Teen Drivers

Every learner should need to sit throught the presentation that I and a class did once in 1971 back in Wooster Ohio. When the seminar was over and we went to our cars, we were damn near scared to even put the thing in drive at all. ( we had already begun the standard driving class in school and our egos had us feeling like we had it down. )

The class was presented by the state police accident scene PHOTOGRAPHER ! . Yep, you got it, The most eye-popping, graphic, ‘scared strait’ experience every driver should see. Complete with a reaction time demonstration using a $20 bill ( this is 1971 ) dangled between your open finger tips ( thumb & first finger open about 3" ) by the speaker and dropped by him at random. “If you can catch it you can keep it.” Out of thirty people in the room he gave out only one $20 bill.

This was a most valuable part of learning the automobile for the MACHINE that it is that every learner must get early on. Along with learning mechanical function and maintainance, and driving operations like winter, skids, trailer, and stopping distance that re-shapes your sub-concious approach to driving from day one.

Learners must realize the MACHINE they are operating from the git-go. It’s not the living room furniture like it feels inside. It’s not their personal sound system. It’s not a show-off clothing accessory nor party time. When they “get” this from the start then the rest makes logical sense as they learn.

Well, I’m glad I don’t have any kids. I’ve got enough gray/white hair as it is, thank you.

On one hand, 16 year olds shouldn’t be let anywhere near a car. Mentally, they are still small children and are incapable of rational decision making. The human brain doesn’t finish assembling itself until about age 25, and the last part to mature is the frontal cortex, where responsible decision-making, judgment, and balancing pros and cons is done.

On the other hand, no one wants to raise the age of majority to 25, or even back to 21 (which was an excellent compromise). At some point, teens need to pick up driving experience while they’re still in learning mode.

What I would suggest is a very drawn-out schedule of supervision. No one should be allowed to solo until they’re at least 18 and have 2 years of driving with a parent or legal guardian beside them. Teens are just too reckless by themselves (remember, they’re invincible). Sure, this will be a hardship on the few teens who are very mature and responsible, as well as those who need to drive to a job. But face it, do teens really need the keys to drive to school every day, or drive to the mall to hang out? No! What they need is close supervision at all times, being carefully exposed to more and more challenging situations after they’ve mastered the basics. If I had teens, that’s what I’d do.

As has been posted here before, knowing the rules of the road is huge. Following distances, right-of-way, merging, basic green,blue,brown signage, etc etc.

Also instilling that driving the vehicle is the first priority. Not the phone, friends, radio, eating or anything else. Their lives are on the line and so are other drivers.

Also educate them about the aftermath of accidents beside dealth or dismemberment. Things like lawsuits, garnishments and true lifelong effects of bad driving.

The best car for a new teen driver is one they buy with money they earned themselves…Four cylinder stick shift pick-ups are a good choice for a first vehicle. No pretense of “coolness” or “performance”. Easy to repair, cheap to insure, relatively safe to drive. Since insurance will be a major expense, always investigate that side of the equation.

Teaching your kids to drive can be a great bonding experience if handled correctly. One of the best places I found to teach a teenager how to handle a car safely, is in a cemetery. Close quarters, constant attention required, a constant reminder of their mortality and no one gets upset when you scream.

Alot of great stuff in there, I love your show and appreciate the info,
down side I have a teen in drivers ed, cripes it is hard enough getting her to listen to your show, and an improvement I might suggest is bigger bolder type and consice points. As I advise my secretaries take out every other word, make it more effective. example

Tip #1: Drive Now. Talk Later.
Don’t drive, pull over and stop if you need to Talk or Text using cellphone!

vs
* Dialing a hand-held device (typically a cell phone) increases the risk of a crash or near-crash by almost 3 times, and talking or listening on a hand-held device by 1.3 times.
* 62 percent of high school drivers say they talk on a cell phone while driving and 24 percent say that talking on a cell phone is safe. More than one in five admits to text messaging while behind the wheel.
* Sources: NHTSA and VTTI, SADD/Liberty Mutual
Then add a link to the fluff if they wish to contest the proposed idea.

If I had one catch phrase to tell a young driver, it would have to be something like “wisdom only works if you choose to use it”. My worst driving happens when I deliberately choose against wisdom and for emotion.

I taught my two daughters to drive, along with driver’s ed. The things I emphasized after the basic car control were:

  1. Parking lots are dangerous! Seriously, people and cars are moving in all sorts of directions and you need to be watching for them everywhere. The speeds are low, so the consequences are usually minor fender-benders, but I’m sure there are more accidents in parking lots than anywhere else.

  2. Look way down the road. Think about what’s going on 1/4 mile or so ahead. You get many fewer surprises that way. Expect people to do dumb stuff and be ready for it.

  3. Keep driving the car! I always get annoyed by the phrase “the driver lost control.” What that almost always means is the driver gave up control. Maybe you are sliding and really can’t do anything, but you should keep trying because you can almost always have some effect on the car’s motion, and if not you can at least know that you tried everything you could.

I was very fortunate when my son was a teenage driver. He attended a military school for high school and took a driver training course while enrolled there. In the summer he lived with a relative and worked for the academy so I furnished a car. The military school experience helped him develop a sense of responsibility. When he drove my vehicle, a Ford Aerostar with a display that gave the average mpg, he would get a better average than I would get. As a college sophomore, he did an Appalachian semester and worked in a little mission. He had to drive 15 passenger vans on narrow mountain roads with steep drop-offs on either side and had children in the van. I rode with him once when he was transporting kids. He wouldn’t start the engine until every seat belt was fastened.

My only complaint about the driver education course is that they said nothing about vehicle maintenance. He knows how to replace a battery but that is about it. He is in his mid thirties and I still get calls about his automotive problems. It’s hard to give a definitive answer when he lives 350 miles from where I do.

During your first winter with snow. You’ve got to learn to drive in snow. For the first year or even two the first snowfall can throw you for a loop with either a couple of skiddings or an accident. Winter is an aquired driving skill.

This is the best piece of advice I got while learning to helm (steer) a sailboat. It is not quite that same (boats don’t have brakes) but does still apply to cars.
"If you can’t avoid a collision, steer to make it a glancing blow."
To date I have not had to use it, while sailing.
Cheers KiwiPhil

My son totaled his ONE MONTH old car a couple of years ago (the car his mother and I went further into debt to buy him). He was making a right hand turn and rear ended the vehicle in front of him. His excuse? He was looking for on-coming traffic on the street he was turning on to. The advice? Teens should watch where they’re going, not where they want to go. Yes, everyone was okay and my son became intimately familiar with airbags.

I got my driver’s license in the late 1950’s. My family didn’t have a lot of money and we knew that. My dad put me in charge of taking care of the family cars. I learned how to do some of the easier jobs–replacing the generator, carburetor or fuel pump as well as routine maintenance. For problems I couldn’t solve, I took the car to a shop. I learned a lot from talking with the service managers and mechanics. My dad bought a used Buick the year I started high school. It was the newest car we had owned–only 1 year old. I bought the car from him eight years later in my second year of graduate school. It had gone 120,000 miles at this time with no major repairs.

I was expected to be a responsible driver and maintaining the car helped give me a sense of responsibility. Growing up in the country, I had operated equipment in the fields, so I had a sense of what to do when I got a driver’s license. My parents trusted me and I didn’t want to let them down.

I tried to do the same thing with my own son. I trusted him to drive responsibly and he didn’t let me down. He doesn’t have a real interest in mechanical things, so he has never attempted repairs. However, he has never had an accident and he is now in his mid thirties.

Nope, if he was looking for oncoming traffic he was not looking where he wanted to go. The advice about looking where you want to go is mostly to do with avoiding “target fixation.” People can see some thing they know they want to avoid and will start to stare at that thing and the car tends to go where the driver is looking.

Your son was probably turning right and looking left. That’s not where he wanted to go, but wasn’t where he should have been looking either.

My daughter, “Crash Cathy,” had 10 accidents before she was 18 years old. I couldn’t afford to send her to the Bondurant Teenage school, so I took her to a Porsche Club driving school (no, I don’t have a Porsche) for a two-day class. By the second day, she had her Contour sideways every lap coming out of Turn 16 at Heartland Park in Topeka, KS, and she hasn’t had an accident since. That was so successful, I took my son, Rob, to a BMW driving school at Road America and he, too, hasn’t had any accidents. These schools are relatively cheap ($200 to $400), available at a track near you, and you use your own car.

Either drive or text you do not do either very well the 2 together is an accident waiting to happen

When your teen asks why you get to push the speed limit, tell him/her that you can afford the speed tax that comes in the form of speeding ticket, increased insurance and possible loss of license:-)

On those mountain roads, teen thinks can go the speed marked for the corners-- not unless they can stay between the lines.
skipp

Drive the speed limit, or below.

Young men. I was young once. I remember it well, sorta. When I was a new license holder I had two things in mind. 1. Get a car. 2. Get a girl to go riding in my car with me. Now both of these things are reasonable. Driving a car is fun. It’s freedom. It’s also a big responsibility. Yeah, I know, Your Dad has already lectured you all about this. But listen, in this age as well as in my early driving age, the quickest way to get dead was in a car. Sometimes booze was involved, sometimes a pretty girl and booze was involved. I can tell you that the girls who enjoy fast boozy rides in your car are not the girls you will end up being either an item with, or even friends with. You may even end up sharing an awful experience with them. I am not saying that these girls are bad people. I’m saying that when you are young you think you are invincible. You ain’t. Don’t do it. You want to drive like a loon? Do it with your Dad in a parking lot. Or on a well frozen lake. Most of all, do it sober. The girls you want so desperately to impress will be more impressed by a handful of wildflowers than a beer, a shot, and a high speed run on a lonely two lane. Trust me on this. There’s a lot to look forward to in life. Stick around and live it.

The most important thing to practice is saying no to driving when you are not ready to do it. This is no joke. Practice it with your parents. Let’s say you’ve borrowed the car for an activity and you are too tired to drive yourself home. (It happens to everyone at one time). Call your parents and ask them for advice about what to do: taking a bus, getting a ride with a friend’s parent, waiting for them to pick you up.
This will really prove that you are dead serious about the responsibility of driving. Even at 43, I will sometimes call someone to pick me up instead of driving myself in a less-than-safe way. Driving is a deadly serious responsibility. You need to practice getting OUT of dangerous driving situations.