Women & Families

Teen Driver Safety Series, Part Three

Click here for more recent information on teen drivers.

In our first installment in this series, we looked at the endangered status of the American teenage driver — not endangered in the sense of a rare species, but threatened by high accident rates and inexperience behind the wheel.

Experts differ as to solutions. One camp calls for increased limitation of teenage access to motor vehicles, citing high accident rates for young drivers. A second group lobbies for improved driver training, arguing that increased education and behind-the-wheel instruction will cure what ails America's newest drivers.

What's the solution?

As enthusiasts, we believe most Americans, barring criminal behavior, should retain the privilege of driving a car. While punishment and limitation have their place, what we ultimately want — what all American drivers want, we believe — is an educated and safe driving population. After all, cars aren't going away anytime soon, and traffic cops can only be so many places at one time.

Mobility holds the key to our diverse economy. Because of this, we need drivers who understand the dynamics of motor vehicles before they get behind the wheel. And the truth is, America often does a woefully inept job of educating her drivers.

In this, our third installment, we'll take a closer look at the driver's ed dilemma in America. We'll also explore some alternative solutions, such as a controversial driver training course that intentionally teaches students to drive cars fast, spin their tires over slick pavement and then apply that knowledge to their everyday driving.

First, though, let's examine traditional American driver training.

In preparation for this article, we interviewed several Edmunds.com employees about their experiences in high school driver training courses. While their exploits in no way reflect the average driver's experience, we nonetheless find them intriguing.

We spoke first with former staffer Christian Wardlaw. Chris is an avowed car nut. According to his parents, the first word out of his mouth as a toddler was "car" (we're not making this up). Never known to be shy with his opinions (have you read any of his road tests lately?), Chris gave us an earful about his driver training.

Wardlaw grew up in the Detroit area and attended public schools. He took driver training in high school in 1983. That's not the whole story, though. Under the supervision of his stepfather, Wardlaw had actually begun driving at the age of 11 (we can tell this now, since the statute of limitations has run out). By the time he turned 16 and entered the state-funded driver training course, he'd logged many hours behind the wheel.

"The driving instructor was a regular teacher, P.E. or something," Wardlaw told us. "He taught driver training in the summer."

Wardlaw recalls that the training car was an "'83 Ford LTD with a four-cylinder engine." He remembers that, early in the training, the instructor set up a driving course in a vacant lot to test the driving abilities of his new students. Wardlaw was immediately declared "too confident" in his driving approach and ordered out of the car.

Wardlaw's overall impression of his high school driver education class was that the instructor had little knowledge of his subject and that the course taught him almost nothing he didn't already know. For instance, he recalls that the class offered no accident avoidance training nor skidding recovery exercises, skills which might have aided him in averting his first accident (see below).

"It was a joke," Wardlaw reflects. "It was too simple to pass. My driver education was nothing compared to what I needed."

Maybe so. Less than six months later, Wardlaw became a statistic: yet another 16-year-old driver involved in a motor vehicle accident his first year behind the wheel. We relate his story at some length here because it contains many of the earmarks of the new driver accident experience — recklessness, overconfidence, additional passengers in the vehicle, lack of safety precautions. "I started driving in the fall that year after taking driver's ed in the summer," Wardlaw remembers. "I had little winter driving experience...it had been snowing all day...5 to 6 inches of snow on the ground...with the driver (myself) and two passengers, all sitting in the front seat, no seatbelts...."

Note that these are many of the classic ingredients that go into a teen driving accident. Add to this one final detail: One of the passengers was a girl Wardlaw was trying to impress.

"I was doing 20 to 25 miles per hour...showing off, making the car fishtail. It got away from me and I couldn't correct the slide. The left-front corner of the car, a 1980 Buick Regal, tagged a telephone pole and the vehicle spun 180 degrees." No other vehicle was involved in the accident, another common trait of teen driver accidents.

"It was like a slow-mo video," Wardlaw recalls. "The girl hit the rearview mirror and had a cut on her forehead." So, in a way, Chris did make an "impression" on her.

"Had I gotten more driver training in snow," Wardlaw speculates, "I probably could've pulled out of it."

Wardlaw concluded by saying, "Young people believe they're invulnerable and that they'll live forever. I think it should be a lot more difficult to get a license — and to keep it."

On a lighter note, we also spoke to Scott Jacobs, our photo editor, a native of northern California, who remembered a high school driver training program that "was pretty bleak in terms of equipment and instruction."

Jacobs recalls that their instructor was a former Marine staff sergeant. "He was still sporting the buzz cut and the black frame military style glasses."

The second day out, a German exchange student named Elmo was behind the wheel. "He was told to pull to the curb and parallel park. He proceeded to pull very close to the curb, not realizing that an old shrub was there (being winter, there were no leaves). The branches scraped across the side of the car in a loud "screeeee!" You could see the sergeant's veins popping out of his neck."

After this happened, the sergeant jumped out of the car and slammed his fist down on the hood. "Then he flung himself against the passenger side window and began to scream, point, slap the window, cuss, swear that Elmo was going to flunk, on and on, till he ran out of steam." Afterward, he got back in the car and, without a word, drove the students back to the school....

These are just two examples of our own staffers' experiences in driver education. Again, while they in no way reflect the average driver's training course, they perhaps give us a glimpse at a system that needs fixing. All laughter aside, teen traffic fatalities remain unacceptably high. How might a different teaching method influence their behind-the-wheel performance?

One such departure, a Los Angeles-based driving school called Advanced Driving Dynamics (ADD), takes a radically different approach to driver training. Embracing the philosophy that "more is better," ADD intentionally puts new drivers in out-of-control situations then teaches them to correct the situation using time-tested racing techniques.

ADD rents vacant parking lots, sprays water down, and teaches new drivers how a car "feels" when it's out of control. The instructors then show students how to recover the vehicle and bring it back into balance.

ADD owner and president Jim Snelling claims inadequate driver training lies at the root of the high accident rates that plague young drivers. "There's no reason a 16 year old can't be as good a driver as an 18 year old," he asserts. "Age doesn't matter, but getting the proper training does."

Snelling, who has been running his school for over six years and has over 4000 graduates, tracks his students' driving records after taking the course. According to Snelling, "We have 84 percent fewer citations and 88 percent fewer accidents."

Still, Advanced Driving Dynamics would appear to be fighting an uphill battle. According to Snelling, California state officials say his sample is "too small," and the insurance industry vigorously opposes any training that would expose young drivers to car-control techniques.

Bill O'Neill, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), has gone on record as saying, "There is no evidence that education makes any difference."

Snelling counters by saying, "They just think it's foolish. They think it's a tool to make them reckless. But I'd rather teach them how to avoid accidents than do nothing."

Snelling claims that the current state of driver education in America goes back to a single study conducted in 1974 in Dekalb County, Ga. That study, which concluded that driver education does little to increase safety or reduce accidents, has been responsible, according to Snelling and others, for the virtual disappearance of public funding for driver education in the United States. Laughing, he says, "Think of it. Everything we do in driver training in this country is based upon a study done over 20 years ago in rural Georgia. And we have the worst driver training in the world."

Contact Advanced Driving Dynamics at the following address.

Advanced Driving Dynamics
314 South Smokeridge Terrace
Anaheim Hills, CA 92807
(714) 974-4233

While Snelling's approach remains controversial, other credible sources would seem to bolster his assertions that the American system is broken and needs fixing. AAA, for one, reported that instructors in most states don't receive adequate training. Charles Butler, director of Safety Services, stated in an AAA press release, "It takes more training to be certified to cut hair or clean teeth than it does to teach new drivers."

AAA has come out with a brochure to help parents choose a qualified driving school. The brochure, called, "Choosing a Driving School...A Guide for Beginning Drivers," can be ordered for free by contacting your local AAA club or visiting www.aaa.com.

We've placed links below to all of the installments in this series.

Teen Driver Safety Series, Part One: Young Drivers at Risk
Teen Driver Safety Series, Part Two: Risk Factors for New Drivers
Teen Driver Safety Series, Part Three: The (Mis) Education of American Drivers
Teen Driver Safety Series, Part Four: A Car for Your Teen
Teen Driver Safety Series, Part Five: 10 Tips for Keeping Your Teen Driver Safe