A free contract that might just save your teen drivers life.
Dear Parent, Relative, Friend, or Whoever,
On this Holiday weekend, always a time of tragedy on the roads, I am reprising this article in the hope of grabbing your attention and maybe saving a life or two….
The Homeland Security community needs your help! It’s very important and we’ve been doing a pretty poor job so far.
No, its not preventing terrorism, securing our borders, or preparing to respond to acts of terrorism or natural disasters…we’ve got that covered…more or less. (Ok, ok…sometimes more…sometimes less…)
What we in the homeland security community really need your help with is reducing the teenagers killed or seriously injured every day on our roads.
In 2013, the most recent year that data is available, “2,163 teens in the U.S. were killed and 243,243 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes. That means six teens ages 16–19 died every day from motor vehicle injuries.”
So…why is this a homeland security issue?
Well, who cleans up the mess? Oh that’s right- First Responders… Firefighters, Police Officers and Emergency Medical Technicians…all members of our homeland security community.
More than2,000 teenagers killed…every year?
If that’s not a homeland security issue, I don’t know what is!
Seems simple. We need teens not only how to drive safely, but perhaps more importantly, we need to convince them to ACTUALLY DRIVE SAFELY!!!
What are we in the homeland security community missing? Is there something that you can help us with in our effort to save lives? Your teens and their friends’? What are we just not getting in our prevention efforts?
I am a Father of three teenagers. The eldest is 17, and much to my chagrin, recently passed his road test and became a licensed driver. His newfound freedom and status is dwarfed by my anxiety at the thought of him behind the wheel, absent adult supervision. Doubtless, this unwelcome anxiety will heighten when my middle child, 16, who currently has her permit and anxiously counts the days until her road test, receives her license. Finally, the thought of my baby, 14, (who thinks she is ready to drive today!) eventually being out on the road by herself behind the wheel of a 4,000 pound machine which, at 30 miles per hour, travels along at 44 feet per second, or at 60 miles per hour, 88 feet per second, etc., is terrifying!
You see, I have been a career Firefighter for over 28 years now, and I have responded to more than my share of automobile wrecks, many of them involving teens, and far more of them than I care to remember resulting in fatalities. These are not pretty scenes, and I won’t attempt to traumatize you (or risk re-traumatizing myself) by describing the worst of them in detail. Suffice to say, having to get up close and personal with a vehicle, body parts, and the fluids of each, that have become so mangled and intertwined that they are often indistinguishable from one another, coupled with the bloodcurdling screams of those who are still alive (or in some cases, “not yet dead”) is an experience that stays with you. As a young Firefighter, many aspects of these scenes were shocking to me, but the piece that for me was the most astonishing was their frequency. Prior to becoming a Firefighter, I had no idea how often these horror-shows played themselves out on our roadways. I have no doubt that the average teenage driver today is, as I was then, blissfully unaware of the magnitude and the frequency of these tragedies.
Most of you have probably been told that teens who drive are at greater risk of serious accidents than other drivers. I’m not sure if the typical teen really believes that this risk actually applies to him or her, do they? Most teens have been told that teenagers, even the relatively more mature and responsible ones, have not yet fully developed their executive function skills, and therefore are far more likely to become distracted, to suffer from poor impulse control, and to engage in risk taking behaviors. Executive functioning skills are found in the frontal lobe of your brain, and that frontal lobe is not fully developed until your mid to late 20’s, so it is just a fact that most teens will often act in ways that they may later regret (if they are lucky enough to live through whatever that act was). These characteristics (vulnerabilities really) in addition to factors such as inexperience and peer pressure, all contribute to the reality that teens are disproportionately more at risk of motor vehicle accidents.
So what can you do?
First, get some hard data. Educate yourself on the actual risk factors and causes of teen driver accidents. For brevity sake, I will only list some of the most critical data, but you should go here or here to learn more.
What exactly are teen drivers doing, or not doing, that put them so at risk?
Driving with other teen passengers. Statistics tell us that the more teen passengers, the more risk there is for a crash.
Alcohol. 25% of teen drivers involved in fatal crashes had been drinking.
Failure to use seat belts. “In 2013, only 55% of high school students reported that they always wear seat belts when riding with someone else.”
Speeding. Speed kills. It’s just that simple. Remember those figures that are written above…at 30 miles per hour a vehicle travels at 44 feet per second, at 60 miles per hour a vehicle travels at 88 feet per second, and at…wait, hopefully there’s no need to go any further…88 feet per second is just about fast enough, isn’t it?
Distraction. Recently, studies have shown that distracted driving is a far more serious problem than previously thought. One of these studies, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, found that “distraction was a factor in nearly 6 out of 10 moderate to severe teen crashes.” (AAA)
The image below depicts the most common types of distraction leading to teen driver crash.
In my experience cell phones and distracted driving are an even bigger problem than the statistics seem to indicate so let’s focus on that for a bit please…
My experience as a Firefighter, and my own personal experience as a driver who is, well, a smart phone addict, has taught me that distracted driving is very, very common these days. Distracted driving is dangerous, and it kills. Did you know that there are a variety of technologies (mostly apps) that can prevent distracted driving? For i-phones, there’s LifeSaver an “app that stays silent in the background and automatically wakes up to lock the phone when driving.” There are also several free apps for Android phones that inactivate most or all of your phone while driving, such as: Sprint’s Drive First ; Verizon’s Safely Go, and AT&T’s Drive Mode . All of these apps block texts and send an auto reply that can be customized. Social media is blocked by these apps while driving also. For vehicle passengers, the apps can be put in passenger mode and they will be free to text, Snap Chat, Instagram, and Facebook to their heart’s content! Yes, I have no doubt that I missed one or more social media channels that are popular these days with teens, and that is a perfect example of why we need your help!
Here is a Teen Driving Contract that I recently made for my son, and had him sign. My daughters will have to sign after they get their licenses and before they are allowed to drive alone. Feel free to share this for use with your teens, teachers, or with anyone at all that you think might want to use all or part of it. Please also let me know how you think this contract might be improved.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I truly hope that you will consider taking on this challenge of saving the life of your own or another teen. How exactly can you do this? Well, now that you have the above information, why don’t you ask your teens to tell me how we can help to accomplish the mission of saving teen lives? As I mentioned earlier in the article, we in the homeland security community need to learn more effective ways to communicate with teenagers to not only teach them how to drive safely, but perhaps more importantly, to convince them to drive safely?
What are we missing?
Is there something in pop culture, a particular social media channel, a secret language, or some other mystery that we just can’t seem to solve, and that you can help us with in our effort to save the lives of teenage drivers?
What are us we in government and emergency response just not getting?
Please add your comments below. I will read and respond to all of them. Also, please feel free to share this article far and wide. Together, we will make a difference.
