DRIVER EDUCATION

I am a mother of a new driver and have 3 more children who will one day be behind the wheel. It has been an interesting experience driving with my daughter Stella for the 40 hours of supervised driving required before she was able to sit for her initial driving test. The first day she drove she had no idea where the car was on the road and had trouble staying in the lines. I even quipped that she was “coloring inside the lines” as she drifted right and left (she did not enjoy that comment). Over the weeks and months, though, she steadily improved. On the day that she got her license she was understandably nervous. I saw her check her mirrors, adjust her seat, frown, make another adjustment and off she went. She was back in what felt like 5 minutes with a weird look on her face. I thought she has failed. I could not believe it- she had spent less time in the car than any of the other prospective drivers that day. She was a careful, contentious driver; often correcting my driving and telling me what the “rules of the road” were. But she got it! She had pulled out well, parallel parked, made a 3-point turn and returned to the parking lot with the instructors’ blessing.

Her experience in driver’s education was a lot different from mine. We parents were trained on how to support our new drivers and we needed to relearn the laws. She got her license at 16.5 as opposed to my 16 and she can not drive her friends until age 17. When I got my license, I thought there must have been a mistake because I did not know how to drive! The first thing I did was pickup all my friends, even put some in the trunk and terrorized the gated communities if Greenwich Connecticut where I lived. A lot of my fellow parents often say that they are “lucky to be alive” due to the lack of awareness and education around driving safety.

The education my husband and I received was very helpful in raising a safe driver. I also am armed with stories of when my friends who crashed their cars in high school. Sadly, it seemed in the 1990s every graduating class has a story of a lethal car accident that took a young person’s life too soon. Where we live in Berkshire County, Massachusetts there are often stories of car accidents and many are lethal. In our town, there are many pedestrian crosswalks where you need to drive 20mph to keep everyone safe. The print or radio news and the dining table chatter is often about road safety. Remember MADD (mothers against drunk driving) and SADD (Students against drunk driving)? These educational campaigns help inform my generation and we are more involved as parents and more invested in driver safety than I feel my parents were. When I saw “death on the highway”; a grainy, black and white film where a driver got crudely decapitated in an accident. I thought it was funny like one of my favorite slasher movies from the 80s/90s. My daughter takes my stories of my brother totaling the family car by crashing into the median when he reached down for a CD on the floor much more seriously. She knows the story of when my friend, Steve, crashed his car in the curve by my house and the sound of crumpling metal woke me up in the middle of the night. I always refer to cars as “loaded weapons” and this heavy weight of driver safety and responsibility has been taught to my child in the classroom and in real life.

The new driver has the increased threat of distracted driving. There are cell phones chiming and navigation and podcasts and music. Drivers are aware of the laws that cell phone use is illegal and dangerous. I am not sure it does far enough, however. I recently had the privilege of traveling in Australia where there are extensive cameras everywhere and tickets are sent to homes for not using seatbelts, for cellphone use and even pulling over in the wrong spot to use a cell phone. There are hardly any accidents in Australia and the drivers there obey the laws because they are enforced. We need more enforcement in this country.

I believe that there have been a lot of vehicle innovations that have improved road safety. My car lets me know if I am too close to a vehicle and initiates braking. There are also backup alerts to prevent me backing into an oncoming car or person. I get vibrations through my wheel to help with the drifting and “coloring inside the lines” which helped train my young driver and did the nagging for me to save our mother-daughter relationship. We also have cameras at stop lights to help prevent people running red lights.

I think a combination of informed parents, strong driver’s education requirements and stricter enforcement of traffic safety laws can cultivate a culture of safe, responsible driving. The responsibility lies on all of us to support each other and we would all be safer if our states and communities used the technology available to us to reinforce the laws. Word spreads fast and a few issued tickets would remarkably change drivers’ habits. We can look to other countries with low accidents and fatalities and learn from their ways of reinforcing the laws.