We have been reading recently about air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job.  Thinking of teen drivers as pilots and parents as air traffic controllers is not a bad analogy, actually.  Parents should consider every time their teen proposes to get behind the wheel as the equivalent of a pilot wanting to fly a plane.   Teens should be required to “file a flight plan” and get permission from the tower — you –before taking off.        

I am not a pilot, but as I understand it, the elements of a flight plan include:

• destination – where exactly are you going (pilots don’t estimate – they need precision)?
• route – what directions will get you there, and are there any safety concerns associated with any of them?
• time of day – when are you leaving, and are there any safety issues associated with your timetable (for example, night driving)?
• equipment readiness  – is there sufficient fuel, and is your equipment maintained and safe?
• communications plan  – when and how will you report in when you arrive at tour destination, report a problem or delay, and report when you are about to return home?
• passengers – who will be with you, where will they sit, and how will you ensure that they don’t distract you?
• contingency plan  — what will be your alternate route if the intended one is blocked or otherwise not available?
• departure time, route, timetable, and passengers  (same considerations as the first leg of the flight)
• are you ready to undertake this responsibility?  Well rested and alert?

Only when each of these items has been satisfactorily planned should your teen be cleared for departure.

Does this sound silly?  Overkill?  If you think so, I respectfully suggest that you return to the dangers of teen driving.  The risks of an unprepared pilot flying are not unlike those facing a teen driver.  The margin for error is very small, and the risks are enormous.

A significant benefit of thinking of teen driving like a pilot’s flight plan is that it should help you and your teen focus on the difference between purposeful driving and joyriding.  Pilots don’t take joyrides, in the sense that they don’t fly a plane “just to go hang out with friends.”  Even when flying is recreational, a pilot prepares and files a plan.

Will this routine feel a bit less necessary when your teen is on his or her one hundredth “flight” and has gotten the checklist down quite well?  Yes.  When you and your teen have spent perhaps a year in this mode, taking every driving episode so seriously that each of the steps listed above becomes automatic, will you need to maintain this level of detail? Probably not. There will come a time when it will not be as critical to be as deliberate and mechanical as suggested above.  But the likelihood that your teens will get to this later stage will be substantially increased if, as they begin to drive, you work with them to treat every situation like a pilot flying a plane,  and your supervision resembles that of a certified flight controller  — one who is awake on the job at all times.

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