A few posts and weeks ago, I wrote about a case that was in front of the U.S. Supreme Court about whether police may secretly place a GPS tracking device on the car of a suspect and track the car’s movements without a search warrant.  I noted that using a GPS to follow the movements of a teen driver is becoming a technological option for parents who can afford it, and I wondered whether the Supreme Court might say something in its decision that would implicate parents use of these devices.

The Court has now ruled in United States v Jones.  The Justices held unanimously that police may not, without a search warrant, place a GPS device on a privately owned vehicle, and that doing so violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.  The decision is not entirely clear about the rationale, because some of the Justices focused on the fact that the police planted the device on a privately-owned vehicle, and some focused on whether a citizen’s right to privacy includes where they drive their car.

Anyway, parents:  this ruling says nothing about you using a GPS device to track the movements of your teen driver.  The ruling does not apply for three reasons:  First, you are not the police, but parents.  Second, the car you are placing the device on is presumably your car, and even if someone else owns it, you will likely get their consent before you place the GPS.  Third, teens under 18 remain under the control and oversight of parents in many ways, so I doubt that any court would say that a parent placing a GPS on a teen driver’s car violated the teen’s right to privacy.

So, if anyone tells you that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned placement of GPS devices and parents cannot track their teens with a GPS, that is not accurate.

Ever since I started researching teen driving agreements two years ago, I have hoped to have a model in both English and Spanish, and now, with fabulous help from Yale-New Haven Hospital, we do.  You will now find on the landing page of this blog a Spanish translation of the revised national model teen driving agreement that I posted on January 12, 2012.  This is very exciting because, of course, the Spanish speaking segment of the U.S. population is large and continues to grow, and it simply makes no sense to have this important tool of safer teen driving not available to that population.  As this blog proceeds, I will venture to add Spanish translations for key posts when it is possible to do so.

My thanks to Jose Rivera-Vinas and Pina Violano of Yale New Haven Hospital for their help in translating.

Readers and friends:  Happy New Year to all of you.  Let me begin by explaining that it has been about a month since I posted on the blog, for two reasons:  I have been hard at work on a handbook, based on the posts on this blog, for parents of teen drivers; and I have been working on a substantial revision of the national model teen driving agreement that I posted on this blog almost two years ago.  So, sorry for the silence, but it has been productive!  I am just about finished with the manuscript (working title:  Not So Fast:  Parenting Teen Drivers BEFORE They Get Behind The Wheel), and today I am pleased to introduce on the landing page of this blog my newly revised national model teen driving agreement.

Some background:  In December 2009, after spending several months researching several dozen teen driving contracts from around the country, and using both my knowledge of teen driving and my experience as a lawyer with contracts, I posted three articles:  one about what not to do in teen driver agreements (provisions that I thought were incomplete, misstated, misleading, misguided, etc.); one about how to negotiate a teen driving agreement (emphasizing that it should be a collaborative process); and one about how to work with and enforce a signed agreement. Then in February 2010 I posted my own national model, a compilation of best practices that I had gleaned from the best national models.

A few months ago, here in Connecticut, Commissioner Melody Currey of our Department of Motor Vehicles, convened a new Advisory Group on Safe Teen Driving and asked the group to do three things:  come up with a statewide model teen driving agreement specifically for Connecticut; create a model curriculum for the two hour, mandatory safety class that Connecticut since 2008 has required parents to attend when their 16 or 17 year old has a learner’s permit; and produce an instructional video about critical safety information for parents to see during that required class.  I was member of the teen driving agreement subcommittee.  Over several weeks the subcommittee considered my model, a model developed by the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and host of others from around the country, and came up with a wide variety of improvements on the prior models (including mine) and a consensus recommendation for a new one. At a meeting in early December, the Advisory Committee adopted a new model for Connecticut, now available on the Connecticut DMV’s website:

http://www.ct.gov/dmv/lib/dmv/teenparentagreement_dmv_12_2011_final.pdf

The adoption of this new model for Connecticut led me to go back to my own national model and incorporate the improvements and insights that the Connecticut subcommittee had provided, which I have now done.  The newly revised model is now available on the landing page of this blog, downloadable as a pdf.  It is a national model but is easily adaptable to your state and family situation.

Here are the important improvements and features contained in this newly revised model from the February 2010 version:

• use of the word “agreement” instead of contract, to highlight that this is not a legally binding document, but a commitment to follow an agreed-upon set of understandings and expectations;
• use of the term “supervising adult” instead of “parent,” to recognize the reality that not every teen driver is supervised by a biological or adoptive parent, but sometimes by a guardian, relative, or family friend;
• an express direction to teens and parents to review and sign the agreement whether teen obtains a learners permit and then review it again and make any needed changes when the teen gets a license;
• a critical set of cautions for parents, asking them to consider whether their teens are ready to begin driving at all, to acknowledge the dangers of any electronic devices, and a reminder that parents are roles models for their teens and must be safe, responsible and defensive drivers at all times;
• a clear statement, to be reviewed and initialed by both parents, regarding the four greatest risks of teen driving:  the delayed development of the part of the human brain that provides caution and risk assessment; the fact that passing Driver’s Ed and getting license makes a teen a beginner, not a safe driver; the fact that teens violating state laws can cause injury, death, property damage, and financial liability; and the types of conduct (speeding, reckless driving, etc.) that increase the risk of injury or death to the driver, passengers, other drivers, and pedestrians;
• a clear statement about the time period of the agreement;
• recognition that the teen’s driving will be supervised day by day by an adult;
• an understanding that each time a teen drives, the teen and adult will devise a “driving plan” for that trip
• a clear statement about seat belt use — all vehicle occupants at all times;
• regarding electronic devices, a simple statement focused on driver conduct (when the car is not in Park, no use of any electronic device for typing, texting, reading, video watching, or communicating with someone outside the car) (getting away from confusing state laws about electronic devices, many of which focus on regulating some gadgets while exempting others);
• a curfew provision intending to be customized to reflect your state’s law;
• a recommended three stage (a/k/a “graduated”) passenger provision (first phase – adult supervisor only, then add immediately family members, then add other passengers);
• clear rules on alcohol, drugs, fatigue, speeding, finances;
• a provision about who may report a violation of the agreement to a supervising adult, and the fact that any suspension under the agreement is in addition to penalties or suspensions under state law;
• a “call for a safe ride” provision, saying that the teen at any time and for any reason may call for a safe ride, and doing so will not be a violation of the agreement;
• an optional provision to appoint a third party as mediator if the supervising adult and teen have a dispute about the agreement; and
• a final written “Commitment to Safety” by the teen and supervising adult or adults signing and dating the agreement.

I am not aware of any teen driving agreement available at this time that combines all of these futures and best practices.  I respectfully submit that this newly revised model is  step forward, and hope that traffic safety organizations, DMV’s, insurers, auto manufacturers, driving schools and instructors, and others around the country will give it serious consideration.

Let me not for a moment take personal credit for this new model.  What I have posted today arose from the excellent teamwork of the Connecticut DMV Advisory Committee and the Subcommittee that I was privileged to work with:  Kevin Borrup of the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center;  Police Chief Louis Fusaro of the City of Norwich, Ct; Deputy Commissioner Leonard Lee of the Ct Department of Public Health; Attorney Richard Hastings, of Ridgefield, Ct (who way a driving force in the initial formation of the Advisory Committee and to whom I am especially indebted for his energy, insight, and dedication); Pina Violano of Yale-New Haven Hospital; Ernie Bertothy and Bill Seymour of the Connecticut DMV, who have coordinated the Advisory Committee’s activities: Emma Morse, a student at Rocky Hill High School; Sherry Chapman, of Mourning Parents Act; and finally DMV Commissioner Melody Currey.

Finally, I recognize that, as many improvement as we have made, the work is never done, and as always I welcome comments, suggestions, and improvements from blog readers on how this newly revised model posted today can be further improved.

Thanks!

As I mark five years since Reid’s crash, I feel a need to explain myself – why I publish this blog, what I am trying to achieve.  That is, today is my own personal GPS day, a time to look back at the route taken and to consider the destinations ahead.

People often ask me if publishing this blog is therapeutic, if I use this activity to deal with my grief over Reid’s passing.  I suppose many folks assume this to be the case without asking.  But this is most assuredly not true.  For the year after Reid’s crash, I floundered in every aspect of my life — as I have often said in my posts, not in the sense of beating myself up for making a huge and obvious mistake while supervising Reid’s driving, but more feeling confused because I thought I had done all of the things that a parent of a teen driver was supposed to do, and yet my son still died.  Then, in late 2007, I joined Connecticut’s Task Force on Safe Teen Driving, got a thorough reeducation in the dangers of teen driving, and discovered that in 2006 I had not been the well informed parent that I thought I was.  Serving on the Task Force, I discovered that so much of the literature available to parents of teen drivers simply does not explain the risks and dangers; makes the assumption that teens will drive when they reach the minimum legal age; and gives parents the clear impression that their job is to teach teens the rules of the road and how to handle a vehicle — and then just sit at home and pray.  In other words, I don’t do this teen driving stuff because of grief or guilt;  I do it because, after serving on the Task Force, I learned that we have an appalling national problem with inadequate education of parents of teen drivers. When the Task Force’s work was finished, I felt a call to step up and do what one person could do try to to fill the gap.

So what keeps me plugging away?  Here is a partial list:

• the upside-down traffic culture in our country: we are desensitized to traffic crashes and fatalities because they are so common as to draw little notice, and because the infotainment industry glorifies speed, risk taking, and crashes.
• the periodic eNewsletters I get from the Safe Roads Coalition, with links to searing news articles from around the country about fatal teen driving crashes and who dies (siblings, parents, pedestrians, fellow students).
• the annual national data from NHTSA on teen driver crashes, fatalities, and injuries.
• the absolute madness of auto manufacturers and the electronics industry now collaborating to introduce new, distracting technologies to the dashboards of new cars, all of which are plainly destined to increased distracted driving crashes (and the federal government’s tepid response to this growing problem).
• attitudes of parents who just don’t get it, who regard law enforcement as an annoyance and teen driving laws as political grandstanding.
• a desire to believe that my son did not die in vain, that something good has resulted from his crash.
• the dedicated traffic safety professionals from around the country that I have had the privilege to get to know during these past few years.
• and a bunch of these folks who I am pleased to now call friends.

On Sunday December 11, The Compassionate Friends, the national organization for parents who have lost children, is organizing its annual Worldwide Candle Lighting.  Wherever you are at 7PM, you are asked to light a candle in memory of children who have died.  So many of those remembered by this event have died in motor vehicle crashes.  I invite you to take a moment then to light a candle to remember Reid and honor all children who have passed away.  And as always,  thank you for your interest in this blog.

I have spent lots of time on this blog warning parents what not to do:  Don’t let your personal convenience get in the way of safety.  Don’t be desensitized  by popular culture and entertainment and the news media to the dangers of driving.  Don’t be lulled into the false belief that a well behaved, responsible teen who has taken driver’s education and passed the state’s road test is a safe driver. Don’t be reckless or indifferent.  Etc.

A friend recently asked me:  “OK, so what should a parent’s attitudes be?”  Here are my top six:

1. Understand and accept the dangers of teen driving as your baseline.
2. Be willing to say “no” to your teen, especially at three stages:  when teens say they are ready to get a learner’s permit but your heart and head tell you that they are not ready yet; when they want to graduate from learner’s permit to licensed solo driving and you have the same fear; and when your licensed driver, day by day, runs into circumstances, such as fatigue or stress, that counsel you to say “no driving today.”
3. Use your parent power to withhold car keys when you need to.
4. Be vigilant day by day for the situations described on this blog: purposeful driving v joyriding, managing curfews, prohibiting passengers, prohibiting texting, not buying a car for a teen’s own use, using a traffic ticket as a teaching moment, signing and following a teen-parent driving agreement.
5. When in doubt, err on the side of being conservative.  There is simply no room for error when we manage teen drivers.
6. Approach parenting your teen driver with the attitude of  working together to make safety the top priority.

In past blog posts, I have discussed the future of in-vehicle technology, highlighting the looming problem of dashboard-mounted screens with Internet access and interactive controls that will transform distracted driving from a teenagers- texting problem to a mainstream adult driver phenomenon.

The future his here, according to the October 2011 edition of Consumer Reports, in an article called, “Connected cars:  A new risk.”  The article details the installation in 2012 model cars of dashboard screens with complicated controls that plainly require drivers to take their eyes off the road. (The claims of manufacturers that these systems are exclusively or predominantly voice-activated are simply not accurate.) The predictions in the CR article are positively frightening:  Said one technology expert, “Within five years, 90 percent of new cars will ship with connected car features.”  In addition, “In-car technology is quickly becoming integrated into broader infotainment and navigation systems.”  And finally, my personal favorite:  “It’s a battle between safety and marketing.” 

Can someone please explain to me why we are debating safety vs. marketing?

But let us consider the implications of the addition of these new technologies on teen drivers.  I can think of no positive ones, but here are a few negatives:  Adult supervisors engaging in more and more acts of technological distraction while driving will only make adults less worthy role models for teens.  If a parent surfs the Internet for a restaurant while driving, how can that same parent warn a teen not to text while driving?  Second, we will now have teens being trained in cars that have these advanced, more distracting technologies, which can only detract from the training.  In other words, distracting technology will become integrated into driver training, which cannot be beneficial.  Third, we need to remember that teen drivers, due to their incomplete brain development and their inexperience, are even more susceptible to the distractions of these in-car technologies; while auto manufacturers may have adult drivers (who are willing to pay to make their cars mobile hot spots) in mind, the fact is that teens will drive these cars, and these new technologies are sure to undermine safe teen driving efforts. 

So, as the sophistication, pervasiveness, and distraction of these new systems grows, the additional cautions for parents include: 

1. when you buy a new car with a dashboard-mounted screen and interactive features, consider whether that car is safe to train your teen and safe for him or her to drive;
2. consider whether these systems have deactivation features, such that you as a parent can be sure that teen drivers will not use them;  and
3. if your teen is likely to drive a “connected car” (a useful phrase – thank you, CR), your parent-teen driving agreement should be even more direct and detailed about rules using any of these features  (for example, the agreement should say, point blank, that “At no time will the teen driver use in interactive Internet feature of the car’s dashboard”.)   

Parents need to bear in mind that technology that is convenient for them may constitute a substantial new danger for a teen driver.

Last month I attended the National Distracted Driving Summit, in Washington, D.C., organized  by the National Organizations for Youth Safety, www.noys.org.  While there, I met a dynamo from Virginia named Julie Garner and learned about Project Yellow Light.

Julie’s son Hunter, 16, died in a crash in 2007, just a few months after my son Reid.  Julie has now organized a national video contest, Project Yellow Light, www.projectyellowlight.com.  The contest seek videos, 60 seconds in length, that will prevent teens from texting while driving.  The prize is a scholarship, along with distributing of the winning video to approximately 1,600 TV stations nationwide.  Julie Garner is joined in her efforts by NOYS and the Ad Council, the national advertising organization.  So, this is a big time contest with potentially huge rewards for the winner — not to mention the cause of saving lives.  Details are available on the Project website.  I am pleased to be able to pass along information about it.

More on the Distracted Driving Summit in the next post.  Sorry for the recent slowdown in posts.  As I write, this, Connecticut is finally beginning to recover from this past weekend’s snow storm and resulting statewide power outages.

This post provides several national updates about safe teen driving:

1. Writer Sharon Silke Carty of the Huffington  Post /Autos@aol.com continues her excellent series about teen driving.  If you have not visited, I highly recommend it.  Her most recent article is http://autos.aol.com/article/teen-driving-safety-teens-speak-up-about-driving-texting-pare/.




2. The National Organizations for Youth Safety, www.noys.org, will host a national distracted driving summit for teens today and tomorrow (which I will be attending). They are expecting more than 200 people and will have several panels of experts talking with teens about ways to combat this growing problem.




3. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, http://www.aaafoundation.org/home/,  has released a new study demonstrating that teen driver crash rates are 50 percent higher in the first month that teens begin to drive unsupervised by a parent of instructor than after a year of driving.  Reporter Tom Costello of NBC did a segment on this research last Friday, October 14, on the Today Show, and concluded that with teen drivers, ”There is simply no substitute for experience.”




4. In 2008, Connecticut became the first state in the nation to mandate that teens in the learner’s permit phase be accompanied to a two hour class by a parent or guardian.  Despite the usual and expected initial complaints from some  parents about imposition on their busy schedules, now that the class is established, it has been overwhelmingly received positive reviews from parents.  Connecticut is now taking the first step in the next phase, which is standardizing what the driving schools and driver education teachers are teaching the parents during this class, hoping to make sure that the messages are accurate, compelling, and mostly uniform.  I am involved with this effort and will report further as the effort progresses.

In 2008, Connecticut transformed its teen driving laws for 16 and 17 year olds from one of the most lenient in the country to one of the toughest.  We tightened and lengthened passenger restrictions, increased the hours required to get a license, moved the nighttime curfew back an hour, imposed mandatory license suspensions for offenders, closed some related loopholes in our juvenile laws, required seatbelts of all passengers of teen drivers, allowed law enforcement to confiscate a teen offender’s license and vehicle, and required parents to sit for two hours with their teens during the learner’s permit stage, to understand these laws and why they were passed.

We did not change the laws for drivers who first apply for a license after their 18th birthday.  All of the above-mentioned restrictions on teen drivers disappear when the driver turns 18, even if the driver only received a license in recent months.  A new driver over age 18 only needs to pass a written test, spend a few hours on the road,  and pass a road test — pretty much the same minimal standard for adults that has existed for decades.

Guess what?  More and more teens, in Connecticut and other states with stricter laws for 16 and 17 year olds, are waiting until their 18th birthday to get a license so they don’t have to go through the hassles of the laws that apply to 16 and 17 year olds.

The evidence on this is mostly anecdotal at this point; there are no reliable statistics yet.  Yet the folks at our Department of Motor Vehicles say that the trend is evident, and of course, this makes perfect sense.  I suspect that some number of teens are delaying getting a license because their parents have finally figured out how potentially dangerous teen driving is, and some have delayed because of the economy — driving instruction and operating a car are expensive — but no doubt some are waiting based only on the convenience of avoiding the teen driving laws once they turn 18.

The statewide task force that overhauled Connecticut’s laws in 2007-08 and the state legislature that adopted most of its recommendations understood this potential consequence, but focused on the task at hand, which was to respond to a string of horrific, multiple-fatality teen driver crashes.  In fact, since 2008, Connecticut has seen a measurable decline in crash, injury, and fatality rates among 16 and 17 year old drivers.  It is not as if the problem has simply been pushed, without change or improvement, to a higher age bracket. 

If we develop better data to document that a sizeable number of teens are waiting until they are 18 to avoid the teen driving laws and then are getting into more crashes than before, or they are not exhibiting the same improvement as other population segments, the obvious matter to consider will be extending at least some of the restrictions on 16 and 17 year olds to ages 18 and maybe 19.  New Jersey has restrictions of this type, though I am told that they are relatively recent and their results are not yet clear.

Regulating driving among 18 and 19 year olds is a bit more complicated than 16 and 17 year olds.  Many of them are out of the house, either for school or employment.  They are more likely to need a car for economic reasons, and many will complain that if they are old enough to vote, they should not be restricted in their driving. 

Obviously, this is not an easy public policy question.  It merits mention, however, that the brains of 18 and 19 years olds are not fully developed and do not fully appreciate risk and danger (which does not occur until age 22-25), and unless an 18 or 19 year old has been driving consistently for 3 or more years, he or she cannot be considered an experienced driver.  In other words, the reasons we impose restrictions on 16 and 17 year olds are generally applicable to 18 and 19 year olds also.  There is nothing magic about 18 when it comes to driving and safety. It happens to be a significant number in our legal system but it is not a dividing line for measuring driver safety.

This unintended consequence of our teen driver laws deserves more data collection and public policy attention.

As regular readers of this blog know, for almost two years I have been plugging away at two recurring themes:  even the most sensible and well-trained teen drivers make mistakes that lead to crashes, and driving school education for teens provides the most basic level of instruction about how to handle a vehicle and the rules of the road, but does not come close to producing a safe driver. 

I am grateful, therefore, for validation, in the form of other articles by experts and researchers who reinforce my point (and, in this case, I will concede, say it even better than I have).  A few months ago, Sharon Carty, a veteran writer for autos.aol.com, http://autos.aol.com/author/sharon-silke-carty/, which is now part of the Huffington Post, called to chat about this blog.  Two weeks ago, she produced an article entitled “Teen Drivers Making Common and Fatal Mistakes,” http://autos.aol.com/article/teen-drivers-making-common-and-fatal-mistakes/.  The article begins with my son Reid and discusses this blog.  It is excellent and insightful, and I highly recommend it. 

The second article in Ms. Carty’s series, “Teen Driving:  Think Driving Schools Make Safe Drivers?  Think Again,” http://autos.aol.com/article/teen-driving-schools-safety/, covers in depth the evolution — or maybe I should say the collapse — of driver’s education in schools.  She discusses the deficiencies in the current commercial enterprises that teach teens to drive, and the vast — though still largely counterintuitive — evidence that driver’s education does essentially nothing to reduce teen driver crash rates.  I strongly recommend this second article as a partner to my September 15, 2009 post on the same subject. 

I thank Ms. Carty for her excellent work, and encourage all to follow her continuing series. 

And remember the basic message here:  There are four realities of teen driving that teaching teens how to handle a car do not overcome: (1) the immaturity of their brains; (2) the fact that safer driving takes years, not hours, weeks, or months; (3) the impossibility of training teens for anywhere near the variety and complexity of situations they will face on the road; and (4) the fact that new drivers use a visual search pattern that encompasses the perimeter of the car (as they try not to hit anything), not the situation developing down the road, where trouble might lurk.