Beginner drivers in need of practice, parental guidelines

PATTY TUCKER knows exactly what the safety experts are talking about: teenagers are at higher risk than other drivers. Her two oldest children had crashes as new drivers. One of the accidents involving her daughter, Sarah, occurred at night, with a teenage passenger.

In her son Joshua's first crash, he was driving his Mustang. "It was his dream car," says Tucker, who lives in Arizona. "We were advised not to get it, but we didn't listen." During a second crash, Joshua was talking on a cellphone.

The statistics are not pretty. Motor vehicle crashes are the single biggest killer of teenagers in the US. In 2005, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a total of 5,334 drivers aged 16 to 19 were involved in fatal crashes; the death toll included 2,330 of these drivers and 963 teenage passengers.

No one involved in the Tucker crashes was seriously hurt, but they highlight causes common in many teenage crashes: youth and inexperience.

"It's a potentially lethal combination," says Bella Dinh-Zarr, the North American director of Make Roads Safe, a nonprofit organisation based in London.

Beginning drivers of all ages have higher crash rates than experienced drivers, but teens are prone to more risky behaviour, an inherent characteristic of their developing brains. According to some studies, Dinh-Zarr says, teenage drivers tend to wear seat belts less than drivers in other age groups.

To get them through these years, training has to go beyond formal driver's education and a few spins with mom and dad. Safety experts say parents have to get intimately involved in the process, making sure their children get dozens of hours behind the wheel and monitoring them after they receive their licences. That monitoring should include restricting passengers and nighttime driving and establishing terms of behaviour.

The Tuckers, for example, say they will closely monitor their next child, Mark, 17, when he begins to drive.

"The one thing that should come through loud and clear is that this is an extremely complex undertaking," says Robert Foss, director of the Centre for the Study of Young Drivers, Highway Safety Research Centre, at the University of North Carolina. "Learning to handle the car is pretty simple and straightforward; learning to be a wise or savvy driver involves far more than that."

Driving at a young age is a particular problem in the US, often starting at 16, and even 14 or 15 in some states. Drivers in many developed nations start when older; Europeans typically get licences at 18.

All states have some form of graduated driver licensing programme that has been highly effective in reducing teenage fatalities in the period immediately after drivers receive their licences, while a new law in Arizona will include limitations on nighttime driving and teenage passengers, conditions under which teenage crashes are high.

Safety experts encourage parents to establish their own programme if their state laws are weak. During the permit stage, the National Safety Council recommends 50 to 100 hours of supervised behind-the-wheel practice over six to 12 months, driving at night, in different types of weather, on a variety of road types and conditions.

Kim Dude-Lammy of Columbia, Missouri, says the state has no law banning cellphone use while driving, but she prohibits her daughter, Kelsey, 16, from using a phone at the wheel. Ten years ago, when her stepson, Drew, was a new driver, there was no law restricting teenage passengers, but she always enforced it.

"Kids can live up or live down to your expectations," she says. "You want to be your child's best friend, but you've got to be a parent and do unpopular things sometimes."

Allan Williams, a road safety consultant who had been chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says laws are not enough because police enforcement is difficult. "Parents have got to monitor driving, not just when their teen has a permit, but after as well."

What a teenager drives is also important. The experts say teens should drive cars with modern safety features instead of older vehicles with inferior protection.

Experts also say parents should not rely solely on driver's education. "Driver's ed is not a safety programme; it's a licensing programme," says Bruce Simons-Morton, chief of the Prevention Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "Safety requires a lot more than that."

Traditionally, most programmes offer about 30 hours of classroom time and about six hours of driving.

Like most complex skills, good driving develops gradually, in much the same way as sports. Knowing the rules and being skilled is not enough; practice is essential for improvements in perception and judgment.

"You avoid crashes by avoiding emergency situations to begin with," Foss says.

"Experienced drivers don't consciously check rearview mirrors, but rely on their intuition. The key is to get the novice driver to think like that."

AAA National is testing Dare to Prepare, a prepermit workshop for families before teenagers take the wheel.

Marc Hawkins and his daughter Alexa, 15, of Phoenix, recently attended a 90-minute session that provided tips on teaching driving that included parent-teenager agreements and logs to record driving time.

Since the session, Alexa has driven most of the state-required 25 supervised hours.

"I don't think 25 hours is enough," says Hawkins. "The more time behind the wheel, the better." The family also plans to draft a parent-teenager agreement.

"Virtually all parents set limits, but they set lax rules that they let lapse," says Simons-Morton, who recommends parent-teen agreements for the first year of driving. "What we do know is that teens whose parents set limits have much better outcomes."

Here are some of his recommendations to parents:

Delay licensure as long as possible. The longer you can keep your child from driving alone, the better.

Don't let your children have their own cars. Shared vehicles are a lot safer; parents lose control if a teenager has exclusive use of a vehicle.

Set limits for the first six months of driving while the teen gains experience: no night driving, teenage passengers, high-speed roads or cellphones.

New York Times