by Kevin A. Wilson

Safe Young Drivers: A guide for Parents and Teens, by Phil Berardelli. Spiral-bound paperback, 160 pages. Published 1996 by EPM Publications. 1003 Turkey Run Road, McLean, VA 22101. Order at bookstores or call (800) 289-2339. $12.

Only 15 states require that young drivers hold lerner permits for some period—usually 90 days— before they get full driving priveleges. Only half of the states require school districts to offer driver education programs. So who trains teenagers to drive? The assumption on the part of many legislators and regulators is that parents will peform this duty, either farming it out to private driving schools or doing it themselves.

Any parent who remembers high school driver education or examines the cursory curriculum at most driving schools would be loath to let his or her teenager out onto the road with such scanty training. But parents who want to step up to ther responsibility for teaching their children how to drive haven't received a lot of help from either the educational or regulatory establishments.

Few drivers are savvy about the intricacies: what, they wonder, should I teach the kids? Car enthusiasts probably think that they know what needs to be learned, and even why. But how do you know when, where and especially how to go about teaching it to your own child?

This book could be a big help. An outgrowth of a story the author wrote that appeared in The Washington Post and Pittsburgh Post Gazette in 1994, Safe Young Drivers provides a detailed curriculum and a methodology for the process of teaching a teen what to do behind the wheel. Underpinning it all is the author's well-considered and explained philosophy.

Berardelli has been a writer/journalist for 25 years, and, perhaps more to the point here, he worked seven years as a middle school teacher. The original article stemmed from his experience teaching his two daughters to drive. The book is clearly the product of a man who not only has affection and understanding for young people, but also for cars and driving. This isn't a car-buff's book about driving technique at the limit, but neither does it attempt to scare teens off the road with the alarmist rhetoric too often found in driver education literature.

Berardelli provides clear, well-considered advice, organized in a way that lets the author speak plainly with both parents and teens (the parts for the kid are in bold type; yours are in regular roman typeface). The book not only tells you waht to do step-by-step, but why you're doing it. If you don't agree with the why and how, the procedure is easily ammended to accord with you own philosophies.

Berardelli suggests a slow, cautious beginning and a lot of time in parking lots, away from the distractions and dangers of other drivers. By the end of the book, though, he's talking about skid control techniq1ue, how to use ABS, and how to teach evasive maneuvers. The detailed process he recommends between those cautious first steps and full independence is time-consuming and demanding—just what you want to put your young driver through before cutting him or her loose with the keys, and perhaps a bit more than you'll want to put yourself through.

Berardelli will seem overly cautious to some of us, such as when he suggests that new drivers should be limited to 55 mph for their first fulll year on the road. But he is consistent in counselling patience throughout the book. It's advice that you'll want your teen to heed. He offers the same counsel even more frequently when speaking to the parent. Obviously, this is a man who has been there. Safe Young Drivers is a recommended resource for any parent; I'll use it in teaching my own teens.

Reprinted from AutoWeek, April 21, 1997

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