How can parents crashproof their kids? For answers and insights, we spoke to Dr. Flaura Koplin Winston, founder and co-scientific director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
For more tips, go to www.chop.edu/youngdrivers.
The Wall Street Journal: Have you seen a lot of young people in accidents in your years as a doctor?
Dr. Flaura Koplin Winston: What we've seen is lots of car crashes. And car crashes for teens – whether as drivers or as passengers – are the leading cause of death for teens. So I've devoted my career to helping young people.
WSJ: What are common mistakes made by teens and young adults behind the wheel?
Dr. Winston: What I think is really important -- the No. 1 thing -- is people are still not wearing seatbelts. I think we spend the bulk of our resources in the medical world on making sure people survive [crashes]. What we should really be spending our resources on is preventing injuries and preventing crashes. That's where restraints come in. It has been shown across all ages that it reduces your odds of serious injuries by almost half. The population that has the lowest use of seatbelts is teens. It's very important that when parents don't wear seatbelts, the teens don't wear seatbelts.
The Best Cars for Young Drivers
The ideal car for a beginning driver would be one that's big, boring and slow. Some tips from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
- Size and weight are crucial aspects of crash protection. Even with all the modern safety features, bigger is still better. It would be better to put them in a used midsize or larger car and chip in for gas money than to buy them a brand new small car.
It's stunning how often we see crashes with teen drivers involving sports cars or cars with a sporty image. Parents should avoid cars that encourage speeding and other risky driving.
Avoid SUVs and pickup trucks because of their higher center of gravity and greater likelihood of rolling over in a crash.
- Other safety features to look for in a car for a teen – airbags, side airbags, electronic stability control and safety-belt reminders.
- Check crash ratings. Go to Safercar.gov to see safety ratings of new and used cars, as determined by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) crash tests.
We think that when a teen gets a license, they're ready to drive on their own. The greatest risk for teens is the first six months, and the first 1,000 miles of driving.
For teens, their risk of a fatal crash is three times the risk of an adult. They are very dangerous from the first six months to a year [of driving].
WSJ: What are the things that contribute to this -- that make it worse?
Dr. Winston: First, teens are inexperienced. They can't detect the hazards; they don't have built-up memory to respond to the hazard.
The next big thing is distractions. We had a national survey of 5,500 teens. They describe these driving situations: passengers, cellphones, loud music, wild behavior, drinking. The biggest distraction is peer passengers, cited by 90% of teens in the survey.
Teen drivers are encouraged to speed; there's singing and dancing in the car; social factors, emotions, impulses get in the way of making the right decision. With all this going on, it affects how they process what's there. If you take the eye off the wheel for three seconds, you double the risk of getting in a crash.
What we're most familiar with is risky behavior. Teens want to try new things -- unfortunately, things they want to try can be dangerous. So if you think of drinking and driving, when a teen is drinking, it's really dangerous. They have a much lower tolerance for alcohol than adults.
WSJ: How can parents coach their kids to be better drivers?
Dr. Winston: It's important what you model for a teen. Look at your own driving. Are you speeding? Are you talking on a cellphone? Are you drinking and driving?
The next thing is the inexperience issue. Parents should spend at least 50 hours supervising their teens' driving under varying conditions. A lot of parents have their kids learn to drive using drivers' ed, where they learn the rules of the road. But this doesn't replace practice driving. Just because a teen knows how to drive back and forth to school, doesn't mean they can drive on the highway. If they had drivers' ed in the summer, it doesn't mean they can drive on ice.
Seatbelts are crucial; they're important for everyone in the car.
Some other suggestions:
- Start talking to your teens when they're 12 or 13 about how to become a safe passenger.
- Monitor your child, where they're driving, who they're with.
- Allow your kids to get out of dangerous situations. Teens have to save face. They have to fit in. If a teen gets in a bad situation, have a pre-set code word. Let's say it's "garage door." In a dangerous situation, the teen can call home and use the code word in a sentence. The parent starts yelling loudly on the phone. The teen then says, "I've gotta go. My mom's really mad."
- Plan the route. Traveling on roads over 40 mph is pretty dangerous for teens. Help them plan a route on lower-speed roads.
- Reduce drowsy driving. If you haven't slept for 18 hours, your performance is a bad as if you have a blood-alcohol level of .08.