|
Motor vehicle crashes are
the leading cause of death for teenagers, with thousands of deaths each
year. The youngest licensed drivers, 16-year-olds, have higher crash rates
then all other drivers of any other age. The economic impact of these
accidents is estimated to cost more then $40 billion, enough to purchase
all of Donald Trump’s assets nearly fifteen times.
But teenagers are not bad
drivers.
We are poor decision
makers. And driving is about the decisions we make.
It is not that we can’t get
ourselves out of as many dangerous driving situations as adults do, it’s
that we put ourselves in more of these situations. And the more times we
make poor decisions and the more times we put ourselves in dangerous
situations, the greater likelihood that one of those times will end in
tragedy.
No one knows this reality
better than communities around the country who have suffered because of
teen-related accidents. And that is part of the reason that Illinois
politicians have made it a priority to reduce teen driving accidents. Good
idea politicians, less accidents are a good thing. But more laws
will hardly mean less death, especially when those laws are applied in the
wrong places.
Effective on January 1,
2008, a host of new legislation will provide what are essentially nine new
laws to buckle down on teen drivers. According to the Secretary of State’s
office, these are aimed at ensuring teenagers are “sufficiently prepared
and able to safely operate a motor vehicle.”
The laws, though, do not
seem interested in meeting this goal.
Fifty hours of practice
time are mandated before a teenager can receive his or her license, and no
extra practice will be mandated under the new law. Rather, the law calls
for more waiting, requiring teenagers to wait nine months (from three)
before receiving a license. In those extra six months, it is conceivable
that teenagers will receive more driving practice. But why not mandate
practice, rather then mandate waiting?
Legislators would argue
that more, actual instructional time is designed to do that, by requiring
that six hours of on-the-street driving instruction take place, rather
then in driving simulators. But most driving certification organizations
that are in areas with high crash rates do not use these simulators. I
could find no suburban drivers education companies or high schools that,
according to their respective websites, use driving simulators to train
drivers.
Driver’s education needs to
be upgraded, and mandating more street time is not doing that. In fact, it
may be doing just the opposite. My time with various driving instructors
consisted of talking about movies and stopping at McDonald’s to pass the
time; one would think that if I had been in a simulator, it would have
been impossible to waste this valuable time in such a way.
The bill, called the Teen
Driver Safety Legislation, doubles the number of time before teenagers can
drive with more then one passenger under eighteen, from six months to a
year. It will also increase penalties for violating the now “one-year
rule” for both drivers and passengers. But that hardly means that
teenagers will stop breaking the law. People still speed despite the risk
of losing your license, in large part because most people have no
clear-cut reason not to speed. Most drivers do not know a single person
who has been killed because of speeding, and most can’t even think of one
who has gotten in an accident. Well, teenagers have no clear-cut reason
not to drive with more then the allotted number of people in the car. It’s
more convenient, and it even helps the environment, right? Not once in my
months of driver’s education was I ever told why this law was in
place. Though it may seem obvious to some, more bodies means more
distractions, no one ever took the time to explain, and because of this
most teens will dismiss the law as another unnecessary hassle. Had we been
shown that the accident risk for driving with more than one passenger is
86 percent higher, according to a Johns Hopkins University study, we may
be more inclined to obey the law. Instead, time is spent explaining legal
consequences, rather then reasoning. Teenagers are logical people, believe
it or not, so why aren’t we provided the logic?
Perhaps the most stinging
addition to the new law is amending curfew by one hour to 10pm on
weeknights and 11pm on weekends. In theory, this provides one hour less
time each night for a teenager to make a bad decision that leads to an
accident. But for teenagers who make bad decisions, such as to use alcohol
and drugs and then drive, violating curfew is the least of their concerns.
They are far more concerned with not getting caught for violating serious
felonies then they are with being pulled over because they were an
hour late coming back from a friend’s house. New curfew laws restrict
those who do not violate more serious laws and are law-abiding regardless,
and effectively change nothing for those who plan to break much more
serious restrictions.
Some legislators (and
parents and teachers and teenagers themselves) may believe that accidents
in which people are killed or seriously injured should be enough to
prevent teenagers from making poor decisions and then operating a vehicle.
I agree that they should be. But it seems many others do not, and continue
to make such decisions without regard for the risks they entail. We need
to be educated about these risks, not punished because we do not
understand them. This education needs to start from the moment a teenager
begins to drive in driver’s education, and continue throughout our high
school careers. It is not so much that we do not understand the rules of
the road; it is that we don’t understand why they are in place and the
consequences (and not legal ones) for violating them. We need driving laws
to help us understand. If legislators took the time to truly gain a sense
of these realities before hastily crafting new, stricter driving bills,
then Illinois may actually see a true reduction in teen driving accidents.
Instead, our politicians seem to favor headlines over actual results. We
should demand better.
Until lawmakers fully
understand what needs to be done to curb teen-driving accidents
significantly and for the long term, it is up to us to protect ourselves.
And unfortunately, we have proven that it should not be. |
