Kenosha News

Show & tell teens about safe driving

BY DIANE GILESdgiles@kenoshanews.com

For parents, there may be no more stressful time than the early years of a child’s mobility.

We’re not talking about those first cute baby steps but rather those first few hundred miles behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle.

Anne Hambrock knows that anxiety all too well. Her two sons, Alex, 19, and Kris, 16, are learning to drive. She said she finds comfort in the improvements made in seat belt and airbag design.

“I will probably be a nervous wreck whenever they’re out there driving,” said Hambrock, of Kenosha.

She has good reason to worry. On average in 2008, a Wisconsin teen driver was involved in a fatal crash every 3.5 days, in an injury crash every 64 minutes, and in a property damage crash every 32 minutes.

What Hambrock and other parents with teens need to do, say the experts, is to talk about safe driving long before their kids are ready to get behind the wheel and keep talking about it as the years go by.

“Teens who have had a conversation with their parents about safe driving and understanding the expectations are about half as likely to be involved in a crash,” said Deena Liska, motor vehicle safety educator with Children’s Health Education Center, which together with Kohl’s department stores has launched the Kohl’s Building Healthy Habits program. A summer focus of the program is teen driving, with an emphasis on educating parents and teens on the importance of staying safe behind the wheel.

Kids are watching

According to the program’s website, driving accidents are the No. 1 cause of death among young adults ages 16 to 21, with 79 percent of those accidents being caused by distractions such as talking or texting on the phone or using an MP3 player. Earlier this year, Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law a bill that prohibits sending text messages while driving in Wisconsin.

If parents want their children to avoid poor driving behaviors, they should not engage in them themselves, Liska said. Likewise, they should set a good example by modeling good driving habits for their children to follow.

“If you are on the phone talking, you’re not paying attention to the driving,” Liska said.

Wearing seat belts also is a must.

“You can’t tell the kids to put on their seat belts and then only do it half the time with your own seat belt,” said Erin Donaldson, Safe Kids coordinator for Kenosha and Racine counties. “Your kids are watching you.”

Today’s distractions different

Another goal for parents in coaching their children through their early driving experiences is to help them see hazards developing on the road. Additionally, if you see your teen make a driving error, have them safely pull over and talk about it.

“A lot of parents try to correct their teens while their teens are driving,” Liska said. “That’s when the tension escalates and the teen becomes self-conscious.”

With so many more distractions available to teen drivers, parents need to remain vigilant when they sit in the passenger seat and their teen slides behind the wheel.

“I do see that today’s young drivers have more competition for their focus,” said Hambrock, who remembers driving distractions when she was younger that were not nearly as varied as today’s. “We had distractions. We ate in the car and had friends in the car. Those are bad distractions while you’re trying to handle a vehicle. But it’s not the same as having that pull of somebody just calling you and you’re dying to know what they had to say.”

For more information on safe teen driving, go to www.bluekids.org/cruisecontrol or www.kohlsbuildinghealthyhabits.com.

Talk to your teen driver about ...

-- Making sure everyone in the car is buckled up

-- Prohibiting cell phone use, both talking and texting

-- Limiting other distractions in the car, such as music

-- Limiting the number of passengers in the car

-- Talking about speeding, using alcohol and other risk-taking behaviors

Source: Children’s Health Education Center’s bluekids.org website

Driving facts

-- More than 19 percent of all crashes in Wisconsin in 2008 involved drivers between ages 16 and 19.

-- Weekends are more deadly for teens than weekdays. Fifty-seven percent of 16- to 19-year-olds who died in traffic crashes in 2007 died in crashes occurring on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

-- Teen drivers tend to crash in the late afternoon. In both the summer and during the school year, the peak hour for teen driver crashes is 3 to 4 p.m. More crashes involving 16- to 19-year-old drivers occurred on Friday than on any other day of the week.

-- June, July and August mark the highest rates for fatal car crashes in Wisconsin.

Source: Wisconsin Department of Transportation