One of the benefits of being an independent blogger — no one pays me, or reviews or edits my posts — is that I am entirely unconstrained by politics, institutional loyalty, financial considerations, practicality, or even reality. With this mind set firmly in mind, I offer a year end reverie (“an idle contemplation”) about safe teen driving. Specifically, two things that hold us back from best practices and legislation that could save hundreds if not thousands of lives every year.
If I had to single out two cultural and political obstacles to safer teen driving, they would be parents putting their own convenience ahead of their teen’s safety, and legislators who believe that the government has little or no business interfering in the lives of parents and teens, that “more government” is not the answer to safer teen driving, even when the effective steps are evidence-based, and the costs of adoption and compliance are low.
To start with the latter, I have written and spoken in recent months about the difference between Connecticut and a midwestern state (I will spare it identification – beside my point) that has twice the population of my state but six times the teen driver fatalities. Why? Because this state issues permits at age 15, has no teen driver law to speak of (no limits on passengers, curfews, etc.), and does not have a primary seat belt law. Government officials and safety advocates from this state have told me that they can make no progress with conservative legislators who simply believe that “more government” is never the answer, even when the “government” is safety standards. In a similar vein, the transportation bill now pending in Congress lowers the minimum driving age for commercial truck drivers (18 wheelers) from 21 to 18 (another proposal is 19.5), due to a shortage of drivers. Never mind the overwhelming evidence that younger drivers have higher crash rates in regular cars and trucks. This is government regulation that will undermine safety standards in the name of profits.
Put another way, while there is a national consensus on what safe teen driving laws should be (in summary, no licenses before age 16; 80 to 100 hours of supervised practice; passenger restrictions for the first year; a on use of any electronic device not part of the car’s operation; curfews/ limits on night driving; mandatory set belts for all drivers and passengers; and driver training that focuses on speed control, following distance, and left turns), state laws still vary widely. The political belief that government should not intervene in the lives of citizens, even to set safety standards, prevails in too many places. We have evidence-based agreement on solutions. We need to embrace it.
The other obstacle to safer teen driving, it seems to me, is parent convenience. Parents way too often let teens drive, or even force them to do so, because parents are tired of being chauffeurs. Mom and Dad feel that they deserve a rest, and as a result, a newly-licensed drivers drive younger siblings, or drive with teen passengers, or drive fatigued, all of which are demonstrably dangerous.
So far in 2015, after years of decline, traffic fatalities among all drivers are increasing. Teen crashes and fatalities, I expect, will follow this trend. The question will become more pressing: what can we do to stem this rising tide? I would suggest that two places to start are educating parents about being aware of when they are putting convenience ahead of safety, and convincing legislators that at least in the area of safe teen driving, government needs to adopt the national consensus of safety standards for teen drivers.
Easy for a blogger to say, right? But putting it out there as part of the national conversation is a place to start.
Thanks for listening.
