One of my continuing goals with this blog is to raise awareness among parents and other adults who supervise teen drivers, especially about items that are hidden, or for some reason not obvious or well known. One of these is the fact at in the United States there is no consistent practice among state Motor Vehicle Departments with regard to notifying parents if their teen drivers get a ticket or a citation for moving violation. In fact, although I haven’t researched all 50 states, my educated surmise is that there are few if any states that automatically provide such information to parents or guardians, and a few that allow parents to sign up for such notification, but the vast majority who do nothing in this regard at all. Most likely, this failure to notify occurs because state governments are not set up administratively to provide notice, or state officials assume that parents will find out on their own. New York State is notably one that has a system for which parents can sign up for email notice of some types of infractions when under-age-18 drivers obtain a license.

If a teen is arrested, it is hard to envision that parents or guardians will not find out, but the situation is different with tickets or citations where the teen driver is allowed to continue driving from the spot of the traffic stop. Typically, when law enforcement issues a ticket, the ticket goes to a central processing facility (either county, regional, or statewide), which then mails to the driver’s address a notice of license suspension (relatively rare) or a fine or penalty (far more common), along with a court date on which the driver can contest the ticket. Thus, whether parents find out may depend on whether they monitor their teen’s mail. In states that have moved to email notifications, of course, there will be even less likelihood that parents find out through the central processing facility’s notification. It is also possible that a ticket or citation that is not contested and becomes a conviction, or becomes a conviction after a court hearing, may be reported to an insurance company, and a higher premium might be the parent’s notification. We should also bear in mind that once a teen turns 18, the so-called “age of majority,” a variety of additional legal and privacy rights kick in, and a parent or guardian may not be legally able to be informed of any driving violation.

There are a variety or procedural possibilities here, and it is impossible to summarize how these situations are handled across the country. The point for parents of teen drivers is that every state is different, and you should inform yourself of what your state’s rules and practices are; and if there is any way that you can have your state’s motor vehicle department or court system report to you if your teen receives a ticket or citation for driving misconduct, by all means sign up to be notified. Tickets or citations are huge red flags for parents and guardians. As noted in my post “Traffic Tickets As Teaching Moments,” April 7, 2010, parents and guardians not only need to use such occasions to increase their oversight and reinforce warnings, but indeed to overhaul their teen’s driving privileges. But parents and guardians cannot take these steps if they don’t know that a ticket or citation has been issued, or if they only find out weeks or months later — or after a crash.

Today’s New York Times contains an important article for parents of teens who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. The article is entitled “Roadblocks to a Rite of Passage,” by John O’Neil, Page D1.

The article points out the increased risks that teens with ADD or ADHD face when learning to drive and when licensed. It notes their inability to focus for long periods of time, and the inattention to the driving situation, or elevated tendency toward risk taking, or both, that can result. Several academic researchers quoted in the article warn that teens with ADD or ADHD simply may not be ready to drive at the legal ages of 16 or 17, that postponing the start of driving may be the only realistic answer, and that at a minimum, teens who take some form of drug therapy for their condition must be sure to have taken their regular dosage before driving.

I know this topic. Reid was diagnosed at age 12 as having observable, though not clinically significant, ADHD tendencies. From then on, through his teen years and when he started driving, he took Ritalin and later Adderall to maintain his focus, and to my knowledge he understood the additional risk and never drove without having taken his medicine, including on the night of his crash. He had his license for eleven months without even a fender bender when he crashed. Having said this, I will always be left to wonder whether his ADHD condition contributed to his skid and his crash, and we will never know for sure.

Here is the link to Mr. O’Neil’s excellent article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/health/add-and-adhd-challenge-those-seeking-drivers-license.html?ref=todayspaper

Today, I begin a multi-part series drawn from observations about driving in Tom Vanderbilt’s terrific 2009 book, Traffic. This book is full of insights. It points out many aspects of traffic safety that are just below the surface of our consciousness as drivers, things we know intuitively but rarely think about, things which when brought to our attention make us wonder why we don’t pay more attention. I will highlight Vanderbilt’s observations that are especially important to those who supervise teen drivers.

Example Number One: Vanderbilt’s observation (page 183) that the most dangerous place on any road is a sharp curve at the end of a long straightaway. This makes perfect sense: on a long, straight, uncongested stretch of road, drivers pick up speed, often going above the speed limit, and are then confronted with a sudden need to slow down to take a curve left or right. Drivers often proceed into the curve at a faster speed than the road designers intended, and the physical consequence is that the force on the wheels becomes uneven, and a skid and a spinout are often the result.

This is how my son died. On Interstate 84 East, he was on the two mile straightaway directly east of the Town of Southington, crossed into Plainville, and then was confronted with the sharp turn to the right where the speed limit suddenly goes from 65 to 50. He want too far straight into the curve, overcorrected, went into a spin and hit the end of a guard rail. Please refer back to my March 17, 2011 post on “The Physics of Skidding.”

The lesson in this for parents, guardians, and those who supervise teen drivers is to think carefully, with your teen, about the route that they will be driving every time they get behind the wheel. In my April 20, 2011 post entitled “Air Traffic Control” I encourage parents to act like an air traffic controller by establishing, each time a teen drives, a flight plan — route, timetable, passengers, weather conditions, return time, check in procedures, etc. So let us focus on the route. First, new drivers should not be allowed to drive a route that you, as a supervising adult, are not familiar with. Second, and most importantly, you should review the agreed upon route in your mind and out loud with your teen, and consider whether there are locations on that route that are potentially unsafe, such as a curve at the end of a straightaway, as Vanderbilt describes; a left lane merge onto a busy highway; a stretch of three or four lane highway where drivers are constantly changing lanes to get to exits; places with poor visibility; roundabouts with multiple entry points, etc. You should either instruct your teen to take a route that avoids these more dangerous places, or at very least make sure to warn your teen what he or she will face in that location. I am sure that one part of my son’s crash was that he was one a road that he had never driven before, and so he was mostly likely surprised by the curve to the right and the sudden decrease in the speed limit.

Another lesson here is the danger of joyriding. You can’t control your teen’s route or warn of a dangerous place if you don’t know where they are going.

Finally, I note that there are now technological ways, GPS systems, for parents to actually track where their teens are driving, so if you map out with your teen an exact route to be taken, or point out an especially dangerous place that should be avoided, there are tracking systems that allow parents to monitor compliance.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently released a “National Phone Survey on Distracted Driving Attitudes and Behaviors.” This study (prepared by Connecticut’s own Preusser Research Group) encompasses all drivers, not just teens. It contains many findings that confirm what most of us would suspect, but one surprising finding that highlights a dangerous attitude about cell phone use and texting while driving.

The study Abstract says: “About 2 out 10 drivers (18%) report that they have sent text messages or emails while driving; about half (49%) of those 21 to 24 years old report doing so. More than half believe that using a cell phone or sending a text message/email makes no difference [NHTSA's emphasis] on their driving performance, yet as passengers, 90 % said they would feel very unsafe if their driver was talking on a handheld cell phone or texting/emailing while traveling with them” (my emphasis).

Wow. We think texting or emailing while driving is safe when we do it, but not when we are the passenger and the driver is doing it. I can only speculate as to the psychological explanations for this phenomenon, but they probably include that when we are texting and driving, we are at least in control of the situation — we can put down the phone or stop texting or emailing when we think we have to, which another driver may not. We are confident in our own abilities but somewhat blind to our limitations when it comes to dangerous behavior. Only when we observe texting and cell phone use do we really appreciate how dangerous it is.

I wonder if part of the answer here is for better warning messages from our electronic devices. For example, in most vehicles with a dashboard mounted screen, the standard warning that appears when the screen first comes on is something like, “Please do not let this screen distract you from your driving.” Maybe it should say, “You may think that it is safe for you to text or email while driving, but it is not - think about how you passengers will feel if you do it.”

Lastly, if 49 percent of drivers aged 21 to 24 confess that they text and email, then the percentage must be much higher among 16 to 20 year olds. Scary stuff.

During the past year it has been my privilege to work on several projects with the National Organizations for Youth Safety, www.noys.org. NOYS is a national coalition of 65 agencies that serve youth in a variety of areas, including traffic safety, wellness, substance abuse, youth violence, and bullying. NOYS reaches about 80 million people in the U.S. with its outstanding website and excellent, numerous communications. NOYS has been kind enough to highlight this blog and its posts on several occasions.

NOYS has now launched a new effort to reach one of the most challenged and challenging audiences, parents and relatives of teens who have died or have been seriously injured in vehicle crashes. This service is provided as a new blog called Parent Perspective. The link is theparentsperspective.blogspot.com. The concept is that I and a few other parents are attempting to start an online conversation about the difficulties of loss and injury involving teens, so that parents who are struggling will know that they are not alone. NOYS and the parents involved in the writing expect that it may take some time - and some brave parents and relatives — to get this conversation going in such a public forum, but we think that once it is established, it will be a helpful and unique resource.

If you know of a parent or relative who might benefit from this new source, please pass along the link above. Thanks