To celebrate the publication and national release of Not So Fast, about 150 family, friends, and the Connecticut traffic safety community gathered at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church. It was a fabulous and poignant event. TV personality and commentator Duby McDowell acted as Master of Ceremonies. Senior Minister Matt Laney of Asylum Hill welcomed the crowd, after which Garry Lapidus, Director of the Injury Prevention Center at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, discussed teen driving from the public health perspective. Pam Fischer, Leader of the New Jersey Safe Teen Driving Coalition, and a national leader in the education of parents of teen drivers, was the keynote speaker. She spoke about policy and education, but also her personal wrenching experiences as the current parent of a teen driver. Barnes & Noble was on hand to sell books.

In my remarks at the end of the event, with Reid’s photo behind me — decorated with balloons — I noted that one of the greatest motivations for a parent like me is “the hope that our child did not die in vain,” and I noted that “Looking out at this scene tonight, I think I can say with assurance that this has now been arranged.”

My thanks to all who attended.

A single mother of a newly-licensed teen called me. She was almost in tears, on the edge of panic. She said her son was a good kid but she was terrified about his driving and did not know “where to start.”

We talked through the situation. Obviously, I will keep the particulars of her call confidential, and I note that where she lives in the United States made a difference in some of the advice I gave her, but let me summarize the basics of our conversation.

I said first that if she truly believed that her son was at risk, then she had to take decisive action to prevent him from driving. I explained that there is no law or rule that says that teens must be allowed to drive once they reach the state’s minimum age. I said that if her son is not ready to drive, she should take steps to make sure that he does not have access to keys or a car. I conceded that sometimes this is easier said than done, especially when the teen already has a license, but I reminded her (though she didn’t need reminding) that this was a potentially life or death situation. I asked if her son would take the car without permission and she said she didn’t think so, though our conversation noted that as a possibility that might even require her as a mother to get law enforcement involved. I suggested that because she is a single mother that she might get another family member or friend involved, if only for moral support.

We moved on to the assumption that if she took several steps, she could gain some control. I recommended that she get a good Teen Driving Agreement, sit down with it and her son, and make signing it non-negotiable. I explained that it would establish rules outside the heat of a particular situation where her son was insisting on driving.

We then moved on to big picture thoughts on where to start. I mentioned my PACTS formula: passengers, alcohol, curfews, texting, and seat belts, five areas where, if she could gain control and get her son to buy in, she would be addressing major causes of crashes.

Finally, I highlighted some of the key advice from Not So Fast: act like an air traffic controller, and follow the book’s other key pieces of advice, such as not allowing joyrides, using keys as leverage, and having zero tolerance for electronic devices.

I am not sure if my advice settled her down or will ultimately turn her fear into control. At this point the only thing I am certain of is that she is not alone. But perhaps I gave her some places to start.

Connecticut’s Department of Motor Vehicles has issued to driving schools statewide, and posted on its website, a new video that explains the basics of the state’s teen driver laws. Connecticut’s Graduated Driver Licensing system was overhauled in 2008 in the wake of a string of horrific, multiple-fatality crashes, and the 2008 law changes have proven to be very effective in reducing crash rates. The link to the DMV website is below, and a link to the video in English and Spanish is at the start of the link. Congratulations to all who worked on this important new resource for parents and teens.

http://www.ct.gov/dmv/cwp/view.asp?Q=528682&A=807

When I am not blogging about safer teen driving, I am a lawyer. Lawyers are often criticized for many excesses, but one thing that has made me proud to practice is the way in which, at times, legal theories and advocacy have made the world a safer place.

So I nearly fell off my chair, and I am sure others did too, when I read recently a news article about a New Jersey appellate court decision involving liability for texting and driving. An 18 year old driver, who was texting, crossed the center line and crashed his pickup truck into a husband and wife on a motorcycle. Both of them lost both legs. They settled with the driver, but they also sued the person, a female acquaintance, who had sent the text message that the pickup driver was reading when he crashed.

Three judges agreed that in this particular case, there was not enough evidence to conclude that the woman who sent the text knew that her message might cause the driver to crash, but the judges said that if the circumstances showed that a texter knew that his or her message-recipient was driving, and reading the message could cause a crash, there might be grounds for holding the text sender liable.

My mind wanders. Can we imagine a message to parents saying that if you allow your teen to text anyone who is driving, you and your teen could be held liable for damages if a crash occurs? That would seem to be a very powerful deterrent to texting. Perhaps if we could adapt current technology so that someone sending a text would always be alerted that the recipient was driving (sort of like as “away message”) but sent the text anyway, there would be grounds for liability?

Stay tuned. This court case may be the start of a sea change.

Last week I was privileged to spend several days at the Governors’ Highway Safety Association Annual Conference, in San Diego. The meeting is attended by the Highway Safety Offices of the 50 states. At the meeting, the Connecticut Department of Transportation was very kind to distribute advance copies of my new book Not So Fast to their counterparts in the other 49 states! We also provided copies to the leadership of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board. My thanks to Joe Cristalli, Juliet Little and Robbin Cabelus for making the pitch to the rest of the country about Not So Fast.

GHSA covers many topics, but teen driving was among them. I will report on the highlights. First and foremost was a comment by Jeremy Amwyl, former Vice Chair of Edmunds.com, the online car dealer/retailer. He said that if it were up to him, “every GPS would be able to identify all teen drivers with red dot on the screen — and would recalculate a route around them!

More seriously, and also delving into more general traffic safety problems, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman made several pointed comments:

- if we introduced, nationwide, the so-called DADDS system (which requires drivers to blow into a tube and will not allow a car to start if alcohol is detected) we could quickly save 10,000 lives per year among the 30,000 + fatalities;

- among traffic fatalities, 50 percent involve people not wearing seatbelts, 30 percent involve alcohol, and 90 percent involve human error; she summarized these as “belts, booze and boneheads”;

- car manufacturers are quickly introducing new technologies such as crash avoidance equipment (forward collision warning devices, lane departure warnings, and electronic stability control), but we need to remember that at the current pace of automobile turnover in the U.S., the current fleet will not be fully replaced for thirty years;

- as much as possible we need to equate driving with flying; the airline industry has understood for years that pilots need a “sterile cockpit “ - no distractions, and we need to apply this mindset to driving;

— in 2011 there were an estimated 173,000 injuries from impaired driving, with 27,000 of those injuries being life-altering;

- in addressing the problem of electronic distraction, there was been widespread support for banning devices among new drivers and among commercially licensed drivers (pilots, bus drivers, train engineers, truck drivers), but when the proposals have sought to be extended to individuals adults, resistance has been widespread;

- 100 countries have adopted a 0.05 Blood Alcohol Content standard for impaired driving, but the U.S has not - we are lagging behind much of the world in this regard.

What are the takeaways from all of this for parents of teen drivers? (1) as with the adult population, if you want to concentrate on the highest risk factors first, start with seat belt use and alcohol; (2) new crash avoidance technologies are improving but are still a long way off in making a difference in crash rates; and (3) as I have advocated long and loud on this blog, parents need to act like air traffic controllers if they want to bring the right degree of oversight and supervision to their teen drivers.