Is the Speed Limit a Law, or a Suggestion?

The controversy over photo radar to enforce speed limits on AZ roads is heating up. One of the comments recently posted to a Tribune article follows:

"....... I drive 85 MPH all the time in the left lane. When I see the cameras, I slow down to 74 MPH for fifty feet or so and then speed up again. I don't tailgate, drink or talk on the phone while I drive; did I really endanger anyone? I think not. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron."

Does this person understand that at 85mph (criminal speed by AZ statute) the ability to react to sudden unexpected events, like maybe a vehicle braking suddenly, or losing control, is almost nonexistent?

Excessive speed results in vastly diminished ability to react to any sudden unexpected occurrence. Don't believe it? We have a simulation that will change your mind.

Come see us for a personal demonstration that the driver going 20mph or more over the speed limit is the real moron.

At the end of the day, who has the last say?

When did it happen? When did we say it was
"ok" for coaches or band or drama directors
to run our children's lives? Often when I go
to church on Sunday and I listen to our
Pastor he talks about priorities in families.
His message is about the need to make faith
a priority in our children's lives because
often times games, or productions or what
have you, take priority over going to church
or participating in youth programs. I see it
every day when we have parents that sign
their teens up for driver training and get
totally frustrated because they can't find
enough time in a week to get "everything"
done. They can't make a class because their
football practice runs for six hours on a
Saturday or the coach called a last minute
practice and if the student has other
priorities and doesn't come - they'll get
kicked off the team. Really? Is this what
we want for our kids? The question keeps
coming up for me - why? Why do we, as their
parents, continue to allow this to happen?
Is it that we think they have a shot at a
sport's scholarship for college, or they
might make it in the big leagues, so we think
it's necessary? Or are we living vicariously
through our children and watching them out on
the field makes us feel good. What is it
that drives this behavior?



What concerns me most is the short cuts
parents take in order to "allow" this to
continue to happen. While I recognize the
need for students to be involved in
extra-curricular activities - must it take
over their lives? We know for a fact that
motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause
of death for teenagers, but when push comes
to shove do we choose sports practice over
driving practice, band camp over driving
lessons? Are we putting our kids out on the
road with little to no training and even less
practice because other things got in the way?
I am writing this article as a thought
provoker. Is this really what we want for
our kids? Have the coaches and directors
gone too far? If so, how do we get back to
what really IS "in the best interest of our
children?" How do they stay involved, but
also gain balance and focus on what is really
important? Parents, this is our job. Do you
really think that football, baseball,
basketball, cheer, band, drama, golf - you
name it is so critically important that it
MUST take precedence over anything else in
their lives? If this is how prioritizing
happens at this young and impressionable age,
what chance do they have for achieving a real
balance in life when they become adults and
one-day parents? Is this frenzied life what
we really want for our kids? I would welcome
dialogue on this topic.

Driving While Distracted (Anyone, Not Just Teens)

A pretty intense PSA was produced in the UK targeting texting while driving. I’ve seen comments by well-intentioned folks suggesting that it is too graphic for teen consumption. I have a hard time understanding their logic. If you haven’t already seen the video, you can see it here:



Utah has also produced a lengthy video about texting while driving that is worth the time it takes to view it.





I’m not a great believer in showing graphic videos to teens as a means of convincing them not to take risks, or drive irresponsibly. Preaching abstinence just doesn’t work very well. That’s why I believe we should be banning all cell phone use while operating a motor vehicle. I also understand that this will probably not happen in my lifetime.

Trinity Noble has developed technology that will only prevent the driver from using a hand-held cell phone while the vehicle is in motion above 15mph. It will still allow calls using blue tooth hands-free units. It requires FCC approval in order to be legally installed in a vehicle.

Until we all realize that driving while distracted is dangerous, and change our behavior, the gruesome collision statistics will continue to pile up. No text message or call is so important that we should be risking the lives of others so that we can handle it. Yet that’s precisely what so many drivers today do, every day. How did we collectively develop such an inflated sense of importance?

Questions for Parents of Teens Getting Ready to Drive

Are you the parent of a teen that’s at that magic age when he/she is eligible to begin driving? Here are a few questions that you should consider.

1. Is he/she mature enough for the responsibility?
This is the most important question that a parent needs to consider. Does your child exhibit sufficient self-control and maturity to handle the responsibility of being in control of a 2,000+ pound missile loaded with 10 to 30 gallons of explosive liquid? If you aren’t comfortable with your answer, then serious discussion between you and your teen should occur before you begin the licensing process.

2. Who will do the training?
Today, there are usually many options available to the parent. I’ll bet that most of us were first exposed to driving in a parking lot or on a quiet residential street by a parent or older sibling. For most, this was just the beginning.

It used to be that most high schools offered driver education courses as an elective; now that is the exception, rather than the norm. These classes were designed around classroom instruction for 30 hours of seat-time. Why 30? Because that was the number of hours required to grant partial credit as an elective course. This has been picked up as the required standard by some states, and by some insurance companies for discount eligibility.

Unfortunately, I have yet to hear from anyone that participated in this type of class that didn’t say they were bored out of their minds while learning very little of practical value. That’s not to say the content was bad, it simply validates studies that rate classroom lectures as the most ineffective teaching method. Check out the DrivingMBA FAQ page for more information on the Learning Pyramid.

A popular option is for parents to take on the responsibility of teaching their teen to drive (~1/3 of teens are taught this way). After all, if my dad could teach me how to drive, why shouldn’t I be able to do the same for my kid? Part of the problem is that both vehicles and roadways, while safer, are far more complex and sophisticated than they were 20 years ago. An NHTSA study of Texas results determined that this was the least effective method of teen driver training, even though the Texas program is one of the most elaborate. Download the study here.

3. How much training will he/she get?
The industry standard is a varied amount of classroom training, ranging from 30+ hours for those schools still adhering to the 1/2 credit concept, to the minimum necessary to adequately understand and retain the rules of the road. This is usually followed by 6 hours of actual road time with an instructor. With the advent of Graduated Drivers License laws, many states require that the parent or guardian attest to a number of practice driving hours with the permit holder prior to licensing.

4. Who will provide the practice time?
Practice time is critical to the development of the new driver. This usually falls on the shoulders of one or both parents. Once the teen has gained some confidence behind the wheel, all driving while the teen is in the vehicle should be done by the teen, unless physical condition makes this unadvisable. The teen has to get exposure to varied conditions and routes in order to really gain meaningful experience. Driving every day to and from school as the only driving practice might serve to meet the minimum requirements, but only means that they are very experienced on that route, and under the same conditions.

5. What kind of vehicle will be available?
If the teen attends a commercial driving school, the likelihood is that the vehicle will be a smaller model. Schools choose these vehicles for economy reasons, but it serves a very different purpose as well. The student is introduced to driving in a vehicle that is easier to control. The transition to driving the family van or SUV or sports sedan is an area where parents need to exercise caution. Start slowly, and make certain that the teen is comfortable with where the corners of the vehicle are when he/she is behind the wheel and in control of maneuvering past that mailbox.

6. What kind of vehicle will he/she be driving after licensing?
Many parents believe that bigger is better/safer. While it might be somewhat safer for the occupant of the vehicle in a collision with another, smaller vehicle, the notion of safety is misplaced. A safer vehicle is one that is within the capabilities of the driver to control its operation. A larger vehicle has a much higher center of gravity, and reacts much differently when a sudden steering or braking maneuver is executed.

There was a school of thought that advocated a large older sedan as the first vehicle. The thinking was that it was inevitable that the teen would experience a collision, so buy something cheap. Older vehicles have less modern safety features, and may encounter mechanical problems, so this is no longer seen as a good idea. Besides, why on earth should it be a given that the teen will be in a collision? Proper preparation just might be a better answer.

7. How will you know he/she is ready to drive solo?
You are no longer on edge and tense in the passenger seat while the teen drives, and you can actually do something other than maintain constant vigil over what is happening. The teen has demonstrated a level of responsibility that allows you to entrust him/her with his own life and the lives of others on the road at the same time. You have discussed and signed a driving contract and have established clear expectations and consequences. The teen is ready.

Could Power-To-Weight Ratio Be The Next Addition To Graduated Driver License Restrictions? Probably Not.

I often remind parents of the huge difference in vehicle and roadway sophistication that has taken place since they first learned to drive. Most any vehicle built before the 1990's had sufficient noise/vibration/harshness issues (remember wind noise at higher speeds?) that told the driver that they might want to be a little more careful as speed increased. Couple that with roads that were slightly less than smooth, and the driver received plenty of sensory feedback.

I've also commented on the continuing increase in power with new vehicles. This article from Autoweek talked about this topic in relation to insurance rates.

The net result is that new drivers today have a much greater ability to get into problem situations faster with less warning signs along the way. They can easily exceed the personal and vehicle limitations governing vehicle control. For this reason, a restriction on vehicle capabilities for inexperienced drivers makes sense.

I was reminded of this when I read this article about Australian Graduated Driver Licensing that is tied to Power-to-Weight vehicle ratios. Some countries in Europe have had this type of restriction for a while, limiting new drivers to slower vehicles until they gain experience.

Given the substantial differences in approach to teen driver training here in the United States, it would be very difficult to add such a restriction here, especially since the requirements are independently mandated by each state.

Ford Motor Company, with their MyKey program, is somewhat addressing the issue by allowing parents to physically impose speed restrictions and providing audio warnings as speed increases. It does not address the temptation of too much power available up to the programmed maximum that can get inexperienced drivers into trouble.

GPS monitoring devices are available that will report on events and speed, but that is after the fact.

The best answer is judicious parental choices in vehicle availability to the newly minted driver that reduce the temptation to "see what it can do".

Seven Steps/Phases In the Process of Becoming an "Experienced Driver"

The insurance industry, based on the surcharge placed on new teen drivers for the first few years, believes that maturity is the key to safer driving behavior. If you wait until you are 25 to learn to drive, even though you have no experience, you will not be penalized with an increased premium. Implicitly, the insurance companies are totally discounting the value of proper training for a new driver.

In thinking about the process of gaining experience behind the wheel, I have identified the following 7 steps:

1. Learning Basic Vehicle Controls

2. Learning the Rules of the Road

3. Mastering Vehicle Controls

4. Executing Normal Vehicle Maneuvers

5. Developing Situational Awareness

6. Negotiating Hazardous Conditions

7. Learning Personal and Vehicle Limitations

The steps are not necessarily serially executed. The learning process takes place over time, and application of technology available today can significantly reduce the time needed to become an "Experienced Driver", especially in the latter steps.

The real goal should be to instill safe driving habits and behaviors as early as possible in the process, and to accelerate the process wherever practical to reduce the window where the new driver is a greater risk to all of us.

Lessons To Be Learned From a NM Tragedy

On June 27, 2009, four teens lost their lives in a collision in New Mexico, caused by a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road. Rightfully so, the response has been a call for more efforts to prevent DUI occurrences.

This article gives some details about the crash:

http://tinyurl.com/lzt2wr


What caught my eye in the comments section following the article was the questioning of the role of the parents in potentially avoiding the situation in the first place. The teens were in the first car of a caravan of four vehicles carrying teens to a house party. The time of the collision was around midnight. The driver of the vehicle is listed as sixteen.

Even without the GDL restrictions, a relatively inexperienced driver should not have been on the road with 4 passengers at midnight, with the probability of a return home presumably sometime after 1 or 2 am.

The second thing that caught my eye was the damage to the vehicle:





Clearly, the driver, in a panic situation, swerved to the left to avoid the head-on collision. That is not surprising, but is exactly the wrong thing to do. She obviously also reacted too late, since the oncoming vehicle caught her in the right front quarter.

Had the driver been through our Level 2 simulation training, she would have known that she needed to go to the right, and would have been drilled on the need to get out of the way, rather than stay in lane until it was too late.

Most experts believe that the answer to teen fatalities is further restrictions on teen drivers until they gain sufficient experience and maturity. We train company fleet drivers in defensive driving techniques using this simulator, and about 75% of these experienced (>10 years) drivers either fail to avoid the head-on collision, or subsequently lose control during the avoidance maneuver. Time spent behind the wheel of a vehicle is not the solution.

The value of our simulation training lies in exposure to critical situations, evaluation of initial reaction, and practice of correct response. You simply cannot get that from an online course, in a classroom, or during supervised on-road driving with an instructor.

Avoiding Collisions (Even if it’s not your mistake)

On the way to the office yesterday, I passed by an intersection collision that had just occurred. A compact car (driven by a young man) had been struck on the left side by an SUV coming up the road. It was pretty obvious that the car had cut across the path of the SUV, leading one to believe that the teen had started up from the stop sign without seeing the SUV coming up the road.

Was this just another case of an inexperienced teen causing a collision? Of course, the teen should have been more careful.

But what about the “experienced” driver of the SUV? The vehicle locations at rest after impact, lack of skid marks, together with the crash severity, told me that had the driver of the SUV simply performed the correct action, the collision could have been avoided entirely.

While there was considerable sheet metal damage done to the car, the vehicle positions told me that the SUV driver had hit his brakes and swerved to the left in an attempt to avoid the collision. The teen’s car had almost cleared the road when struck, and was not hit with enough impact to significantly move it sideways. Had the SUV driver simply braked hard and steered a little to the right, he most likely would have missed the car.

We teach our Level 2 students a police academy tactic to “Steer to the Rear” if a vehicle is unexpectedly moving across their path. There are 2 reasons for this move: First, if the intruding vehicle has momentum, that will be the spot that gets vacated; in other words, don’t go where they are heading, go where they’ve been. Second, if a collision is unavoidable, a glancing blow to the rear of most vehicles will result in far less damage to either vehicle. The majority of vehicle weight is in the front, where the engine and transmission reside, so that if you strike another vehicle with your front end (heaviest) you will encounter less resistance at its rear, where it’s lightest. Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule – for example, this doesn’t apply to a loaded tanker or concrete hauler, and it definitely does not mean that you should cross the center line into oncoming traffic lanes!