The case for teen driving contracts

Car accidents are the leading cause of death for American teens. Sixty-one percent of teen passengers die while riding with a teen driver. In response to those two statements, most US states and territories have adopted GDL laws. GDL is the acronym for Graduated Driver’s License. While GDL is no guarantee that your teen will avoid being cited or injured in a crash, there are ways that help assess the teen driver’s maturity and experience that can increase their safety.

GDL laws have around 5 components, but those components are based on a minimum requirement but make not providing adequate preparation for any teenage driver.

Teenage drivers are perfectly capable of operating the vehicle, but are severely handicapped by the slow development of maturation skills of the prefrontal cortex.

The GDL framework on which to build driver skills but have nothing to do with the emotional maturity of a young driver, such as judgment, rationale, and decision-making. These skills are necessary for driving and they all develop in the prefrontal cortex of the brain; the part of the brain that does not begin to develop in a human until the age of 12-13 and does not reach full maturity until around the age of 20.

Tools for measuring prefrontal cortex maturation are the missing component of GDL laws, but the most essential information that parents and teens should know and understand.

Why Parental Involvement Is Important

Parents Hold the Key to Teen Driver Safety! Research from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) shows that when parents do not limit when, where and how often an adolescent can drive, traffic violations and motor vehicle accidents for teens increase. teenagers. Research also shows that while parents are in a unique position to influence teens’ driving behaviors, many parents are less involved than they might be.

According to a recent NICHD study, researchers found that teaching parents how to set limits on their teens’ driving greatly reduces the chances of teens engaging in risky driving behaviors that could lead to crashes. Whenever youth learn a new skill, it is always advisable for parents / guardians to actively support and encourage the youth’s progress. Research concludes that the key to greater safety in families requires parental awareness and involvement. It is essential that parents have immediate response plan for a teenager’s first offense or accident.

Children observe parents from the day they are born. Much of their attitude – in life and behind the wheel – is established early in their lives by the behaviors of their parents. It is essential that parents model seatbelt use and safe, law-abiding, and polite driving.

Adolescence can be a confusing time when many issues, ideas, and opinions develop. Extreme emotions are as harmful as any chemical while driving. Working in disruptive situations of the day, frustrations or disappointments while driving is dangerous because it distracts attention from the task at hand.

We encourage parents to enroll their teens in a professional driving school or the school’s driver education course. Not to be tricked into believing the child is a skilled driver simply by attending the class. Continuous practice after taking the course is essential.

Connecting the Dots Between Brain Development and Driving for Teens

Studies from the American Medical Association (AMA) show that the prefrontal cortex of the brain begins to function in a human being around 12-13 years of age and reaches full maturity around 20 years of age. Parents sometimes ask teens, “Why would you do something like this?” and a teenager responds, “I don’t know!” Guess what? They don’t know it because the immature brain can send confusing messages at times.

The PBS series THE SECRET LIFE OF THE BRAIN describes the kinds of activities teens choose that determine how the prefrontal cortex develops. If a chemical is introduced during these formative years, it will inhibit the development of the prefrontal cortex. If teens choose healthy activities and develop new skills during this period, the brain develops ways to retain information and remembers how to learn.

Ways to measure developing maturity:

• Consistently wearing safety equipment correctly when going faster than running or walking (correctly positioned, secured and worn with or without parental supervision)
• Taking responsibility for schoolwork and housework without remembering
• Successful fulfillment of agreements
• Money management and organizational skills.
• Offer to help with housework and projects without request
• Greater cooperation

Caution: Work with youth with behavior problems in a safe and controlled environment, but postpone licensing until the problems are well managed.

In this article, let’s learn how to use the GDL Driving Record component effectively.

The importance of maintaining a Precise Driving record

Most GDL laws require documentation of driving practice hours. While this documentation is required, it is helpful to understand the importance of purpose.

First: Driving practice hours only apply to skill development. Once understood, teens are very good at driving a vehicle, but it has nothing to do with developing competent driving habits.

To build a ‘habit’, a sequence of actions must be correctly repeated a minimum of 21 times in a row.

Second: Taking into account the time of day, traffic and the weather conditions in which the driving practice occurs is essential to keep track of different driving circumstances.

For example, if the teen has never driven in heavy traffic in challenging weather, a teen DOES NOT KNOW how to drive in those conditions.

Tip: Whenever it appears that the weather may be less than desirable driving conditions, take some time to supervise your teen’s driving.

Periodically review the driving log to see when a weather-related driving lesson occurred. If the record shows that the lesson occurred in early supervision time, relying on the adolescent’s ability to remember the lesson would be a mistake, especially if he / she has had little or no recent driving experience under the circumstances.

Bail: Driving at night requires an additional skill set. 55% of teen crashes occur on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Developing a good teen driver during the day and putting off night driving ONLY for the first two years of having a license is a great option!

Can you guess how many skills a driver uses while behind the wheel? About 1,500! These skills include: observation, perception, interpretation, and anticipation, all occur in the prefrontal cortex! Adolescents are capable of operating a vehicle, but DISADVANTAGES simply because of the way the human brain develops.

GDL is effective only if parents understand, support and know how to implement it, and if young people have well-practiced driving skills, experience, maturity, and highly developed personal integrity.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recommends:

200 hours or 6,000 miles of practice driving prior to licensing a teen, plus an additional 500 miles of supervised driving after licensing that the teen must log before being granted primary driver privilege. It takes 5 to 7 years to master driving.

Understand the basics and then go beyond the GDL requirements-Keep in mind that the fact that something is legal does not make it SAFE.

Next: Are Tech Devices Valuable For Monitoring Teen Driving Behavior?