I am at the Governors Highway Safety Association conference in San Diego, where I had the chance to see and sit in the world famous Google self-driving car. It felt like standing next to the Wright Brothers on 1903!
I am pleased today to offer a guest post by Bill Akintoye of Shabana Motors in Houston, Texas. Bill talks regularly to teens and families about cars and responsibilities, and with a great passion and concern that is evident in his post below. Thanks Bill!
Talking to your teens about drinking and driving can be a difficult job; however, it is also an essential one. Statistics show that teens who talk with their parents about drinking are much less likely to abuse alcohol or drugs. However, before you begin any discussions with your kids, look over the following helpful tips.
It is important for you to realize that talking to your children about drinking and driving should not be a one-time discussion—it should be an ongoing conversation. You must also realize that in some cases, no matter how hard you try to steer your kids away from alcohol, they will drink anyway.
With that said, the first thing you will want to do before talking with your teens is to set some reasonable goals. In short, what do you want to accomplish by speaking with your kids? Of course, the first goal you will want to set is to teach your children how to say no to alcohol. Other goals you may wish to implement are as follows:
· Help them realize they can have fun without alcohol
· Teach them the consequences of riding in a car that is driven by someone who is drunk
· Teach them to avoid places where alcohol is served
· Help them get treatment if necessary
· Limit access to alcohol in your home
There are several things that you need to keep in mind when preparing to talk with your teens. These points are essential because they will help you have a more meaningful discussion and build a solid and trusting relationship between you and your kids:
· Choose a time when you and your teens are relaxed and not stressed-out
· Do not worry about discussing everything at once
· Be supportive of your teens no matter what
· Listen to your teens’ concerns and fears
· Encourage your teens to talk by asking open-ended questions
· Control your emotions and do not respond with anger
· Do not lecture or belittle your children
So, you think you’re ready to talk with your teens, but where exactly do you begin? There are many things that young people need to learn when it comes to alcohol and drinking and driving. You do not have to cram all of these topics into one conversation; just pick one or two and save the rest for a later date.
· Your teens’ views on alcohol and drinking and driving
· Alcohol abuse facts
· Driving under the influence (DUI) facts and statistics
· Good reasons to stay away from alcohol and drugs
· False feelings of happiness and satisfaction while drunk
· Detrimental effects of alcohol on the mind and body
· How to handle peer pressure
I am pleased today to offer a guest post written by Jim Donelon, President of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and Commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Insurance. Commissioner Donelon resides in Jefferson Parish, La., with his wife. They are parents of four daughters and grandparents to six granddaughters and two grandsons.
I’d like to thank Tim Hollister, the author of this blog, for inviting me to share my thoughts about teen driving on behalf of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). By educating teens and parents alike, our goal is to help save lives and cut insurance costs associated with teen driving.
Consider this as the summer heats up: more teenage motor vehicle fatalities happen in summer than any other time of year. That’s a sobering statistic, particularly at a time of year when teens want to hit the road with their friends. (See seven more eye-opening facts about teen driving here.) But with the freedom afforded by the summer months (and a new driver’s license), there also comes a great deal of responsibility — a level of responsibility that few teens are truly equipped to handle.
Safety is paramount, but responsible driving has cost benefits as well. Seasoned drivers know even a minor fender-bender can drive up insurance costs, so encouraging your teen to keep this in mind as they hit the road may offer additional incentive to exercise as much caution as possible. In fact, here are several tips to keep in mind as you and your teen select an insurance plan that’s affordable and provides sufficient coverage.
No matter how many precautions one takes, accidents happen. It’s a fact of life. To alleviate some of the uncertainty of what to do after an accident, NAIC’s free WreckCheck app is a useful tool for your teen’s iPhone or Android smartphone. WreckCheck walks users through the process of creating an accident report and documenting all photos and other information necessary to file an insurance claim.
For more resources to help guide these discussions with your teen, visit http://www.insureuonline.org/. There, you also can identify and contact your state’s insurance commissioner who can provide unbiased insurance information for your family and your teen driver.
As parents, we have the responsibility to get involved, educate our children about the risks and empower them to make the best decisions they can — both on the road and in the event of an accident. So do what you can to make our roads a little safer for everyone.
Consumer columnist Kevin Hunt of the Hartford Courant (“The Bottom Line”) recently wrote an informative column comparing how much household car insurance rates go up when a teen driver joins the family’s group of insured drivers. The basic answer — no surprise probably — is 79 percent on average, nationally, with several states averaging an increase of more than 100 percent. The full article is at http://www.courant.com/business/connecticut/hc-bottom-line-teen-car-insurance-20130720,0,634600.column. The column’s cited source is InsuranceQuotes.com.
Hunt explains that rates increase so much due (of course) to the high risks associated with teen driving (although it is interesting to note that teen drivers are generally regarded as having crash rates of three to four times experienced adult drivers, yet the rates at most are double). Also, the column explains that where one lives has big impact, because insurers impose higher rates in locations with “higher traffic density.” Rates in rural areas are somewhat lower, and higher in cities. This all makes sense.
The article goes on to list several things parents can do to reduce their premium sticker shock: good student discounts; having their teen take a defensive driving class, which can be done on-line and for as low as $8; shopping around; long-term policy holder/loyalty discounts; multiple policy discounts; and buying “an older safer model like an SUV, family sedan or midsize car.” This last choice is a trade-off between buying a newer car with more safety features and a bigger car that is more likely to remain intact in a crash. Also, older cars may not need as much collision insurance.
I am all for saving money, but parents: please don’t be misled by any of this. A good student may qualify you for an insurance discount, but academic success has nothing to do with your teen being a safer driver. The same goes for defensive driving classes; don’t be misled into thinking that if an insurer is willing to lower your premium by a few dollars, that it is because your teen is now a safe or safer driver. There is no evidence to support this proposition. Next, note the research, discussed previously on this blog, about the higher risks when teens own or have primary access to a car vs. sharing a car with other family members. The more access a teen has to a car, the higher the risk. Lastly, as between spending more money for a car with more safety features and buying an older car whose collision insurance is lower, this seems like a no -brainer: buy the safest car you can afford. Saving a few bucks on collision insurance is not worth putting your teen at higher risk.
In the past few months I have written several times about the dangers of joyriding — teen driving with no particular destination or timetable — and how the presence of passengers on a joyride is a formula for peer pressure that leads to risky driving behaviors. Those of us who follow the headlines of teen driver crashes have seen this pattern, and its often fatal consequences, again and again, especially in 2013.
I have also written about a particular, recent teen driver crash that involved five teens in a car on a Saturday night. As always, I have no reason to embarrass those involved or make things more difficult for the families, but the fact is that we are all safer when we take the time to look at and understand examples of teen driving that resulted in tragedy. For this reason, and in this spirit, I offer the following excerpt from a news article about the police report on this crash. I have omitted the names, because the focus is the peer pressure, not the people involved or the location. The last line of the article sent a shiver down my spine; it gives a voice to one of our worst fears:
[The survivors] both told police that the SUV’s passengers urged [the teen driver] to go faster over the hill on the way back to the party, according to the warrant. [One passenger] told police that the radio was blasting, and that the SUV hit the bump and became airborne, then landed and veered into trees. She said she felt as though she had blacked out, and when she regained consciousness, she heard [the driver] screaming, the warrant says.
Police estimate that the 2003 Ford Explorer was going 84 to 90 mph at the time of the crash on a street where the speed limit is 30 mph. After hitting the bump in the road, it flew for about 100 feet before landing and going out of control, the warrant says.
The left front fender hit several trees, causing the vehicle to spin counterclockwise, and the passenger side then struck a large tree, and the vehicle spun clockwise and lifted off the ground, the warrant says. The back bumper struck a tree at a height of about 6 feet, and the SUV landed with the left front fender against a tree.
“Oh my God, I think I killed my friends,” [the driver] told residents of the area who heard the crash and rushed to help, the warrant says.
One of the residents described the crash as “never-ending,” according to the warrant. Another resident told police that she asked [the driver], who had gotten out of the SUV on her own, why she sped up.
[Her] response, according to the warrant, was: “They told me to. They kept telling me to go faster.”
One of my jobs on this blog, occasionally, is to point out advice given to parents of teen drivers that misses the mark. My goal is not to embarrass or criticize any person or company, but sometimes one of the best ways to showcase good advice is to point out bad advice and explain why it’s bad.
I recently came across a list of five tips from a national company about how to keep teen drivers safe during the summer months, when crashes, deaths and injuries are the highest. I will paraphrase, to avoid identifying the authors. In summary, the advice was five items: (1) make sure the car your teen drives has the latest airbags; (2) limit high radio volume, eating, and drinking, in addition to texting and cellphone use; (3) make sure tire pressure and tread, wipers, and fluid levels are maintained; (4) advise your teen to look ten seconds down the road and stay three seconds behind the vehicle ahead; and (5) enroll your teen in a driver’s education program that provides experience with skid control and emergency situations. Why is this advice off the mark?
Yes, it’s always best to have the latest safety technology, but on a list of tips for parents, airbags would not make the top 100. They are impact minimization, not crash avoidance.
Advice about distractions that puts radio volume and eating on the same level with texting?
Fluid levels and tire conditions are important, but again, as advice to parents of teen drivers, does this belong in the top five?
It’s nice to tell teens to look ten seconds down the road, but it is well documented that a major reason that teens crash is that they don’t do this; they focus on the perimeter of their own car, on not hitting anything. Looking down the road at the developing traffic situation takes years of experience. It is not something you can simply tell your teen driver to do.
As to so-called ‘skid schools,” the jury is still out. Experience with skids, high speed turns, obstacles avoidance is good, but in some teens it promotes risky driving — trying skids on real roads instead of controlled conditions.
But my biggest concern with this list is: What about brain development? Passengers? Speeding? Curfews? Alcohol and drug use? Fatigue? A teen driver contract? Zero tolerance for electronic distractions? This list doesn’t even touch on these basic, critical items. It gives parents the false impression that if the car their teen drives has up to date airbags, all will be fine. To the contrary, teen driving is a dangerous activity, and any list of tips for parents that is of value starts with this recognition, and focuses on educating parents about the dangers of driving and heading off the most dangerous situations before they arise.
Those of you with sharp powers of observation may have noticed an addition last week to the landing page of this blog: the announcement of the publication of my new book, Not So Fast: Parenting Your Teen Through the Dangers of Driving.
As detailed on our new website, www.nsfteendriving.com, the book will be released nationally on September 1, 2013. We have timed the release to coincide with back-to-school. Our publisher is the Chicago Review Press, www.chicagoreviewpress.com. CRP is a long-established and highly respected independent publisher, and it is an honor for me to work with them, and with Clarisey Consulting, which designed the website.
It is very important to me that everyone understand that the proceeds of this book will support my son’s memorial fund, the Reid Hollister Memorial Fund, c/o the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, and a variety of national traffic safety causes. Reid’s Fund provides financial assistance, for day care of infants and toddlers, to low income families in the Asylum Hill neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut. The benefiting traffic safety causes will include those sponsored and supported by the National Organizations for Youth Safety, www.noys.org, without whose help this book could not have been published.
Not So Fast, as you might expect, is based in part on what I have posted on this blog over the past three and half years, but it is much more than a compilation. I have pulled together the best of about 75 posts, put them in a logical order, and refined them into a comprehensive list of best practices for parents of teen drivers. I selected the best posts in part on the comments I have received from you readers about the posts, plus a healthy dose of consultation with about a dozen traffic safety and teen driving experts from across the country. Put another way, in Not So Fast, I have tried to help parents of teen drivers by doing their homework for them by making the best tips and advice easily and readily available in one place. Thus, I was honored last week to get our first national review: PublishersWeekly called Not So Fast a “concise, practical, and potentially life-saving book” that should be “required reading for every parent before their teen gets behind the wheel.” (Their assessment made five years of nights and weekends spent on teen driving seem worthwhile….)
The website shows the book’s Table of Contents and the Introduction chapter, which will give you a good sense of the topics covered. I would summarize by saying that my mission, as always, has been to give parents a better understanding of how dangerous teen driving is; a sense of the proper attitude to adopt when parenting a teen driver; and a comprehensive list of how parents can head off the most dangerous teen driving situations by proactively managing and supervising their teens BEFORE they get behind the wheel. As with this blog this book is not about driving a car, but parenting a teen.
As shown on www.nsfteendriving.com, the book can be preordered through Chicago Review Press, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. Starting now, I will provide periodic updates leading up to the September 1 release to bookstores.
For now, let me finish this announcement by demonstrating to you that I am fully invested I this publishing process. Below - my new vanity plate!
On the heels of my post about how the National Safety Council has done us all a great service by collecting and publishing national news stories about teen driver crashes, they have published an infographic that aptly summarizes the statistics that document teen driving as a public safety crisis. Great work!
In the past few days I have seen two news reports that individually and together demonstrate our law enforcement system getting tougher with teens who text while driving. The first story involved a 20 year old in Wisconsin who left work to drive home around midnight, sent six text messages while driving, and while composing the seventh text hit a bicyclist from behind. He died a week later. The driver was recently convicted of negligent homicide. The second story is that the State of New York has revised its penalty for texting by teen drivers from monetary fines to a 60 day license suspension. The change makes the penalty for texting the same as for reckless driving and speeding.
I am constrained to say that the verdict in Wisconsin was probably fitting - a criminal conviction for a driver who elevated texting above human life. I must also applaud New York for its change. When I served on the task force that overhauled Connecticut’s teen driver law, one thing that became apparent early in our work was that monetary fines for violations of teen driver laws were not much of a deterrent, especially in a state that has among highest per capita income in the country. We heard too many instances of teens — or their parents — paying the fine and the teen getting back behind the wheel, no wiser and not deterred in any way. On the other hand, a license suspension hits both teens and supervising adults hard. In fact, suspensions drive parents crazy; they quickly become accustomed to the convenience of having another driver in the house, and when that driver is lost to them for 30 or 60 days, they are dreadfully inconvenienced, and the boiling point arrives quickly. In other words, license suspensions are a far more effective deterrent.
Let’s remember, though, that whether state law characterizes texting while driving, by teens or adults, as a civil offense, moving violation, or criminal offense, and whether the state imposes fines or suspends the license, only affects what happens after a violation or a crash. We also need to focus on the upfront actions that prevent texting. As I have now said many times on this blog, Step 1 is to simplify our electronic driving laws, so everyone knows what is and it now allowed. Step 2 is parents of teen drivers — as hard as it may be — having a zero tolerance policy for teen drivers using any kind of distracting electronics (which means electronics that don’t make the car go forward or backward). Readers of this space also know the I am not a fan of “apps” installed on a phone to deter or block texting or phone calls. My philosophy is that rather than install a second piece of technology to disable texting or calling, we should focus on zero tolerance for phones being in the car and within reach during vehicle operation at all. Put another way, instead of putting the bomb in the car and giving teens a piece of technology to defuse the bomb, let’s not put the bomb in the car in the first place.
One of the themes I have tried to develop on this blog is how the national public safety crisis of teen driver crashes, fatalities, and injuries is largely hidden from our view, for two reasons: crashes are so common that they are almost always reported as local news only, a paragraph in the regional or local news or police blotter section of our newspapers; and unless we know the people involved in the crash, we hardly give crashes a second thought — they are the price of our mobile society, an unavoidable fact of life in our automobile-dependent society. We don’t see or understand the big picture.
So, let me heap praise on the National Safety Council’s Drive It Home website (launched several months ago), both because of its overall quality and specifically a feature called “Today’s Teen Driving Headlines,” a compilation of news stories from across the country involving teen driver crashes. A few years ago, Safe Roads for Teens, part of Advocates for Highway Safety, collected these headlines as part of their advocacy for what became the federal teen driving legislation known as MAP 21, but then this valuable service disappeared until NSC resurrected it on their new website. The link is http://www.driveithome.org/Pages/home.aspx?utm_medium=banner&utm_source=nsc-web&utm_campaign=comm2013. The headlines are the box at lower right.
Simply put, there is nothing else that I know of that describes so well the cumulative pain and society-wide impact of teen driving than this compilation of the daily headlines. Reading them is nothing less than searing: teen driver kills sibling, teen driver kills parent, 15 year old driving illegally kills himself and others — on and on and on and on and on. Our accumulated national anguish with teen driving, all in one easily accessible place. I strongly encourage parents to post the link above as a browser favorite and check it out every few days, to get a true sense of how teen driver crashes impact our society — not as aggregate statistics or isolated stories, but through a day by day recounting of the real-life, real-time, national impact of crashes and how they destroy lives and communities.