Automated safety systems are wonderful. Right up to the point where you exceed their abilities, physics takes over, and you just became a passenger. On your way to becoming a news item. Then what do you do? Street Survival and similar programs address that question.

A year ago, we had waiting lists-I just learned that our last warm-weather session for the year here is Minnesota was cancelled due to low enrollment. No idea why.

a) There’s still a small net win (i.e. the early fatality reduction exceeds the later fatality increase)

b) Might we want to look at keeping the restrictions for longer (some till 21, esp in urban areas?) and check again? We know the male brain is still developing in terms of ability to evaluate consequences at this age, so we might see a significant improvement in the net win?

Started driving at 16, didn’t die, but probably had a few close calls/risks that I wouldn’t take now.

When I got my driver’s license, it involved a written test, a driving test, and then 3 months where I could only drive with others in the car if one of those others was over 21. There were no driving logs, the restrictions weren’t in place for 3 years, and the age for a license was 16 years exactly.

Today, though, kids who should be going through what I went through instead have to wait until they’re 16.5 years, they have to have 80 hours or something of driving logs, and I have no idea when they can drive with others in the car. Oh, and if they fuck up? More driving classes.

Here’s a quote that all of you cranky old people might be familiar with:  won’t somebody please think of the children??

It is not sane, and it is not healthy to be sheltering everyone from everything indefinitely. Kids nowadays can’t even climb a god damn tree without the cops being called and having a psychological evaluation. Give kids their freedom back, stop relentlessly doing things “for their safety.” You know what? Some kids will die. And if you don’t let kids drive, then some adults will die. You can’t prevent accidents. What if it’s your kid that dies? Well that’s damn tragic, but you shouldn’t force everyone to live in bubble wrap because you had something traumatic happen to you. You can improve car safety, though, and the auto companies are working on it.

But you don’t need to go to the pros to see a benefit from simple experience and training. Take a look at http://www.accidentavoidance.com/AA%20Study%20by%20Bill%20Scottpdf.pdf, especially Figure 1, comparing teens who attended BSR’s Accident Avoidance class to their peers who did not.  The differences are striking.  (Figure 2, dealing with rookie West Virginia State Troopers is also interesting, if not as germane.)

Yeah, the sample size in the first group is too small to say much, but BSR’s report is harder to dismiss.  (Note that while what they have up is their report, I believe they wrote it up after a story was published in the Winchester, VA paper about the teenager comparison, and after one of the local law enforcement groups noted their benefits as well.  I know I was told about similar stats back in 1998, before the data they use in their report existed.)

If someone you know is a teen driver, send ‘em.

(On a tangential note, until I started autocrossing at the age of about 35, I *thought* I knew how a car handles…. I can credit at least one successful accident avoidance on the road to lessons learned on the course.)

Odds are that people just delayed the expense of a test until they could drive properly. In this case, the fix (giving a beginner’s license for a certain amount of time, no matter your age) seems both as simple as others have said, and as necessary as the numbers suggest.

The post says”the results were pretty much a wash”
and the linked article says
“While the number of fatal crashes among 16- and 17-year-old drivers has fallen, deadly accidents among 18-to-19-year-olds have risen by an almost equal amount.”

Nearly equal amount?

If fatal accidents are down 26% among younger kids and up 12% among older kids, that sounds like a net win.  Apparently some people are going to die as new drivers, and these regulations seem to be reducing the numbers.  Apparently something like half of the effect is due to age and half due to inexperience.  Okay, it’s not quite that simple, but certainly the numbers don’t indicate that we should focus on inexperience and ignore age.  Why can’t we address both?  The Times article gives the impression that these laws have needlessly killed 18 year olds.

Even now at 31 I drive better when I’m alone then when I have someone in the car.  I don’t have to listen to them make gasping/screaming/OMG we are going to DIE noises when something happens…

I think a lot of small things could be done to help teen drivers.

1. Install a cell jammer into their car, automatic $500 fine if a cop pulls them over and it’s not active.  (Which it should be by default if the car is in gear.)

That’ll at least solve the problem of paying more attention to your phone than controlling the 3000+lb vehicle you are piloting around the roads.

Nothing beats experience hands down.
You want your kids to live longer? Then don’t just rely on the schools (my driver’s ed teach couldn’t have cared less as long as someone was able to get him to the donut shop in one piece) or the state to teach them. Spend some time with them yourself and teach them how to be responsible behind the wheel.
Unless you’re a crappy driver yourself and then maybe you both could use some lessons.
(Of course most stupid drivers don’t realize that they’re stupid drivers)

Nearly 40 now and have only had two accidents and neither were my fault.

Turns out, deadly car accidents aren’t so much a function of driver age as they are a function of driver experience.

Maggie, given the proximity of the datapoints, that’s not a particularly safe inference to make: the same rationale when measuring the height of babies at 16 and 18 days would lead you to conclude that they wouldn’t get significantly taller in later life.

Also, some kids just don’t have spacial awareness – I remember the hysterical laughter being a passenger in a friend’s car, he kept bumping things, “we’re all going to die” was a common refrain.  Not even any booze.  Poor him.  Couldn’t avoid things, and had a band of laughing monkeys everywhere he went (he was the first to have regular access to a vehicle).