As we argue in today’s editorial, several recent fatalities involving teens show the need for tighter rules for young drivers in Kansas.
Teens are easily distracted and think they’re indestructible — a deadly combination on the road.
Despite accounting for just 7 percent of registered drivers, teen drivers are involved in 20 percent of Kansas accidents.
And car crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers.
Legislators should pass a couple of proposed changes in driver regulations — restrict nighttime driving for teens (say, after 9 p.m.) and limit driving with other teens in the car. No cell phones, either.
Of course, parents provide the most important models and oversight. Some tough love could save a lot of young lives.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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21 Comments
Any bets that “waitaminute” is going to show up and claim that Randy only cares about teen drivers so his family can sell more cars?
Or, maybe he will provide a more delusional hypothesis.
Gosh, I hope he doesn’t call me alter-randy. That would be just awful…
“…and limit driving with other teens in the car.”
I am recalling that there is some insurance research that suggests boys driving with boys is a risk for accidents, but the same isn’t true with boys driving with girls. I will see if I can find that data.
I was thinking the same think, Steven . . . hehehe . . .
Was not able to find the literature on the sex of the teen passenger making a difference.
This research says that if a teen is driving at night, with multiple teen passengers the risk of an accident is 11 times greater than if the teen is driving alone during the day.
http://heb.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/29/1/73
This research supports the benefits of graduated licensing.
A real solution is to not license children to drive in the first place. If you are not considered an adult you should not be operating a car. How many people have died and the ‘inattentive driver’ has been slapped on the wrist as a juvenile offender?
This:”Male passengers are an especially problem scenario; a male driver and a female passenger is lower risk.16″from this study -http://ip.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/12/suppl_1/i4
This study sites work where male passengers are a risk factor for both male and female teen drivers -https://www.nsc.org/public/GDL/HedlundShultsCompton.pdf
My ideas on this topic are, no doubt, affected by one of my prior employments; working in a mortuary putting myself through the last 3 years of college and the first year of Law School.
I don’t believe in licensing anyone to drive, in any fashion, until that person is at least 17. The first year should be under some of the restrictions set out in the editorial linked above, i.e., not after 9:00 pm, a limit on the number of other teens in the vehicle; in fact, I’ll recommend that until age 18, with one year driving experience, the newly-minted driver not be allowed to drive with anyone other than a parent or guardian. This should be coupled with increased drivers’ ed requirements, with greater use of simulators and actual on the street/road driving under supervision. Now, this won’t take care of all the problems; but it likely would help.
Does this create some hardship on the young person and family? Yes, it likely does. I suspect the benefits, such as a reduced teen accident rate and fewer injuries/deaths would outweigh these.
An indirect benefit would be to keep the ones still in school concentrated more on their studies, rather than out getting a job to support the money guzzling beast sitting in the drive. Interestingly, neither of our girls showed the least interest in learning to drive at the normally “appointed time”. Don’t know what’s wrong with them, but have been grateful for their position many, many times.
Personally, I’ve been involved in way more accidents with senior citizens than I have with teenagers.
A few weeks ago, I was at a conference where the lecturer was saying that male brains don’t fully mature until an average age of 24. The brain areas associated with judgement mature last. This guy (from the univ. of Minnesota, medical school) also said female brains reach full maturity earlier than males.
Teen auto accidetns result from bad judgement, inadequately appraising risk, and inexperience. So, maybe Vaughn has some good suggestions here.
I lean both ways on this one. Having lived out in the middle of nowhere while my kids were teenagers, and the fact that they were out-of-district students at the school they attended and had to meet the bus, if they took it, some 7 miles from home, the oldest was licensed at 16. She did take driver’s ed, but rarely drove to school (I drove them), although she did sometimes drive to evening activities (play practice) after she was 16.
There are a lot of parents in rural areas who buy their kids cars–some much fancier than I’ve ever had. Parents also buy the gas, pay the insurance, etc. After-school and before-school activities are the main reason. When I was in school, I remember guys on the football and basketball teams driving the farm pickup or a few even wheat trucks to school. When they did get their own car (after they turned 16 and had worked for it), most parents limited the driving time. Lots of curfews, lots of “rules.”
My kids were never given cars. After high school, they worked to buy one. I’ve helped with insurance when needed, but the responsibility has pretty much been theirs. That’s how they learn that a car isn’t a toy, but comes with responsibilities such as tags, taxes, gas, insurance, and repairs.
I think how they get the car and how they are allowed to use it can make a big difference.
Has this suddenly became a problem? Are RATES higher now than when we used to get our license at 14 if we lived on the farm and drove wheat trucks, large farm equipment and were allowed to drive to and from school?
Steven Davis, this link also supports the male passenger v. female passenger issue insofar as increased risk of injury/fatality.
http://www.iihs.org/research/topics/pdf/teen_passengers.pdf
mrbill,
Are you referring to insurance rates or the number of teen driving deaths?
I could give everyone a big lecture since I have a degree in Safety, but I won’t. Okay, maybe a few things…
From an old film, but a goodie, there are things to consider when driving.It’s called T.E.A.M.
T(ask)E(nvironment)A(utomobile)M(Man)
Those are the basic elements everyone needs to consider when driving an motorized vehicle of any type.
Even the so-called pro’s make mistakes and can find themselves in a vehicle incident they did not desire.
Training is not necessary the answer to all the problems, it’s attitude and responsibility.
Just watch people who drive your children in school buses as they leave from the parking lot in their own cars. They suddenly turn from Safety conscious, to get the heck out of my way type of people. (bad attitude)
Responsibility. When is the last time you checked your car for safety. Do you take off down the road with one headlamp working? Are your brakes kind of spongey and you been driving that way for the past six months? How about that tire with no tread? Or maybe you should really fix that strut or shock absorber or get the front end aligned…
How fast are you traveling?
55mph is 80.67 feet per second.
Let’s say you have a really good braking system and can come to a stop at a 50 percent reduction of your current speed. And you have really fast reactions so you can put on the brakes in about 1/2 of a second.
So, under idea circumstances (which ain’t gonna happen) you can come to a stop in 80 feet. That’s about four car lengths in perfect conditions (no bad weather, everything is working,etc.)
If you are speeding down a street in the city at 55mph and you apply the brakes with your superhuman reflexes and super brakes you will still hit that car you’ve been tailgating because you did not even leave room the proper distance at lower speeds. (General rule is a car length for each 10 miles per hour)
So, if the speed limit is 35 miles per hour, you should be follow a car with 3.5 car lengths minimally under idea conditions. Otherwise, you just purchased a new backend for the other guy and a new front end for your car, not counting medical conditions resulting from the accident.
Personally, I think we should adopt the German driving method. Their driver’s performance test is quite tough. It is much like what cops go through to get certified to drive under hazardous and emergency conditions.
Also, extremely rigid safety conditions before an automobile is allowed on the road and heavy fines for those who ignore maintenance of their vehicle.
Oh yeah, take that cell phone, drink, cigarette, newspaper, map, hairbrush and anything else out of your hands and put it down.
Both hands on the wheels at all times.
Now considering how all those things make it difficult to drive a car…
Consider a teenager who drives to be cool (fast and wreckless) and has built-in road rage everytime he gets in the car ignoring the safety of others and theirselves.
I could put more, but we’d be here for four more weeks. heh
In regards to JM’s post–it is good to see the importance of attitude and responsibility stressed. But I have to add on a few points of detail.
First, the usual rule for following is two seconds. At 55 mph this translates to a distance of 160 ft–more than twice the suggested spacing of one car length for every 10 mph (5.5 x an assumed car length of 16 ft = 88 ft).
Second, it is important to note that in spite of their rigorous driver licensing procedures, the Germans’ fatality rate on motorways is only slightly better than ours (4.5 deaths per billion vehicle km, versus 5.2 according to IRTAD data). The countries to follow are Britain and Switzerland–2.2 and 2.5 respectively.
Personally, I am agnostic on the whole question of teen driver licensing. I didn’t start driving until I was 17, and had no real desire to start earlier, but I’m sympathetic to the problems faced by people who live on farms and families where both parents work and the children have after-school activities.
I would like to see some stats on people who learned to drive in their twenties. My suspicion is that the first year or so after starting to drive is the most dangerous regardless of age. If that’s the case, then raising the driving age only postpones the problem.
Jed, that seems logical; however, with the greater brain maturity in the 20s, etc., I presume the statistics would not be as negative, although I don’t have any data to back me up on this. I have a client who learned to drive at age 70, following her husband’s death; some 15 years later, no accidents, no moving violations, although she will be giving her license up soon, due to medical issues.
Argatlam,
You are correct on the following lengths, I was using an old rule of thumb for slower speeds. The time/distance method is preferred.
“I would like to see some stats on people who learned to drive in their twenties. My suspicion is that the first year or so after starting to drive is the most dangerous regardless of age. If that’s the case, then raising the driving age only postpones the problem.” Posted by: Jed
I have that data somewhere, just have to dig it up. You are right in the assumption that maturity and chronological age is tied to more responsible driving.
Van:I was referring to the accident rates.
I had also looked previously at the cell phone links but Ive lost the reference. It had some interesting info on the cell phone and accidents. Cell phone involvement is listed under the broad heading of “Inattentive Driving” this covers eating,drinking , reading etc. I realize people dont like cell phone users in general but the cell phone use was not even in the top 5 of “Inattentive” causes. The number ONE cause of incident was the mere fact of having another person in the car. Having another person in the car was about 5 times higher than the cell phone use. So mostly the cell phone canard is just that.
People have bad feelings for obnoxious cell people anywhere.But they are not a big issue when compared to others to waste resources on.
But don’t dare ask for the media to attempt to explain these issues. With such scientifically illiterate 22 year old blonde’s with a degree(?) in “journalism” yammering with no knowledge base to work from. It would be nice to have the media hire someone to look into and actually be able to pick these numbers apart if necessary. Instead of just reading them from a news release.
The just released Institute for Highway Safety said that NO American cars made the safe list.
They did not tell anyone that this Insurance backed group now refuses to test any car that does not have “stability control”. This is just now being put in low end cars since it REQUIRES ABS brakes. But as far a a crash into another car…we wont know now until this is mandated by the Feds.
My mistake on the data, I seem to have remembered a study conducted concerning Commercial Drivers Licenses to those over 21. The reasoning was more maturity was desired and later required to drive the big rigs, buses and like vehicles.
But I do have a joke told to an audience by the Superintendent of the Texas Highway Patrol.
He was making comments on proper use of turn signals, 4 way flashers, headlamps and parking lights.
He remarked, “It scares the life right out of me when I see a parked car moving down the road at 65 miles per hour!”
JM – what scares me even more is when the guy at the wheel isn’t driving; he is in his easy chair having an animated conversation with someone on the phone.