Download PDF

ALERTED THAT CAR crashes are the leading cause of death and injury among young people, Americans are stepping up to address the issue. While governments, regulators and insurers focus on making graduated-driver-licensing (GDL) laws more rigorous and widespread, individuals aren't waiting on the safety establishment but are taking action in independent and innovative ways.

A year after the first AutoWeek Teen Driving Safety Summit (TDSS) in August 2007-an event the magazine plans to reprise in 2009-a survey of the field finds much activity, despite restraints imposed by the national economic downturn.

A few examples of what's new since last year at back-to-school time:

• A California company aims to establish European-style driver training at dedicated facilities in the United States.

• In Ohio, Cincinnati-area dealers and Toyota are backing a competition for high-school students to improve driving attitudes, knowledge and skills.

• In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, regulators and hospital researchers have organized to improve licensing laws.

• The national AAA has increased efforts to alert teens and parents to the dangers of distractions at the wheel, especially cellphone text-messaging.

• New technology helps parents track a young driver's activity at the wheel.

• There is broadening appreciation for the responsibility that society places on parents of new young drivers.

The most ambitious of these initiatives is that of Drive RSTC in Burlingame, Calif. The company's goal is nothing less than the widespread application of Europeanstyle driver training in the United States.

The distinctions are significant, and company founder Rob Cole details them in a 20-page paper available as a download at www.driverstc.com. AutoWeek reported on many of the differences between the European and American models for driver training last year (Aug. 27, 2007), but Cole's analysis is more extensively researched and detailed.

The issues are complex, but Cole says the key is that European researchers discovered 20 years ago that instruction centered on driving skills alone (such as skid control) resulted in new drivers who were either overly confident in their car-control abilities or overly fearful. This 1988 research, often cited by opponents of such skills-centered instruction in the United States, did not lead Europe to abandon such training, Cole asserts, but instead led to a refinement discussed in more recent safety literature as the "postrenewal" period.

NewerTesearch, Cole says, shows a 34 percent reduction in accidents among students who learn the same skills but within the context of a curriculum that sets a priority not on car control for its own sake. as much as on safe on-road behavior and the understanding of the limits of car, driver and road. That's a 34 percent gain, mind you, among young drivers who experience much lower rates of crashing, death and injury than are typical in the United States.

"This is radically different from what you find in the United States. But after years of research," says Cole, "I am confident that there is no other way."

The classes he takes as a model, typical of Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Norway, among others, take place at dedicated facilities-road skills training centers, or RSTCs-using water jets as obstacles (rather than traffic cones) and wet, slippery road surfaces, all computercontrolled from a central station, with students driving alone (with no ride-along instructor).

These tracks allow students to experience a total loss of control, analogous to the experience of students learning to fly airplanes who must master the" deadstick" powerless landing and recovery from a spin. Cole says most U.S. skills training does not allow for this total loss of control and thereby teaches students either that they can always be fully in control of the car or that they may never be, which has profound implications for the psychology of the young driver and how he or she approaches the task.

This approach led Marland Thompson, a former U.S. Navy pilot who made the proposal that led to the Navy's "Top Gun" flight school, to sign on as a member of the Drive RSTC board of directors.

The curricula at the European schools lead students to take the wheel with a goal of arriving safely at the destination without excessive risk. Students taught only the skills without the goal-setting context, Cole argues, may set their own inappropriate objectives, such as speed, high g loadings or peak fuel economy, all of which are inappropriate substitutes for safety of both the driver and other road users.

All of this skills training, crucially, takes place after students have done enough training and testing to have acquired their probationary licenses, so that they can place the skills in the context of their on-road experience. Laws vary by nation, but generally, a driver earns a probationary license at age 17 or 18 and then must attend skills and attitude training within two years to obtain a full license.

Such centers, typically on 20 to 40 acres of land, are not cheap, though colocation with test facilities used by automakers or suppliers or at racetrack sites may spread the cost of building and operating them.

Pushing for Awareness

A MAJOR CONTRIButor to the reduction in drunk-driving deaths and injuries in the United States during the past 20 years was a widespread publicrelations push to make the behavior socially unacceptable. There was a similar push against smoking. Teens and young adults are still among those who most often take these risks, but it is hoped that similar peer and social pressures can be used to address unsafe driving.

To that end, insurance company State Farm and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia lobbied Congress and got the third week of October designated as National Teen Driver Safety Week. Although the bill was passed barely in time for last year's effort, the designation will apply this October, and advocates will have had a year to gear up their programs.

Also, Bridgestone Firestone North America, a primary sponsor of the Driver's Edge training program, ran its second-annual Safety Scholars event, awarding scholarships to young people ages 1 6 to 21 who developed publicservice commercials promoting auto safety. Socialnetworking Web sites YouTube,Facebookand MySpace were used to distribute these messages, which you can view at www.safetyscholars.com.

Winners of the $5,000 scholarships this year were Danny Belkin of Rockland, Md., a film buff attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, whose video wams about the dangers of cell-phone use at the wheel. Ryan Massey, an 18-year-old from Laguna Niguel, Calif., was critically injured in a car accident that claimed the lives of two of his friends-none was wearing a seatbelt-and Massey's first-person account reaches out to peers to explain the importance of belt use. And a video by Sarah Wilson of Tampa, Fla., a junior at the University of South Florida, features a group of teens discussing a crash they attribute to cell-phone textmessaging; the camera pulls back to reveal that the teens are actually ghosts in a graveyard. A special Critics Choice Award went to 17-year-old Angel Roscioloi of Bethlehem, Pa., whose video features a girl writing a farewell letter to her parents detailing the decisions that will lead to a fatal crash.

All four winning videos will be used as publicservice TV commercials by Bridgestone Firestone. The winners also will attend the 2009 Chicago auto show to display their work to auto journalists covering the show. -KAW