Along with its recent report on the increase in the first six months of 2012 in 16 and 17 year old driver fatalities, the Governor’s Highway Safety Administration has updated its national survey of the minimum age in state laws for a teen to obtain a learner’s permit, and then a driver’s license.

As long as I have been writing this blog, one of my core themes has been the idea that There Is No Such Thing As a Safe Teen Driver, with the first and most important of the four reasons for this being that the human brain does not fully develop until we reach about age 22 to 25, and the part of the brain that provides judgment and restraint is the last part to develop. Thus, I have argued again and again, minimum ages for teen drives, if they were based on science instead of politics, parent convenience, and tradition, would be at least 21 if not 24 or 25, and certainly not 16 or 17.

So I was somewhat caught off guard to be reminded by GHSA’s recent update that in 39 states, the minimum age for getting a learner’s permit is less than 16, and in four states it is under age 15. For a driver’s license, 5 states license teens at between 14 years, six months and 16, and then 34 states allow the license on a teen’s 16th birthday. Only one state, New Jersey, has a minimum age of 17 (and that state has a substantial reduction in crash rates as a result).

On this blog I have written previously about the fact that when I served on a Connecticut task force that overhauled our teen driver laws in 2007-08, we got letters from teens saying that the answer to the multiple-fatality crashes that Connecticut had experienced was: to lower the driving age, “so when teens reach age 16, they will be more experienced drivers.” At the time, I and other task force members dismissed this thought as a backward way to approach teen driving laws and policies. The GHSA report, however, has reminded me that 39 states allow exactly what those letter writers advocated, perhaps not for the precise reason stated, but allow nonetheless.

The point to be reiterated for parents of teen drivers (other than trotting down to your legislature and advocating for a higher minimum age for permits and licenses) is that the more lenient your state’s teen driver law is, the more responsibility you have to supervise and control your teen driver. This is especially true for the minimum age requirements for learner’s permits and driver’s licenses.

As many of you have likely heard, during the past weekend, 15 teens died in three crashes, six in Ohio, five in Texas, and four in Illinois. Each crash involved a teen driver at the wheel and multiple passengers. In two of the three crashes, as I understand it, the passengers were illegal under state law.

Linked below is a news video about the three crashes. I have no complaint about the video; it is straightforward and accurate (and I apologize but you will have to sit through an ad before getting to the coverage). But I have posted it because it illustrates three things about our national consciousness of safe teen driving.

First, the only teen driver crashes that get national attention are multiple fatalities. Had these 15 teed died in 15 separate crashes, there would have been no national coverage and in fact local coverage would probably have been limited to small articles in local or regional papers - just another day in America, with teen driver deaths one of the prices we pay for a mobile society.

Second, these crashes vividly remind us, and should remind all parents, that teen drivers with passengers are an invitation to disaster. This is especially true when the teens are going from or between parties, as opposed to so-called “purposeful driving” where teens have a destination, a route, a timetable, and good reason to arrive safely.

Third, in a subtle yet powerful way, it seems to me that the two segments in this video involving the driving school reinforce this message: if teens are crashing, the answer must be that we need to provide more behind the wheel training. Those who have spent any time on this blog know that this attitude is exactly what I view as one of the main problems with our national approach to teen driving. Too many people, too many parents and supervising adults, think that the answer is giving teens more hours on the road and more driving practice. My view, on the other hand, starts with my mantra that There Is No Such Thing As A Safe Teen Driver (see my September-October 2009 posts on this subject), because no amount of on-the-road training or hours in Driver’s Ed can overcome the biological and physical limitations, such as incomplete brain development, that prevent teens from being safe drivers.

As always, it is the horrific, multiple-fatality crashes the present the opportunity to rail against what we are doing, or not doing, to prevent them.

The video:

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/cvptve/cvpstream2#/video/us/2013/03/13/howell-dnt-teen-driving-deaths.cnn

Traffic and pedestrian safety is as local as making sure we can walk safely to our town centers, our schools, our neighbors’ front yards, our places of worship. But it is also a global public safety crisis. In the next sixty days, we all have an opportunity to participate in a world-wide effort to raise awareness about traffic and pedestrian safety by participating in something much bigger than ourselves, The Long Short Walk.

The Walk is part of Global Youth Traffic Safety Month, http://www.noys.org/global_youth_traffic_safety_month.aspx, and the United Nations Decade of Action, http://www.who.int/roadsafety/decade_of_action/en/.. GYTSM, which culminates on May 8 with events in Washington D.C., will involve high schools across the country and around the world, focused on safe driving. The Decade of Action seeks to eliminate millions of traffic and pedestrian fatalities between now and 2020. Both programs are affiliated with the worldwide Zenani Campaign, named in memory of Nelson Mandela’s great-granddaughter Zenani, who was killed in a crash in South Africa in 2010.

You — individually or with any group of any size — can take a few minutes to join in this important and fun event by organizing and posting information about, and a photo of, your own Long Short Walk. The essential information can be found here: http://www.makeroadssafe.org/longshortwalk/Pages/homepage.aspx. In summary, organize a group, take a walk, add up your total mileage, take a photo, and share it with the nation and the world by uploading it to the Long Short Walk website. The Hollister family and friends are organizing and we urge you to do the same.

The Governors’ Highway Safety Administration has issued a new report, New Study: Teen Driver Deaths Increase in 2012 (Feb. 26, 2013), based on preliminary fatality statistics for 2012, and the key finding should send a big shiver up our collective national spine: after years of decline, deaths of 16 and 17 year old drivers increased in the first six months of last year. From 2011 to 2012, the national number of 16 year old driver deaths increased from 86 to 107 and the number of 17 year old deaths from 116 to 133.

As with many statistics in traffic safety, the numbers require a bit of perspective. These are six month, year over year numbers, and they don’t include anything about drivers older (or younger) than 16 or 17, nor anything about passengers, other drivers, or pedestrians. Historically, more passengers, other drivers and pedestrians die in crashes involving teen drivers than drivers themselves. And the report does not touch on injuries or property damage.

Still, the very fact that our national progress has at least leveled out must set off alarms bells and launch a search for the reasons. The report, duly noting the great progress that has been made in the past few years, identifies the economic recession and now the recovery as the most likely explanation for the decline in fatalities in recent years and now the slight uptick. It also notes that after a wave of teen driver law improvements in the mid 2000′s, the pace of Graduated Driver Law reform has slackened in the past few years.

It is interesting to focus on the decline and improvement in the economy as the most likely reason for the decline and now the small increase. The report surmises that the economic downturn both impacted employment (and thus spending money) among teens, and coincided with a run up in gas prices. This should in theory have resulted in less “discretionary” driving — joyriding — which we know is more dangerous for teens than “purposeful driving” — teens on the road with a destination, a set route, an important reason to reach their destination (school, job, activity) and a consequence if they don’t arrive on time and safely. On the other hand, if improvement in the economy by itself is the main reason that teen driver fatalities are now increasing, what does this say about the effectiveness of our teen driver law improvements, or the effectiveness of parent oversight of teen drivers? In other words, if the ups and owned of the economy are by primary mover behind the fatality statistics, that would crowd out the explanation that our laws, enforcement, and public education are the main reasons, This is, to some extent, a zero sum game. for the recent improvements.

I am not an academic researcher. I do read every study I can get my hands on (and I appreciate the hard work of NHTSA, the AAA Foundation, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and IIHS, who do the hard work of these studies). I try to spot trends and pass them along as advice to parents. So let me offer this pessimistic view: Yes, improvement in the economy is the most likely reason for teens driving more, and this means there is more joyriding than there was two or three years ago. But this uptick in the miles teen are driving now coincides with a full fledged epidemic of distracting electronics - not just texting, but teens having access to and using, without a second thought, the increasingly complex array of electronics that are becoming standard in cars. As one example, the big news out of the recent Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas was dashboard-mounted screens that give the driver access to all of the same apps available on phones - not just navigation and music, but Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, Words With Friends, and much more. And this time no one is claiming that these electronics are voice-activated only.

In summary, the economy is improving, and teens are driving more, and they are doing so with more distracting electronics than ever before — gadgets, apps, and fun stuff that threaten to overwhelm pledges to not text. My hypothesis, which perhaps the researchers can test, is that the economy is resulting in more driving, but the crashes and fatalities are likely increasing due to the unprecedented availability of distracting electronics in cars.

Contrary and sideways views welcome as comments.