Is Your Teen a Good Driver? No
Learning to drive is very exciting, and a critical step towards independence for teens. When I see a 15-17 year old in my office for a well visit, I always ask them if they are a good driver, and usually they will say “yes”. To this I always respond, in a very over the top, exaggerated way, “No you are not, you are terrible! How old do you think someone has to be to drive equally as bad as you?” They think about this, then usually say something super offensive, like “60?”. I let them know that the actual number is in the 80’s. That is right, if you have to decide between two Taxi’s (Ubers), one driven by an 18 year old and one driven by an 84 year old, it is literally a toss up of which car to get into. At this point I reassure the teen that they may be a good driver for their age, but that doesn’t make up for the hundreds of thousands of miles of experience most of us middle aged adults have. Their excellent eyesight, rapid reflexes, muscle tone, and quick thinking are no match for the hours and hours of driving that their parents have put in behind the wheel. In fact, the safest age group is mid 30’s to mid 50’s, so nice work readers! Teens need to know these facts to stay humble.
So how dangerous is driving for teens? 2800 teens died in 2020 in car accidents. Teen drivers have a rate of death three times as high as adults, and 16 year old drivers, are 1 ½ times higher than 18 year old drivers. Why are they so terrible? The first is what I mentioned before, they have no real experience. Knowing how to drive in snow, on water, what to do when the car hydroplanes, how to avoid an accident, etc, cannot be learned in a driver’s ed class, unfortunately they are learned on the road through thousands of miles of practice. Their natural cockiness makes them underestimate how dangerous situations can be. My youngest driver, who is our most cautious kid, constantly complains about how slow people drive in snow. And this is a kid who runs on the nervous side! His annoyance is born out of not almost killing himself in an accident in dangerous conditions, like most of us have. Another reason driving is more dangerous for teens is they tend to drive at night; 44% of fatal teen car accidents happen between 9 pm and 6 am. On top of that, you know your teen has absolutely terrible sleep habits, so they are driving late at night, usually sleep deprived, which has been shown in studies to be even more dangerous than driving legally drunk.
Another reason, which most of us are guilty of, is distracted driving. 39% of teens text or email while driving, and they are doing it during an activity that they are already terrible at - namely driving. The study didn’t include watching videos on their phone, but my suspicion is that activity is way more common than emailing or texting. They also get distracted by each other; every additional teen passenger your kid transports increases their risk of getting in an accident. I remember driving around with my friends as a teen, we were obnoxious, my guess is many of you were too!
The last reason I want to focus on that increases teen driver’s death rates, is that they are less likely than adults to wear their seatbelts. I have been practicing for 20 years, and over that time, the number of safety questions that we are supposed to ask patients about during their well visit has increased substantially. In fact, the amount of preventative questions that we cover has become so excessive that studies show, the more we ask the less the parents remember. So, I try to focus on the high yield, very important things. For a while I had stopped asking about seatbelts. Why? Because to me, asking if someone wears their seatbelt is like asking someone if they put their pants on in the morning before leaving the house. Of course you put your seatbelt on! I live in a world where everyone puts their belt on without thinking about it. But I was wrong. A few years ago, I had three teens in serious car accidents, which resulted in one death and two broken backs. All three of these accidents, the teen was the only unbuckled passenger, and the only one to have a serious injury. This was a wake up call for me. Now I ask about seat belts at every teen well visit - and I am shocked at how often I get a “no”, “usually”, or “not if I am in the back seat” response, and even more shocked when the parents are not surprised by the answer. Modern cars are three times safer than the cars I started driving in, but they depend on airbags and the occupants following the law and buckling their belt in order to be safer. Without that belt on, your teen is giving up all the safety advantages that have been engineered in the last 40 years, and choosing not to decrease their risk of death or serious injury by 50%. It is vital to have a no tolerance policy in your family for not wearing a seatbelt, even for short trips, even for parking, even for the backseat. There are no excuses not to wear your seatbelt.
Make sure you talk to your kids routinely about driving safety, and be quick to take the keys away if your child doesn’t take it seriously. I sometimes tell my patients, driving a car is the same as operating a lethal weapon, and they have to approach driving the same way they would approach using a gun at a gun ranch. Using it correctly is usually safe, but carelessness can be deadly. Please see the websites below to access my sources for most of my statistics, unlike facebook, twitter, and instagram posts, I want you to be able to verify the information that I deliver!
Until Next time, good luck parenting!
Dr. William J Fisher, MD
Fisher Pediatrics
Comments