At a recent meeting of safe teen driving advocates and traffic safety professionals, I heard a new one: about parents having their teen drivers be their designated drivers, so they can drink at parties.
Not sure what to think about this one.
On the one hand, keeping people potentially impaired by alcohol off the road is a good thing, a responsible choice. However, it would seem that asking a teen driver to be a designated driver for an adult/parent likely would involve driving after a state’s curfew (11 PM or midnight in many states). And this arrangement raises questions: are the parents being good role models? Being safe and being a role model can be two different things. Also, this designated driver role potentially puts teens in a position of forced responsibility. I surmise that not many teens would volunteer for this designated driver role. It may be that parents, who control the keys, are bargaining their teens into this role — “Drive for us tonight and you will get more freedom to drive on your own at another time.” The designated driver role could also involve the teen driving while fatigued, and driving in bad weather, as I doubt parents cancel party plans based on bad weather to the same degree they control a new driver’s time on the road.
This arrangement seems good for parents in the sense of keeping them off the road when impaired, but I am not sure I see much that is good for teen drivers.
