It's Crazy Out There - What Chance Does a Novice Driver Have?

I have a short comute to and from work everyday, so when I do get out on the "big" streets I am shocked and appalled at the driving I see going on out there. Just last week I was driving in downtown Phoenix and watched a pedestrian, crossing the street, in a crosswalk, when the light changed on him. The poor man was scurrying across the street and SUV's were coming across the intersection honking their horns at this poor man. His life was literally in danger. That same day I was entering the 101 Loop when I watched a white bus cross over the gore area and nearly push a sedan off the road. The driver must have decided they DID want to get onto the freeway and those in my way "be damned." These are only two stories of many I hear day in and day out from colleagues, friends, students, you name it!!

Now think about putting a young novice driver out there with these agressive drivers, fast roadways and even faster vehicles - what chance do the REALLY have? Do parents or even driving instructors take their teens out on streets and put them in all of those precarious situations and teach them how to handle them? I think not, it's far too nerve racking, not to mention dangerous. So, how do these young people learn? The Driver Education system in the United States is failing our teenagers. Some states are better than others, but on the whole and on the average we are still teaching teens to drive the way we did 50 years ago. Things have CHANGED!! The roadways we drive on are more complex and move much faster, the vehicles we drive are much more sophisticated than the vehicles we drove 30, 40 or 50 years ago. When boomers were learning how to drive we had sensory feedback - wind noise, shaking, rattling and rolling was going on. The vehicles we drive now are made to eliminate all of that unpleasantness. So now we can be going 30 MPH or we can be going 80 MPH - we really don't feel the difference. Now, put a teenager behind the wheel - do you really think they will be able to react in time if something out of the ordinary happens? The answer is NO. The data is CLEAR. We have a problem in this country. Teenagers are dying every day in vehicle collisions.

Think of it this way - when we hand our teenagers the keys to a vehicle today, we are handing them a 2,000 to 4,000 lb. projectile with 35 to 40 lbs. of explosives and we're sending them out there with a hope and prayer that WHEN they do get in their first collision, and they will, it will only be a fender bender. We need to do better than that!

So, what is the answer to this problem? We at DrivingMBA, think we are PART of the solution! We have 3 years of experience utilizing state of the art simulators to teach teenagers the fundamentals of driving and advanced defensive driving skills. Our preliminary results (interviewing our students after 1 year) are indicating that we are improving their odds significantly. While the national average of novice drivers getting into a collision their first year on the road is >50% our graduate students are averaging < 12% getting into some kind of collision their first year. While we know we can't guarantee they won't have a collision, we know we can improve their odds.

Teen Stats

Teen Driving Facts and Figures:

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15-20 year olds Teens have the highest involvement rates in all types of crashes 10 teens lose their lives every day in car crashes Many fatal teen crashes involve excessive speed or driving too fast for existing road conditions 77% of teen crashes involved avoidable driver errors 31,000 people were killed in crashes involving teens between 1995 and 2004 Since March 2003, 2,600 American troops were killed in war-related accidents. In the same 41-month period, over 22,000 teens 15-19 died in car crashes throughout the U.S.