The AAA Foundation has recently published several excellent and important reports on teen drivers with passengers. I will talk about their most recent piece on passengers, “Characteristics of Fatal Crashed Involving 16- and 17-Year Old Drivers with Teenage Passengers,” http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/2012FatalCrashCharacteristicsTeenDriversAndPassengers.pdf, in my next blog posts. First, however, I want to highlight a footnote in this report, taken from the federal governments FARS (fatality statistics) database for 2005-2010, listing the “Improper actions and errors [of teen drivers] considered indicative of at least partial responsibility for the crash” — in other words, the things that teen drivers have done that have led to fatal crashes. Here is the list:

• aggressive driving
• failing to have lights on
• failing to dim lights when required
• operating without required equipment
• following improperly
• improper or erratic lane change
• failure to stay in lane
• driving on shoulder, sidewalk, or median
• improper entry or exit onto highway
• backing up improperly
• opening vehicle while in motion
• passing where prohibited
• passing on the wrong side
• passing with insufficient clearance or visibility
• failing to yield to overtaking vehicle
• operating in reckless, careless or negligent manner;
• speeding
• failure to yield right of way
• failure to obey traffic signs, traffic control devices, or law enforcement officers
• passing through or disregarding traffic barrier
• failing to observe warning signs on another vehicle
• failure to signal
• making an improper turn
• making a right turn from a left turn lane or left turn from right lane
• driving wrong direction on one-way road
• driving on wrong side of road
• driver inexperience
• driver lack of familiarity with road
• stopping in the road
• over-correcting in a spin or skid.

This list, I think, eloquently makes a very simple but critical point. In most states, teen drivers are eligible to obtain their license after 20-50 hours on the road. Many teen drivers get their license after taking Driver’s Ed and several weeks of training with a parent or guardian. But look at this list above and identify how many of these situations that led to fatal crashes do Driver’s Ed and parents NOT cover — because they can’t? The list underscores one of the four reasons why I say that “there is no thing as a safe teen driver”: as well intentioned as we can be as parents, we cannot nearly train a teen driver for the multitude of situations that he or she will face on the road. To become a safe driver, in the sense of having experienced and being prepared to respond to most of the most difficult situations that all drivers face on a regularly basis, takes several years, not hours or weeks. Newly licensed drivers have been taught the basics, but they are not anywhere near prepared for even a majority of the situations that can cause fatal crashes.

I am pleased today to publish a guest post, from Attorney Richard Console of New Jersey. His post provides an excellent summary of several core vehicle-handling skills. A brief bio of this guest author appears at the end of his article.

What’s Your Teen’s Driving IQ? AAA’s New Test Can Tell You

Teaching your teenager to drive doesn’t have to be a fast track to grey hair and roadway panic attacks. By educating yourself on the latest safety tips and safe driving tactics, you not only help the newest driver in your family, you can also improve your own performance behind the wheel. To help you in your quest, AAA has a brief IQ test to make you and your teen driver aware of improved safety strategies for modern vehicles and age-old traffic problems. Incorporating these tactics can help make driving for all motorists safer and may even reduce the likelihood of injuries when crashes do occur.

Hands on the Wheel

The old rule of keeping your hands at “10 and 2” doesn’t work with modern vehicles that have airbags and power steering features. Keeping your teen’s hands at positions “9 and 3” provide better control over the automobile and reduces the chances your teen might hurt their wrists or arms when an airbag deploys in an accident.

Emergencies on the Road

Sudden changes in road conditions, including a tire blow out, can fluster a young driver and may lead to serious collisions. AAA recommends teaching your teen driver to ease off the accelerator to regain control over the vehicle as opposed to braking hard to slow down the vehicle. Applying the brakes in a tire blow out could aggravate the situation and actually cause the car to careen further out of control. This is also true of a car skidding in rain or other inclement weather. Teaching your teen to remain calm and avoid those kneejerk reactions – like sudden braking – can greatly reduce the risk of injury.

Managing the Blind Spots

Positioning your side mirrors with a view of your own vehicle is the old way of managing your blind spots. Teaching your teen driver to angle side mirrors out further better addresses the blind spots and helps them learn how to operate in crowded driving conditions.

Teaching your teen these simple steps is an integral component in the toolkit your child will need to drive safely every time they pull into traffic. Incorporating AAA’s safety tips into your own routine strengthens your teen’s responses and makes it more likely they’ll drive with greater care.

Bio: Voorhees car accident lawyer Richard P. Console, Jr. has been helping auto accident victims in New Jersey since 1994. His firm, Console & Hollawell P.C., has obtained tens of millions of dollars for more than 5,000 clients injured in auto crashes.

The October 13 edition of The New York Times contains an outstanding essay about how car crashes have affected the lives of President Obama, Mitt Romney, Vice President Biden, and several past presidents and candidates. The link is below. I absolutely love the last sentence of the piece.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/opinion/make-motor-vehicle-safety-a-priority.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

As we begin National Safe Teen Driving Week, I begin a multi-part series about a unique aspect of Connecticut’s teen driver law.

In 2008, the Connecticut legislature, based on recommendations from a statewide task force on which I served, transformed the state’s teen driver law from one of the nation’s most lenient to one of the strictest. The major changes were increasing the required on-the-road hours for learner’s permit holders from 20 to 40; lengthening passenger restrictions to no one for six months, then family only for six months (so, no friends for one year); moving the nighttime curfew from midnight to 11 PM; a total ban on electronic devices; mandatory license suspensions for violators; a requirement for all passengers of teen drivers to wear seat belts; a required two hour safety class for parents and guardians of learner’s permit holders; and finally, authority of law enforcement to confiscate a teen’s license and impound a teen’s car for 48 hours where the situation warrants. Since 2008, the results have been remarkable: substantial and even nation-leading reductions in teen driver violations, crashes, injuries, and fatalities.

This track record led me to ask this question: of all of these changes, if I had to choose one, which has been the most effective in reducing teen driver crashes? Obviously, each change has played some role in the progress. but my vote is the required two hour class, which at least one parent or guardian of a learner’s permit holder must attend before the teen driver can graduate to a license.

I believe I am correct to say that Connecticut is the only state that currently mandates a two hour class. New Jersey has a form of required parent education, and I am informed that some local governments in Virginia have instituted required classes, but in any event this is not a widespread phenomenon.

When Connecticut’s Task Force was considering this class as a recommendation in 2008, there were obvious concerns: Requiring parents into a forced march — taking two hours from their busy schedules? What would the class cover? Would the driving school instructors agree to do it and do it well? Would there be any minimum standards or specified curriculum? Would parents listen? After the the class would they think it was worthwhile?

Three plus years into the experiment, it can be reported that although Connecticut has not yet adopted a uniform or required curriculum for the class — an advisory committee is working on it currently — and even though there were some growing pains as driving schools struggled initially to understand how to carry out this class, the good news is that, based on at least two comprehensive surveys, the class has been well received and parents have found it informative and helpful, both in educating them about what the state’s teen driving laws do and do not require, and also in raising their awareness of the risks and dangers of teen driving. In one sense, the very fact that the legislature decided that teen driving is so potentially dangerous as to require a parent or guardian to attend a safety class before turning a teen driver loose seems to have made an impression on parents. Put another way, Connecticut has said that the “cost” to parents of allowing their teens to drive on the state’s roads and highways is two hours of their undivided attention to the safety risks, and most parents — not all — have come away thinking that this is not an unreasonable request.

Perhaps the lesson here for those who labor to educate parents of teen drivers about safety risks, teen driver laws, and best practices for training and supervision is that the single most important element is: getting parents’ undivided attention.

Next up: if I could design a curriculum for a two hour class….

Faithful readers of this blog, I think, would agree that one of my recurring efforts and themes is to make parents aware of aspects of teen driving that are less than obvious — that is, just below the surface of our consciousness, and therefore not realized or appreciated until someone raises the issue. A good example is the difference between purposeful driving and joyriding; I have found that, like me when I was supervising Reid, many parents don’t think about the difference, but when it is brought to their attention, they have an “Aha!” moment.

Here is another: making sure that parents (meaning, as always, any adult who is responsible for supervising a teen driver) have at least similar and complimentary, if not identical, approaches to teen driver supervision.

What are the key elements of supervising teen drivers on which parents need to coordinate? First and foremost is educating themselves about the dangers of teen driving. A mother who has attended a class on teen driver safety will be less effective with her teen if the father has not attended or worse, doesn’t care to know the facts. Obviously some teens are adept at playing one parent off against the other, and an obvious imbalance in parents’ knowledge of teen driver laws and risks will create an opening for a teen to disregard the more informed parent by seeking out the less informed one when he or she wants to drive.

A second role involves my mantra that each parent needs to act “like an air traffic controller,” by having a teen (especially a brand new driver) go through a process before each drive not unlike a pilot filing and getting approval of a flight plan. If one parent insists on this procedure while the other believes and makes it clear that this is overkill, the teen driver will most likely wait out the situation and end up being allowed to drive without this important level of supervision.

A third place for supervising adults to be on the same page is in negotiating, signing, and following a teen driving agreement. If one parents does all of the negotiating and the other is unaware of the agreement’s provisions and consequences for violations, the enforcement will undoubtedly be less effective.

This is of course a complicated and potentially messy topic, because it overlaps with fundamentals of a family household’s discipline and oversight; for example, it is not unheard of for one parent to be in charge of school and academics and another to handle the driving lessons. I am not qualified, and this blog is not the place, to address the bigger picture of how and when discipline is more or less effective based on interactions between parents. All I can offer — again, if only to make parents aware of it so they can assess it — is that all adults supervising a teen driver need to have a relatively comparable understanding of the dangers, the daily plans for oversight, state laws, and household rules for driving, because if there is an imbalance or a disconnect, important supervision that is essential to preempting the riskiest situations will suffer.