Today, another interesting topic from the recent Lifesavers Conference.

Presenter Pam Fischer, who has been active in safe teen driving in New Jersey and nationally for 30 years, presented a chart that compared the top five things that, according to surveys, parents worry about when it comes to their children, as compared to the actual top five causes of injuries and fatalities:

What Parents Most Worry About

1. Kidnapping
2. Sniper Attack
3. Terrorism
4. Predators/Strangers
5. Drug Abuse

Causes Of Death For Teens And Children

1. Car Crashes
2. Homicide
3. Child Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning

This list in itself was dramatic enough, but as a matter of fact, Pam presented this list on Monday morning April 14, and then that afternoon, as the Lifesavers Conference attendees were at the annual NHTSA awards luncheon, the news of the Boston Marathon bombings started appearing on cell phones throughout the auditorium. In other words, that afternoon, Number 3 on the parent’s worry list probably escalated to Number 1.

The point of the lists, of course, was to illustrate that parents appear to worry more for their children about unknown and uncontrollable causes than they do about things that, although more often the cause of injury or death, are more commonplace, more familiar, more expected, and perhaps more within their control. Also, I do not know the exact question that was posed to parents to elicit these lists, or how the words “What do you most worry about?” were conveyed. In any event, the take-away from the chart and Pam Fischer’s remarks was clear: parents worry less about the safety of their teen drivers than they do about unknown and unpredictable causes of injury or death. I doubt that anyone who works in traffic safety is surprised by this, but it does shed an interesting light on the continuing problem of how we get parents to pay more attention to the safety risks of teen driving. The lists reinforce the idea that teen driving crashes are such a regular occurrence that we are not wholly surprised, and therefore less attentive to them than we should be.

Another nugget of wisdom from the Lifesavers Conference: The dangers of teen drivers having passengers, especially other teens or siblings, are well documented. For teen drivers, any passenger who is not a supervising adult driver is a potential distraction, and the distraction outweighs any “another pair of eyes” safety benefit.

But with the acknowledgement that the following does NOT apply to teens, one speaker at Lifesavers explained why talking to a passenger is less distracting than talking to someone on a cellphone. First, a passenger who is an experienced driver actually can provide some modest benefit as an extra pair of eyes on the road. Second, a passenger knows when to stop talking, because he or she can see when the driving situation requires the driver’s full attention, which someone on a cellphone cannot. Third, studies have now shown that it is more cognitively challenging to talk to someone who is not in the car than it is to a passenger. In other words, a driver and a passenger talking are “in sync” as to the driving situation, but a driver and a cellphone caller are not. A caller has no idea when the driver needs to switch attention back to the traffic situation, and might in fact say something that requires careful thought — cognitive distraction — at just the wrong time.

So, for teen drivers, any passenger is a distraction, and for experienced drivers, talking on a cellphone is more distracting than talking to a passenger. Thus, anyone who says that “if I can talk to a passenger, I can talk on a cell phone” is off the mark.

This past weekend I attended the Lifesavers Conference, the annual meeting of the national traffic safety community. My next few posts will report on a variety of things I learned there (in Denver, in the snow).

There have been some studies and reports about teens delaying getting licensed until age 18, to avoid the restrictions and requirements of Graduated Driver Licensing laws, and some evidence of crash rates for 18 and 19 year olds going up as a result. A session led by Bruce Hamilton of the AAA Foundation and Scott Masten of the California DMV shed some light on this topic.

In summary, the current research, which admittedly is not comprehensive or definitive but indicative, shows the following: First, in states with the strictest GDL systems, there is some evidence that if teens do not become licensed at 16, they wait until they are 18 or older. This was evident in Scott Masten’s data for California, which has a relatively strict GDL system; the data showed a large number of 16 year olds obtaining their licenses, but then a marked drop off among 17 year olds, followed by a surge among the 18 year olds. Second, an important safety issue: crash rates for 18 and 19 year olds who got their licenses without going thorough the GDL restrictions for drivers under 18 had higher crash rates for the first 36 months of licensing that younger drivers who had been through the GDL restrictions. The important take-away from this (again, data from one state only) is that one of the key benefits of GDL is that the prohibitions and restrictions on new drivers that GDL imposes allow them to get on-the-road experience in less dangerous situations — with passengers, night driving, etc. — before moving on to an unrestricted license. This information, if documented in more states, would seem to be a powerful argument for extending GDL restrictions to 18 and 19 year olds at least.

The third point from Bruce and Scott’s presentations was that this phenomenon of teens delaying licensing is a relative non-issue in states with lenient GDL systems. In other words, if state law allow teens to obtain a learner’s permit at age 14 or 15 (as 39 states do) and a license with few restrictions at 16, waiting until age 18 is much less of an issue. In these states, delaying licensing to age 18 or 19 or later is an issue of finances, location, or family situation. Teens who can’t afford to drive don’t do so until they have a job/income; teens in urban areas have less need for cars; and sometimes a family’s situation or a teen’s physical and mental development simply dictate that they are not ready to drive.

Sometimes blogging is easy. Friends in the traffic safety community send me stuff that is so amazing it speaks for itself. The video linked below is the work of students at Lyman Hall High School in Wallingford, Connecticut. Thanks to Kevin Borrup at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center for sending it to my attention. Enjoy.