The Young and Reckless, Ready to Drive

By PHIL PATTON

WHILE teenagers make up only 7 percent of the driving population in the United States, they account for about 18 percent of automobile accidents in this country. In fact, driving accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers, 6,000 every year. While traffic-related deaths for all other age groups fell over the past decade, those for 16-year-olds increased.

With about 24 million 16- to 20-year-olds in the United States, and census projections of 26 million by 2010, young drivers put themselves and all other drivers sharing the road at increased risk.

"I can't imagine any social problem of this magnitude where you don't have people marching in the streets," said David Thompson, a former racecar driver who operates a driver education company. Mr. Thompson became interested in driver instruction after he was nearly killed by a 17-year-old driver on a highway.

This social problem is a hotly contested issue. Most experts agree on one point: driver education, at least in its traditional formula of 30 hours of classroom time and 6 hours behind the wheel, has been ineffective in making teenagers safe drivers. Instead, the consensus is that they learn to drive by driving as much as possible.

But the best way to give teenagers the experience they need and tame their natural exuberance (read: risk-taking, notably speeding) is not so easily understood.

With driver education no longer a mainstay in public schools, some say the best people to teach teenagers are parents — after all, they're free and on hand to ensure that their children put in the time behind the wheel to develop the requisite skills. Others point out that parents do not have the experience and training for such a responsibility, and that they're in a hurry to get their children licensed.

Several states are reporting that the accident rate has dropped under new graduated licensing policies, most of which raise the driving age to 17 and extend the time on a learner's permit. In North Carolina, which has reported a substantial reduction in crashes involving 16- year-old drivers, the graduated licensing system was instituted in 1997. Under this system, drivers ages 15 to 17 are allowed to drive only with a designated adult for a year. Before, teenagers were allowed to obtain a learner's permit at 15 1/2 and take their driving test at 16.

The thinking behind graduated licensing is that it gives students more time to learn in real driving conditions, in addition to removing lone 16-year-old drivers from the highways. Currently, 46 states have instituted graduated licensing policies.

Some people, however, think that driver education, if retooled to offer more real-world driving, would be better at teaching youngsters how to negotiate the highways safely. These proponents are asking the government to address the lack of regulations and national standards for teachers.

It is too soon for results of most of these graduated license programs to show up in statistics. Much of the decline in the quality of driver education stems from an influential 1977 study of teenage drivers in DeKalb County, Ga. The study, sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, marked the beginning of a shift of driver education from public schools to private driving schools. The study found that graduates of both a traditional driver education curriculum and a slightly more extensive curriculum failed to show significantly better road performance. Driver education did not produce safe drivers, it concluded. Federal funds for the courses were cut. At the end of the 70's, about 80 percent of public-school systems offered driver education; today, fewer than 25 percent do.

"All the research studies suggested that driver ed was not the answer," said Allan Williams, the chief scientist for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In response to the research, the institute initially pushed for licensing at age 18, then it supported graduated licensing, in which licenses are issued to 17-year-olds after they spend a year driving with a learner's permit.

Mr. Williams pointed to a more recent study sponsored by the institute, in which Daniel Mayhew and Herb Simpson of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada surveyed international studies and concluded that "driver education and training do not lead to lower crash involvement, compared with other ways of learning to drive." According to the report, teenagers become overconfident when they take parking-lot courses that teach vehicle dynamics, wet-pavement skids and other examples of automobiles' escaping a driver's control.

"It's a motivation problem," Mr. Williams said, referring to teenagers' proclivity for risk-taking, which seems to be the real problem. "Teenagers feel invincible."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agrees. In 1994, it reported to Congress that "current novice driver education is not doing a very good job in motivating youngsters to drive safely." The AAA has recommended that a psychological or emotional element be included in driver education, to deal with such risk-taking.

Since driver education faded from public schools, the death rate for 16-year-old drivers has risen markedly. In 1975, the rate was 19 deaths per 100,000 licensed drivers; by 1996 it had risen to 35, according to a report by the insurance institute.

Mr. Williams attributed the increase to the nation's overall prosperity, which has resulted in more teenagers behind the wheel, thereby increasing the number of miles they drive. Others suggested that the decline of driver education in schools has contributed to the increase in deaths.

The shift from public-school driver education to private driving schools has produced mixed results.

"You have some good commercial courses and some bad ones, some good school courses and some bad ones," said Dr. Brad Bradshaw, the executive director of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association. He estimates that there are 30,000 to 40,000 public and privately employed driving teachers in the United States.

In a society where driving is essential, shifting instruction to the private sector has produced some cut- rate courses for families who cannot, or will not, pay more. The cost ranges from $50 for the minimum requirements to obtain a learner's permit to several hundred dollars for a package of services.

LAST August, the New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall released a study of driver education companies in the Albany and New York City regions. Of the 628 driving schools in the state, the comptroller's office sampled a third. Of these, nine employed instructors whose own driving licenses had been suspended; 46 of 257 instructors had criminal histories. Fewer than half the schools could provide proof that their cars were insured, and 16 percent lacked documentation that their vehicles had passed safety inspections. Several schools had not applied for licenses to operate their businesses, but simply set up shop and began advertising.

Little has changed in the driving curriculum that is offered by many driving schools. Classroom time comes first, with concepts like traction and center of gravity introduced before the student sits behind a real steering wheel. The formula, 30 hours in the classroom, 6 behind the wheel, harks back to the 30's.

"Driver's ed today is like trying to teach someone how to play the piano without a piano," said Mr. Thompson, the former racecar driver who operates a driving education company. His car-control clinics put young drivers and parents through daylong near-accident conditions on closed parking lots and conduct exercises on the road.

The thinking behind graduated licensing is that it gives students more time to learn in real driving conditions. While laws vary from state to state, graduated licensing programs usually assign a permit at age 16, after the teenager has taken a driving course; certain hours, mostly from midnight to 5 a.m., are blocked for driving. In addition to pushing the licensing age to 17, most systems require 50 hours — roughly an hour a week for a year — of real driving with a responsible adult, most likely a parent.

In the 50's, "parents were the primary people who taught driving," said Charles Butler, the director of driver safety services for AAA. "We've got to go back to that."

The problem is that many graduated systems require a simple affidavit from a parent, attesting to the number of hours a teenager has driven. There is no way, however, that states can confirm whether the time was actually spent driving.

To motivate teenagers to drive safely, Mr. Thompson has argued for a financial incentive, like a 20-percent reduction in insurance premiums for those who maintain a safe record over three years. Currently, most insurance companies offer a small discount for people who take driver education. Mr. Thompson would also like national standards and curriculums that focus on real-world experiences to be instituted.

"We simply let them on the roads and wait for them to encounter their first emergency," he said of teenagers. There are some signs of change, he noted, but for now, "kids are in the middle."