I launched this blog to provide a perspective that differs from the mainstream literature on teen driving published by motor vehicle departments, driving schools, journalists, and even safety advocates. A recent article posted on www.Edmunds.com, the car buying website, gives me an opportunity to demonstrate this difference.

I will apologize in advance to Scott Memmer for taking issue with his article, “10 Tips for Keeping Your Teen Driver Safe”. To their credit, Memmer and his self-described “automotive journalist” colleagues at Edmunds.com confessed at the beginning of their recent, multi-part Teen Driver Safety Series that they are “human beings who love the smell of cars, the look of cars, the idea of cars . . .”, even as they felt compelled to address teen driving because “no automotive-related topic is more pressing or urgent.” I compliment them for revealing their predispositions and, indeed, the car-loving attitude they bring to their top ten list for parents of teen drivers is consistent with mainstream American advertising: Cars are sold in ads that glorify speed and showcase risky driving that never results in a scratch or dent much less a crash, while the cautionary words “Professional driver, closed course, do not attempt” are relegated to tiny print at the bottom of the screen.

Here are Edmunds.com’s top ten ways to keep your teen drivers safe (I paraphrase; for the full explanation, see the link above):

1. Pay for extra driver training because driver’s ed is “absolutely deplorable.”
2. Spend lots of time with your teen during the learner’s permit phase, even if it’s tense for you.
3. Talk to your teen about safety as you supervise the driving lesson.
4. Don’t yell at your driver until you get home.
5. Review the driving session after it’s over.
6. Keep track of your teen’s passengers.
7. Remind your teen of safety risks.
8. Choose a safe car (discussed in Part Four of the Edmunds.com series).
9. Ride with your teen periodically after licensing to ensure safe driving habits.
10. Have your teen share insurance and other costs.

Well, with all due respect to the automotive professional author, I disagree with the premise of this list and several specifics. The underlying assumption is that teens must and will be allowed to drive when and where they want, and a parent’s job is to counsel them how to do it safely. Except for No. 7, this list does not focus on parent decision-making about whether teens should drive at all, or how parents can control and avoid the specific situation that pose the greatest risks for teens.

I disagree specifically with:

Nos. 1 and 2. See my post, “There Is No Such Thing As A Safe Teen Driver.” No amount of training can make him or her a safe driver.

No. 6. Keeping track of your teen’s passengers is far too mild a warning; newly-licensed drivers with passengers other than a supervising driver are a documented risk.

No. 8. The assumption is that teens should have their own cars, yet a recent study by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, funded by State Farm Insurance and reported by MSNBC.com, shows that one in four serious teen driver crashes involves a teen who is the primary driver of that car. The study concludes that “Giving in to teens’ demands for their own cars can have dangerous consequences.”

No. 9. This strikes me as unrealistic. A teen driver with a parent in the passenger seat will drive cautiously, showing off knowledge of safe driving practices. Perhaps a parent will pick up on subtle errors, but I doubt that a teen who at other times drives recklessly will do so when Mom, Dad, or a guardian is sitting in the front passenger seat.

But the biggest problem with the Edmunds.com list is what’s missing: well-informed, day-by-day, conservative parental decision-making about whether the teen driver should get behind the wheel in the first place. Thus, my Top Ten list for parents:

1. Recognize that all teen drivers are at risk, and be sure that the facts that underlie this reality inform every decision you make as a parent.
2. Educate yourself not just about your state’s teen driving laws, but about the specific dangers of teen driving.
3. Don’t force a teen to obtain a driver’s license for your convenience, and don’t allow a teen who is not ready to drive safely to become licensed.
4. Before your teen is licensed, negotiate and sign a parent-teen driver contract.
5. If within your financial means, enroll your teen in a hazardous-driving situation school, known sometimes as a “high performance class” or more colloquially, a “skid school.”
6. Be sure to train your teens thoroughly in bad weather and night driving before allowing them to drive in those conditions. Driver’s ed in the daytime in the summer followed by unrestricted driving at night or in snow or ice is not adequate training.
7. Pay close attention to the difference between purposeful and recreational driving and either forbid or put strict limits on any driving that might fall into the latter category.
8. Look into the technology that is increasingly available and affordable to monitor your teen’s driving: GPS systems, email alerts if the vehicle exceeds a certain speed, devices that disable cell phones when the car is in gear [all future post topics], etc. If you sense that your teen needs this type of oversight and you can afford it, buy it.
9. If your teen receives a ticket or a license suspension, or is required to undergo retraining, don’t fight it, don’t ask for a continuance of a court date, don’t delay. Let the medicine be administered as soon as possible.
10. Never put your convenience or saving on the cost of gasoline ahead of safety.

Different, huh?

Again, I respect the views of automobile journalists and others whose profession involves the automobile, but parenting teen drivers begins with informed, conservative consideration of when, where, and under what conditions teens should be permitted to drive in the first place. Good vehicle operation skills are simply not enough, and they are certainly not the place to start a list of things that parents can do to keep their teen drivers safe.

Let me say first that in this post, when I refer to “driver’s ed,” I am referring to all types of teen driver training and education, whether provided by parents, other licensed drivers, high schools, or commercial driving schools.

Parents who delve into the voluminous research about what is and is not effective in reducing crash rates among teen drivers will find this very confusing conclusion: there is no statistical evidence showing that driver education reduces crash rates among teen drivers. Federal highway safety agencies, state motor vehicle departments, insurance company associations, and university transportation institutes that have researched this issue have all reached the same conclusion.

So, does this research mean that parents are wasting their money, and teens are wasting their time, when they enroll in driver’s ed to learn how to operate a car safely? The answer is certainly no – but embedded in this seemingly contradictory answer is a critical reality about safe teen driving and, in fact, one of the central points of this blog.

Obviously, teens need to learn the rules of the road, how to operate a car safely, and how to drive defensively. Without question, the more hours they spend behind the wheel receiving supervised training, the better drivers they will be when they begin driving solo. The research and the data absolutely do not imply that we should not train teen drivers thoroughly before licensing them.

The problem is that no amount of driver education can overcome the three reasons why “There Is No Such Thing As A Safe Teen Driver” (see my September 15, 2009 post with this title). First, biologically, the brains of teenagers have not developed to the point where they fully appreciate risk and danger. Second, not even hundreds of hours of driver training can provide teen drivers with the judgment necessary to anticipate and avoid unsafe situations (and, across the United States, the typical driver training hours required for licensure ranges from approximately 20 to 100). Driving judgment takes years. Third, we train drivers in our local towns and neighborhoods but when they are licensed, they routinely drive on roads they have never driven before, so that they are learning to drive while trying to follow directions – a skill that can confound the most experienced adult driver.

Thus, driver’s ed does not reduce crash rates because it does not and cannot overcome the principal reasons that teens have higher crash rates. Driver’s ed makes teen driving safer, but not safe. Driver training somewhat reduces the risks of teen driving (though research has been unable to quantify the benefit), but by no means does it reduce them to a level that parents can rely on as guaranteeing safety.

The research demonstrating a lack of correlation between driver’s education and reduced teen driver crash rates does not mean that commercial driving schools and other driver’s education programs are unnecessary. The data, however, provide the clear lesson that parents should not assume that a teen who has taken driver’s ed, passed with flying colors, and will now be a law-abiding driver will arrive safe and sound at each future destination.

As a member of the task force that recommended overhauling Connecticut’s teen driving laws, I learned a critical lesson from the driving instructors who served with me. Their point was so obvious that I wasn’t sure why it had not occurred to me while I was supervising my son’s driving, but it hadn’t. I suspect now that for most parents, this idea, this key caution, lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; we are distracted from it by the convenience of having our kids become drivers, or by the simple fact that we naturally dispatch inchoate dangers to the recesses of their minds.

Thus, what I learned from my fellow task force members: If John or Sue has a reason to drive from Point A to Point B, an estimated time of arrival, and a consequence for not arriving on time, the likelihood of a serious crash is relatively low. But when teens drive for the sake of driving, without a particular destination, reason, planned route, or arrival time, trouble starts. If teens are driving for kicks, to get away from parents or something else at home, to spend time with friends, or perhaps to see just what this four-wheeled contraption can do, crash rates are high.

In simplest terms, I learned the difference between “purposeful” and “recreational” driving.

If your child is headed to sports practice or a job at 6:00 a.m. and arriving late will result in extra pushups, less playing time, or docked pay, he or she will drive the shortest, quickest route – and will most likely get there safely. If, however, the evening’s agenda is a ride “somewhere,” to a destination unknown, and with a return time that is merely “sometime before” a curfew, significant motivations for teens to drive safely disappear and factors that can cause a crash take their place. Teens are more likely to practice the safe driving skills they have learned and obey both teen driving and traffic safety laws when their destination itself is a goal. Conversely, when teens drive for entertainment or escape instead of transportation, the priority of safety takes a figurative, and almost literal, back seat.

I recognize that the difference between purposeful and recreational will not always be clear. If a teenage boy is driving cross-town to see his girlfriend and then go to the movies, is that purposeful (the driver has a reason, an ETA, and a consequence) or recreational? Even so, the vast majority of situations where teens get behind the wheel fall into one category or the other.

Parents are the first line of defense against teen drivers getting into situations where the risk of a crash is heightened. If the driving that your son or daughter proposes today, tonight, or tomorrow can be labeled cruising, joyriding, hanging, hauling, dragging, going for a spin, wheeling, tooling, tracking, scoping, surfing, or some 2009 teen slang equivalent that is unknown to an old guy like me, then think twice about allowing your teen to take the keys and go.

I suppose I should mention that my son died during recreational driving, nothing more than a ride with friends.