreciate risk and danger; teens lack the experience and judgment essential to driving; and after getting their licenses, whenever they drive on roads or to places they have not seen before, teens are simultaneously learning to drive and to navigate. In addition, they may be driving a vehicle entirely different from the one in which they learned to drive. As a driving instructor once told to me, “We train them in a Ford Taurus on local streets in the suburbs, and then their first trip is to drive an SUV on the MassPike into downtown Boston.” Thus, if we were to prepare a safety scale for teen drivers and assign a label to each tier, the lowest, safest level would be “At Risk,” not “Safe.”

The point is that for teens, the dangers start at “at risk” and go up from there. It is impossible to rank these risk-elevating factors or assign them point totals, because each factor has its own variations and levels – speed and blood alcohol level, for example. We do have approximations, however, such as the recent study concluding that drivers who text are 23 times more likely to crash than those who don’t. My purpose here is only to make parents aware of that there are factors that spike the punchbowl, so to speak:

• drugs, alcohol, and anything that impairs reflexes and judgment;
• distracted driving (texting, cellphones, Ipods, other electronic devices);
• speeding;
• passengers;
• failure to use seat belts; and
• bad weather and night driving.

Other factors with documented risk-enhancing consequences are fatigue, emotion (“road rage”), and any other reckless behavior.

These factors make the averages discussed above virtually meaningless. If the safest teen driver is at risk and the average teen driver has a one in 1,500 chance of dying behind the wheel, these higher-risk factors push the odds of a serious crash into categories that could be called “Waiting to Happen” or “Imminent.” Then, if a teen driver combines one or more of these higher risk factors, the relevance of these averages diminishes even further because the likelihood of a debilitating crash goes even higher: alcohol and texting, speeding and passengers, drug use and no seat belts, etc.

To bring the point back to Mr. Rosemond: bear in mind and explain to your teens that the statistical, average likelihood of them getting into a serious crash is high to begin with, but there are behaviors and choices that can transform that average into a virtual certainty.

In recent weeks the Wall Street Journal has featured a series of personal advice columns written jointly by its San Francisco bureau chief Steve Yoder and his college-bound, eighteen-year-old son Isaac. In one recent column, Steve offered advice to Isaac about how to succeed in college, while Isaac counseled his younger brother about how to succeed in high school. Isaac’s Point No. 8: “Obtain your driver’s license early and make use of it. It will extend your boundaries and your freedom.”

It’s hard to argue with that advice, isn’t it? What Isaac says is true. Getting a driver’s license is a major step from childhood to young adulthood. Having a license allows teens to travel to school and extracurricular activities, get and hold a job, explore new places, broaden their knowledge of geography, and gain new perspectives on where and how people live and work. And let us not forget or deny that having a license also enables teens the opportunity if not the freedom to break away from the real or imagined shackles that parents, police, and school administrators impose on them.

Without knowing, I assume that Isaac’s experience in getting his license was uneventful and a considerable source of pride to his parents, and probably a convenience in a family with a younger sibling who regularly needs transportation.

So, with all these allures and benefits in a teen getting a driver’s license, why did Isaac’s advice (which probably was read mostly by parents, since I doubt many teens read the Journal) make me shudder?

Because, unfortunately, there is no such thing as a safe teen driver. While “earlier” licensing eliminates boundaries and creates opportunities for education, employment and exploration, it also elevates the risk of a disabling or fatal crash.

Why? Because teen drivers, no matter how well-intentioned, trustworthy and respectful, schooled in safe driving laws, and thoroughly trained in how to safely operate a car, do not have and cannot obtain two essential elements of safe driving: a brain that quickly and accurately perceives and responds to risk and danger, and judgment to deal with fast-moving and ever-changing situations that every driver faces every time he or she gets behind the wheel. The brains of teens are not yet fully developed and, driving experts say, driving judgment requires three to five years of on-the-road experience.

Thus, the singular piece of advice that I offer to parents of teen drivers: yes, having your teen get a driver’s license “earlier” has many benefits, but don’t ignore, discount, or overlook the heightened risks.

In future posts I will delve in more detail into what every parent of a teen driver should know about the biology and chemistry of the underdeveloped brain of a teenager. I am not a doctor, scientist, or traffic safety professional, but here is the basic fact: In the brain, one chemical called dopamine stimulates needs and desires for excitement, and one called serotonin alerts the body to risk and prompts defensive actions. In the brains of teens, dopamine far outweighs serotonin. As one doctor has explained, dopamine is “the gas” and serotonin is “the brakes,” and teens are mostly gas and very little brake. Applied to driving, this chemical imbalance, which persists into the mid-twenties, means that teen drivers do not recognize hazards or assess the risk or danger in a car’s maneuver or in a complex traffic situation, and so their reactions are often late and their decisions poor. Only time and maturity, the completion of physical development of the brain and thousands of hours behind the wheel, can overcome these barriers to safe driving.

“Safe,” of course, is a relative term. All driving is risky. Statistics show unequivocally that drivers aged 35 to 49 are the safest; they have the lowest crash rates. Their brains are fully developed, their combination of experience and good reflexes is the best of any driver group, and they have the greatest personal and professional reasons to drive safely. Middle-aged drivers are safer, not safe. Teen drivers are at significantly greater risk.

In writing this blog, my goal is not to be a spoilsport or to deny the reality that for most teens and many parents, getting a license is a holy grail. I don’t deny that a driver’s license can help a teen with school, a job, maturity, and social development. But my advice to parents is to make sure that the benefits don’t distract or blind us from the risks of teen driving, which are immutable and substantial. Good parenting decisions about when to entrust a teen with car keys are those that balance the benefits with the risks.

WHY A SAFE TEEN DRIVING BLOG FOR PARENTS?

MY REASONS AND MY PLAN

In the post on this blog entitled, “How I Became An Advocate For Safe Teen Driving.” I have explained the personal odyssey that led to my immersion in this issue and my becoming a “message spreader,” if you will.

But why a blog? Well, I surveyed the Internet and the blogosphere for “safe teen driving.” The blogs that I found fall generally into these categories:

• by parents, providing basic tips on instruction;
• by driving instructors affiliated with a driving school;
• by personal injury lawyers (as a public service, of course!);
• by public officials discussing a specific state’s teen driving laws;
• by providers of commercial products, such as GPS systems; and
• by health care providers and injury prevention professionals.

Thus, I have found no blog written specifically by a parent for parents of teen drivers and focusing on good, safe, parent decision-making about when and how they should supervise teen driving, as opposed to providing instruction on how to handle a vehicle.

Second, my two years of studying teen driving has led me to these realities:

• Driving is the leading cause of death in the United States of people under age 20;
• Much of the literature available to parents focuses on teaching teens to operate a vehicle and provides only cursory warnings about “being careful”;
• In fact, our culture, through advertising and entertainment, more regularly glorifies speeding and risky driving than highlights its dangers;
• With parents and families so busy, scheduled, and stressed for time, good decisions about teen driving are too often overtaken by convenience;
• While no one can dictate to a parent how to raise his or her teenager, parents of teen drivers should make their decisions – and push back against their demanding, insistent teens when necessary – based on a full appreciation of driving’s dangers; and
• From my experience as the father of a teen who died while driving, as well as my other safe teen driving activities in the past two years, I believe I have a platform and credentials to be a credible source on these issues.

My plan is to post a new article on the 1st and 15th day of each month. Listed below are the topics I intend to write about, in approximately the order I will tackle them, although the list and the order may change as the blog develops and parents comment on what is most helpful to them. Thus, after my first post, entitled “Why There Is No Such Thing As A Safe Teen Driver,” I will address the following topics:

• The Difference Between “Purposeful” and “Recreational” Driving
• Baseline Dangers Of Teen Driving, And Factors That Enhance The Risk
• How to Negotiate A Parent-Teen Contract
• How to Manage Nighttime Curfews and Exceptions
• How to Prepare and Keep A Driving Instruction Training Log
• Passengers: The Underestimated And Misunderstood Risks
• Parent Attitudes About Teen Driving
• Electronic Devices and Dangerous Games
• Choosing The Best Car For A Teen
• Teens’ “Need for Speed”
• Why Doesn’t Teen Driving Literature Warn Parents About Dangers?
• Why Do We Build Cars That Go More Than 80 mph?
• Challenges For Police In Enforcing Teen Driving Laws
• Insurance Companies and Policies Covering Teen Drivers
• Teen Drivers And The Cost of Gasoline
• Tickets, Citations, Court Appearances, Convictions, Suspensions, and Revocations

I hope that these posts will provide parents of teen drivers with useful perspectives.