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SAFE YOUNG DRIVERS
A Guide for Parents and Teens
Phil Berardelli
Mountain Lake Press
Mountain Lake Park, Maryland
Safe Young Drivers: A Guide for Parents and Teens
Copyright © 2011 Phil Berardelli
All Rights Reserved
Published in eBook format by Mountain Lake Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9846512-2-1
Cover design by Michael Hentges
Original design by Tom Huestis
Drawings by F.A. Berardelli (1921-2000)
Author photograph by Melissa Berardelli Vallor
For Zach and Ryan and Reece—and Tommy
FOREWORD
Being the author of Safe Young Drivers remains a rewarding and surprisingly challenging experience for me, now 15 years after I first completed the manuscript. Originally I had intended the book to be a relatively straightforward self-help tool for parents to give their teens a good start behind the wheel. Now it has evolved into a lifelong personal campaign to combat highway fatalities, which remain alarmingly high.
Consider just this one fact: During the five years beginning in March 2003, when the U.S. military invaded Iraq, until March 2008 as I write this new foreword, almost precisely 4,000 soldiers were killed in combat and related actions. But over that same time period, approximately 32,500 teenagers—more than eight times as many—died on our highways. A death on the road is just as sudden and just as violent as anything experienced in warfare, so we are talking about the violent death of children and young adults.
There are many reasons for this continuing tragedy, but one primary fault lies in the fact that our roads remain dangerous for everyone, and despite this environment many parents give in much too easily to pressure from their teens to obtain a driver’s license on or near their 16th birthday. Reluctantly or eagerly, many parents hand over the keys to their inadequately trained kids. They also give in to pressure to buy vehicles for teens right away—often, flashy and too-powerful vehicles.
Some parents even support beginning the teaching process as early as age 15. They rationalize that they’re giving their kids extra time to learn, and therefore it will make them better young drivers, even though no evidence supports this view.
To the contrary, after 12 years, the facts remain undeniable: Vehicle crashes still claim more teen lives than any other cause, and for the youngest drivers—the ones for whom I wrote this book—the toll remains the highest. Each day you spend using this book, 18 more teens, on average, will die on our highways. About 1,500 will be injured, some disabled for life.
Even worse, teens riding with teens constitute a recipe for disaster. A study by Johns Hopkins University revealed that a 16-year-old driver carrying one passenger is 39 percent more likely to die in a crash than when driving alone. That figure jumps to 86 percent with two passengers and 182 percent with three or more. Seventeen year olds fare nearly as badly.
Such information confirms that Safe Young Drivers is needed now just as much it was the day it was published. It is more than useful information—it is potentially life-saving information.
Since the original publication of the book, I have changed some of the instructional guidelines to reflect improved technology or the results of new research. For example, I now recommend a way of steering favored by driving-safety experts to reduce the chance of injury if the vehicle’s air bag deploys. Based on other discussions, I have changed my advice about where to position the rearview mirrors. I also have adjusted some of the recommended speeds for certain lessons.
I hope you will find this book useful, and I hope you will visit our Web site, www.safeyoungdrivers.com, and I welcome you to email your questions and comments to me at [email protected].
Please tell others about Safe Young Drivers. Let’s all keep working to make our highways safer and keep our teens safer on the road.
Drive safely. Be a Lightfoot!
How to Use This Book
In this age of the Internet, cell phones and Blackberrys, books seem to occupy a less-important role in our daily lives. That’s sad, though it’s a reality of modern society and a matter of personal preference. But sometimes books can be very useful, and driving instruction is one such time.
The best place to learn how to drive is on the road, not in front of a video screen or computer monitor. Good skills and road sense develop only through repeated and lengthy exposure to real situations and sensations. And information about driving is most valuable when it can accompany you.
You the parent and you the teen should read this book before getting started, and you should keep it—this being an electronic edition, via your reading device—in the vehicle during the lessons.
Certain sections of the book are intended for parents, while other sections are for teens. There’s also a crossover. Teens can’t use the book while driving, so they should study the relevant sections ahead of time, and parents should help teens through those sections during the lessons.
I have broken down the lessons as much as possible into simple steps, but there is a lot to remember. You both should refer to the book often. There’s an effective way to do this. It’s called Brief/Perform/Debrief. Here’s how it works:
—Before beginning a driving session, both of you should read the relevant text.
—During the lesson, the parent or instructor should refer to the text frequently to make sure the teen covers all of the material and performs the exercises correctly and well.
—After the lesson, both parties should spend a few minutes talking over how the session went. Did the teen understand everything? What went well? Were there difficulties?
Though the paperback edition of Safe Young Drivers contains a Lesson Log, meant to help you record the individual sessions and the teen’s performance, you can compensate by bringing a small notebook with you, or by creating a file for your notes on your handheld device. Use it to keep track of the material covered, the progress made and the problems that appeared.
Last, when all of the lessons have been completed, keep the book handy for
