Happy New Year to my readers and visitors. Thank you for your continued and growing interest in and support of this blog. In 2014 we approached 30,000 visitors per month, and in 2015 we will be aiming even higher. I now also have a routine of sending most of my blog posts to my Facebook “From Reid’s Dad” page, and also to Twitter, @fromreidsdad. New followers welcome, along with reviews of Not So Fast posted on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. Thanks!
To start the New Year, here is my list of the major challenges and concerns about safe teen driving that I plan to tackle in 2015 — and I suspect will occupy many other safe teen driving advocates and professionals as well:
- Lower gas prices! While we can all rejoice at the sudden downward trend in gas prices and hope that they stay below $3/gallon for a long time, which age group, proportionally, will now drive more miles — and thus have more crashes — simply due to driving being less expensive? That would be the group with the least amount of discretionary income for driving — teens and young adults. Put another way, many experts suspect that the economic downturn and the spike in gas prices during the past five years had a major role in declining teen driver crash rates and fatalities, but now we will find out whether lower gas prices will reverse this trend.
- Licensing the undocumented resident population. Eight states, including California, Colorado, and Connecticut, now allow undocumented residents, many of who are not native English speakers and a majority of whom are Spanish speakers, to obtain driver’s licenses. Teens will be among this new population, so getting safe teen driving information to them in a culturally and linguistically appropriate way will be a major safety issue. (For this reason, as noted here previously, my book Not So Fast will be published in Spanish in the Fall on 2015).
- Hands free and voice activated. The latest research further documents that while much of our anti-distracted driving efforts focus on hand-held cell phone use and texting, hands-free and voice activated devices can be comparably if not more distracting. Also, distraction is not just text messages but all in-vehicle electronics that are not part of safely driving the vehicle, such as so-called “infotainment” systems. If we are to make inroads with distracted driving among teens, we may need to widen our focus on its causes.
- Alcohol and seat belts. These should be the “no-brainers” for teens and parents, yet roughly speaking, one third of teen driver fatalities involve alcohol and half involve unbelted drivers or passengers. This should be low hanging fruit – we could reduce serious injuries and fatalities substantially just by greater seat belt compliance and zero tolerance for drunk driving. This is of course not a new issue; thousand of dedicated organizations and people spend their days combating these intractable causes of avoidable injuries and deaths.
- Decals. New Jersey is now several years into its program of requiring that cars driven by teens display a decal that is visible to law enforcement. The program indisputably helps with teen driver law enforcement. Concerns about pedophiles and predators have proven to be non-existent. Every state should take a hard look at copying this program, which has demonstrably reduced crash rates.
- Auto manufacturer teen driver systems. I don’t endorse products on this blog, and this is not endorsement, but let’s hope that in 2015, more auto manufacturers introduce safe teen driver systems that resemble Ford’s My Key. This system includes speed chimes at 45, 55 and 65 MPH, blocking incoming text messages, an entertainment system that cannot be turned on unless the driver is belted, and a maximum speed control. We need more cars with similar systems, and for Ford and others to keep working to make them as simple and effective as possible.
- Recreational marijuana. The early news from those sates that have legalized marijuana is not good for driver safety in general, including teen driver safety. As with so many aspects of safe driving in general and teen driving in particular, will it take a horrific, multiple-fatality crash caused by marijuana use to get the public’s attention to the fact that these states have legalized a drug that impairs driving reflex and reactions?
- Finally, for the past few weeks I have been thinking about the late November crash in Louisiana. A family of two parents and six children was on its way from east Texas to Disney World for a vacation. At 10:30 PM, the family’s 16 year old was driving. He fell asleep at the wheel, crashed, and both parents and four of the six children, none of whom were waring seat belts, died. Only the teen driver and one sibling survived. This was, by all accounts, a loving, well-meaning family, but they crossed swords with the saying that “You should not entrust your most precious cargo to your least experienced driver.” Let’s hope we get through 2015 without a tragedy of this proportion.
So what’s on your issues list for 2015? Comments welcome, tim@fromreidsdad.org.
