Safe Teen Driving Blog

Many parents view the licensure of their teen driver with some trepidation, not only because of concerns for their teen's safety but due to practical considerations such as the high cost of auto insurance for teen drivers. Luckily, one of the ways you can reduce the cost of your teen's insurance will also keep your teen safer - selecting a vehicle equipped with certain safety features.

Your insurance company may offer discounts for the following safety features. If not, it pays to shop around. Discounts for vehicle safety features vary widely among insurance companies.

Air Bags: Passenger and driver-side dual airbags are now required in all vehicles sold in the United States. Air bags must be used with safety belts for maximum effectiveness.

Head Injury Protection: This feature, which lessons the blow if your head hits the interior roof of your vehicle, has become standard in recent years. If you select an older vehicle for your teen, it may not have this safety feature.

Advanced Headrests: These systems allow the back of the seat and headrest to move down and back if the vehicle is hit from the rear, reducing the forward motion and thus decreasing the severity of head and neck injuries.

Automatic Daytime Running Lights: This feature makes it impossible for your teen to drive without headlights, making your teen's vehicle more visible when driving, even during daylight.

Anti-lock Brake System: This feature eliminates the need to "pump the brakes" when you have to stop quickly, preventing the wheels from locking up and the vehicle from skidding. ABS pumps the brakes for the driver; the driver keeps constant pressure on the brake pedal and concentrates on steering. This allows the driver to regain control in bad weather conditions or quickly avoid a crash.

Traction Control: While ABS helps drivers maintain control while braking, traction control helps them do so while accelerating. This feature stops the spinning of a wheel due to wet roads, loose gravel, or fast acceleration by braking it, reducing the fuel or cutting spark plug ignitions, depending on the type of system, which improves traction.

Electronic Stability System: This feature coordinates the ABS, Traction Control, and the "yaw" of your vehicle (how much the vehicle rocks side to side). The system reduces tire spinning, skidding, and tractionless cornering, keeping the vehicle's tires in maximum contact with the road.

Read more about how to lower your teens auto insurance rates through driver safety and driver education courses.

Labels: auto insurance, save, teen.driver

That will be the cry of parents everywhere if they do not enforce state laws - or their own house rules – prohibiting their teens from talking on a cellular telephone while driving.

Research published by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) says that talking on a cell phone turns the reaction time of the average 20-year-old driver into that of a 70-year-old. Researchers observed study participants on four simulated 10-mile trips lasting 10 minutes each. Participants talked on a cell phone during half of the trips and drove without talking for the other half. Hands-free cell phones were used for the study. The results of the study indicated that young drivers were 18% slower in braking response time and took 17% longer to regain the speed they lost while braking when they were using the cell phone.

The difference seems small but is significant - an extra fraction of a second could mean the difference between life and death in an emergency situation.

Young drivers (the term typically refers to drivers under the age of 21) need to know that the fast reflexes and excellent coordination they take for granted can easily be compromised when they submit to the lure of using a cell phone behind the wheel.

And parents of young drivers need to know that enforcement of cell phone laws depends on the example they set for their own teens and enforcement of (or creation of, if there's no state law) a strict rule about not driving while talking on a cell phone in their own household. Recent research indicates that enactment of a state law prohibiting cell phone use while driving is not sufficient to keep teens from doing so.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety/UNC Highway Safety Research Center showed that teenage drivers’ cell phone use actually went up after the state of North Carolina enacted a ban on cell phone use by young drivers. The ban on cell phone use by drivers younger than age 18 is part of the state’s graduated licensing program.

One to two months prior to the ban's start on Dec. 1, 2006, researchers observed 11% of teen drivers using cell phones as they drove away from school in the afternoon. About five months after the ban, they observed nearly 12% of teen drivers using phones. Half of the teens surveyed by phone after the law took effect said that they had used their cell phones, if they had driven, the day before the interview.

Interestingly, both young drivers and their parents strongly support the law (74% of teens and 95% of their parents) and say that the problem is that it isn't being enforced. But teens have a far better rate of compliance with other graduated licensing restrictions even when those laws aren't well-enforced.

"Most young drivers comply with graduated licensing restrictions such as limits on nighttime driving and passengers, even when enforcement is low," says Anne McCartt, Institute senior vice president for research and an author of the study. "The hope in North Carolina was that the same would hold true for cell phone use, but this wasn’t the case...Parents play a big role in compliance with graduated licensing rules."

Studies show that teenage minds are predisposed to risk-taking. In 2005 and 2006, a series of risk-reward studies across a range of age groups funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in The Journal of Neuroscience showed that when confronted with risky choices, the brains of teenagers exhibit twice as much activity in the impulse area as adult brains, while the area that expresses restraint shows less activity. The study indicated that it takes until the early 20s for the two areas to reach parity.

This biological imperative to throw caution to the wind, combined with a teenager's natural rebellion and peer pressure to be able to handle dangerous situations without exhibiting fear, is a deadly mix.

Enforcement of the law is typically the purview of law enforcement, not parents. But a teen may only be motivated to comply when the law and parental "house rules" intersect, as in the case of driving curfews that are part of the graduated driver’s license programs in most states and household curfews that parents implement for the health and safety of their children.

"Cell phone bans for teen drivers are difficult to enforce," McCartt says. "Drivers with phones to their ears aren’t hard to spot, but it’s nearly impossible for police officers to see hands-free devices or correctly guess how old drivers are."

And Barbara Harsha, executive direction of the Governors Highway Safety Association, says, "What [cell phones while driving] laws do is send the message to the parent more than anything else."

When surveyed after the cell phone restrictions in North Carolina took effect, only 39% of parents said they were aware of the cell phone law, compared with 64% of teen drivers. If only 39% of parents even knew the law existed, how many parents had discussed the law with their children? If parents knew about the law, they could use it to support their own house rules. If cell phone use while driving hadn't been banned by the parents previously, they could use the state law as support for a new house rule.

Perhaps most difficult for some parents is setting a good example for their teens. Parents must drive the speed limit, wear their seat belts, avoid driving distractions such as cell phone use, and drive defensively. They should pull over to use their cell phones or have a passenger answer it instead. Parents should use this time to point out drivers who demonstrate risky behavior, including talking on cell phones, and initiate a discussion by asking the teen driver to explain why it's unsafe. Here is a Parent Teen Driving Contract with recommendations from the Driver Education Handbook for Parents to help you and your teen compose a practical contract of rules regarding driving expectations.

Labels: driver, safety, teen.driver

As the parent of a teenage driver, Police Chief Roger Boatner, of Lakeland, Florida worries when his daughter is behind the wheel. However, his worries are not with her own driving skills or with the locations she visits. He worries most about the many drivers he sees doing nearly everything but driving as they cruise down the street.

Those who spend even a few seconds changing a CD, answering the cell phone, or taking a bite of a sandwich can cause a serious accident. Other troopers agree with the seriousness of the problem of distracted driving. Larry Coggins of the Florida State Highway Patrol claims that in every crash there can be some type of driver error found.

Many studies have been done on the effects of cell phones and other distractions while driving. While exact numbers have varied, the basic results have been the same.

• Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute found that drivers who talk on cell phones are 4 times more likely to be involved in a serious crash.
• The National Highway Traffic Administration carried out a study, which found that more than 75% of crashes and 66% of near misses occurred when drivers were engaged in conversations on cell phones.
• The University of Utah carried out an experiment that resulted in the conclusion that drivers talking on cell phone were just as impaired as an intoxicated driver.
  

Results such as these have caused a few states to pass laws prohibiting all drivers from talking on cell phones while behind the wheel. Even more states have implemented similar laws, but focused them only on teenage drivers. Unfortunately, Florida is yet to have created one of these laws.

The Sheriff's Office in Polk County, Florida has decided that these messages are so important that they have placed them on their phone system as a hold message. Additionally, they remind drivers of the importance of wearing their seat belts.

The Polk Sheriff's Office handled 50 traffic deaths within their jurisdiction. Of these, officers believe that at least 14 lives would have been saved if the victims had been wearing a seat belt. To prevent more of these accidents from claiming the lives of young people, Florida has enacted a law allowing officers to pull cars over if passengers under the age of 18 years old are seen unrestrained.

Labels: cell.phone, florida, seat.belt, teen.driver