The high price of gasoline is a push and pull, a double-edged sword, for teen driver safety.

Teen driver crash rates have been declining modestly but steadily during the past several years. Undoubtedly, stricter Graduated Driver Laws and more attentive parents are the main reasons, but more expensive gasoline and the economic recession also have been factors. Obviously, as driving becomes more expensive, all drivers, and especially teens and people whose income has declined, drive fewer miles. By definition, this translates into fewer crashes and fatalities. Moreover, as the summer of 2011 begins, we see another facet of this reality; for decades, summer jobs have been a key source of gas money for young drivers, but this year summer employment has been as difficult for teens as we parents can remember. Thus, fewer jobs, less income, and less driving equal fewer crashes and injuries.

The high cost of refueling also has the beneficial effect of limiting teens to purposeful driving and reducing joyriding. Parents are clamping down out of economic necessity, not just safety, on their teens taking the car to hang out with friends. In this way, more expensive gas directly reduces a mode of teen driving — without a purpose, route, timetable, and consequence for arriving late — that is among the most dangerous for teens.

There are, however, safety downsides to more expensive gas. The first is that teens get less practice behind the wheel; instruction itself has become more financially burdensome. Another negative is that parents are economically motivated to bend or violate state driving laws. For example, here in Connecticut, after lengthy consideration in 2007-08, we adopted a ban on any under age 18 drivers with a learner’s permit or in their first six months of being licensed having any passenger other than a parent, guardian, or supervising adult. Expensive gas, therefore, gives parents a reason to combine driving practice with times when siblings and other illegal passengers are in the car, even if this practice is against the law (several states now have similar rules) because experts consider it unsafe. Paradoxically, gas prices get in the way of the precious hours of practice that teen driver laws promote, and this can lead parents to set a bad example by allowing teens to drive in illegal situations.

A third, significant result of the cost of gas for teen drivers is the incentive to share the pump price with passengers. As the literature and research on teen driving clearly establish, teen driver crash rates go up substantially with each additional passenger who is not an instructor or supervisor. On the other hand, $4.00 per gallon and higher prices, especially for teens driving every day to school, a job, or community service or events, are a compelling reason to divide the expense. To put a sharp point on the question, think of a group of teens who would like to attend a church youth group every week, but need to cut the cost of getting there to get permission. I am not sure how often parents, teen drivers, and their passengers actually split gas costs, but I do remember vividly serving on the Safe Teen Driving Task Force here in Connecticut several years ago and receiving lots of emails from parents, complaining about the proposed stricter passenger restrictions, because “the new rules would waste gas.”

High gas prices require every family to make hard choices about important matters — as basic as where we live in relation to jobs, schools, services, and stores. Yet as difficult as these decisions can be, for parents of teen drivers who put safety ahead of cost, the choices are clear:

• use gas prices to help your teens learn the reality that driving can be financially expensive;
• take the reduction in teen driving that results from high gas prices as a net gain for safety;
• don’t give in to the temptation or incentive to use high gas prices as an excuse to violate teen river laws;
• accept that high gas prices give parents another good reason to say no to teens who want to go for a joyride; and
• understand that when comparing the costs of gas with the costs of injury or even loss of life, there is no comparison.

Two national news articles in the past few days promise even more problems with distracted driving. First, a major car manufacturer has admitted that its newest dashboard-mounted technology, a screen that allows Internet browsing and synchronizing with a mobile phone screen while the car is in motion, has not been working consistently. So, on top of the distractions that will result from drivers interacting with these new dashboard screens, we can add the same frustrations that computer users sitting in a chair in a cubicle or office experience every day — error messages, blank screens, interfaces that change for no apparent reason, etc.. Just what the driving public needs. Opposite of the manufacturers’ statements that this new technology will make cars safer.

Now comes the World Health Organization with a report recommending that cell phones and their low level radiation be labeled “potentially carcinogenic.” One recommendation from experts in response to the report has been that cell phones users, instead of holding phones to their ears during calls, text or email instead.

Talk about the cure being potentially worse than the disease.

The only thing I can offer to parents of teen drivers is that these developments are one more reason to look into the cell phone applications that disable texting and emailing while the car is in motion.