Читать книгу Safe Young Drivers: A Guide for Parents and Teens - Phil Berardelli - Страница 8

I’ll say it at the outset. My personal opinion is that few if any teenagers are ready to drive with no restrictions at age 16—let alone 15 or 14. It is a major risk to allow them onto today’s highways.

Furthermore, the statistics are undeniable. Sixteen is the most dangerous age for drivers, followed closely by 17 and 18. Yet year after year, many parents routinely allow their kids to obtain learners’ permits even before they reach 16. They’ll take their teens for their licenses on their birthdays, as if the age automatically qualified them to drive. Granted, many states allow kids to obtain licenses on their 16th birthdays, but that doesn’t make it right.

It is a mistake to assume that state governments know what’s best for your child. On today’s dangerous highways, inexperience and poor judgment frequently make a lethal combination. Driving is a critical area where your parental maturity and concern should prevail. Not state regulations, no matter how well-intentioned. Not peer pressure.

There seems to be a widespread attitude of resignation among parents: Let the kids have their licenses, ready or not, and hope for the best. In most cases, nothing dramatic or tragic happens. Maybe there’s a fender-bender or two, but no worse. Good fortune wins over good sense.

I am convinced this is not a sound approach. Too many children are harmed because they simply do not understand how much power they are attempting to control when they get behind the wheel. Or, they have not been trained properly, so they put themselves into situations they cannot overcome when things go wrong. Or, as so many kids do, they think they cannot be harmed, so despite the skills they have learned they do harm themselves—and often their passengers.

That’s the key thing to remember here: Most of the time, nothing happens, but when something does, either it’s too late to help or the young driver’s skills are insufficient. Usually, it’s both. Yet good driving habits are surprisingly easy to learn; they simply must be practiced, repeatedly. They also must be accompanied by good judgment, which takes time to develop.

Most important, driving skills cannot be used properly unless they are reflexive. You can’t think about evasive actions while you’re executing them. It takes too long. When needed, skills must be automatic, and they can become automatic only by practicing them, over and over, for months and months and months.

There is no other way.

Think of playing a musical instrument. You can’t sit down at the piano and perform like an expert right away. It takes lots and lots of time to read the music, to learn technique, to strengthen the muscles guiding the hands and the fingers, to develop senses of rhythm and emphasis. When you learn to play a melody, you no longer think about the individual notes. Instead, your fingers feel the sequence. They move faster than you can think. The skill displayed by playing well is performed by a different part of the brain than conscious thinking.

Driving works the same way. If you had to think about every single thing you were doing, you’d be tense constantly and you’d become fatigued quickly. For example, whenever you drive through thick fog or rain or snow, particularly at night, you tend to search every foot of the road almost frantically for a sudden obstruction or change. Time seems to slow down. It takes forever to go anywhere. Your muscles tense. Your heart rate elevates. You have a general feeling of unease. After a brief time, you become very tired.

On the other hand, in clear weather with good visibility on a familiar roadway, you are at ease. You don’t exert conscious effort. Just like playing a well-practiced tune on the piano, you drive automatically. It’s second nature.

With this in mind, I argue that it’s impossible for someone who has just turned 16 to possess good driving skills. There has not been enough time for those skills to appear, and if a teenager doesn’t have good skills, what is he or she doing on the road? This is why I think all parents must decide, not whether their teen is ready to drive at 16, but whether he or she is ready to learn to drive.

In my own case, I faced a different situation with each of my daughters. One was ready at 16—to learn. She was a bright kid, level-headed, mature for her age. She possessed the mental discipline needed to learn the rules of the road quickly. She could focus her attention and listen carefully. She had excellent hand-eye coordination. She had been a ballet dancer. She was a fair athlete.

Shortly after her 16th birthday we visited the DMV and acquired her learner’s permit. About six months later, after almost daily instruction and practice, she obtained her license.

My other daughter presented me with a difficult dilemma. She, too, was very bright, as well as compassionate, caring and much fun to be with, but there were certain things, during that stage of her development, that worried me: She was late frequently. She had trouble staying organized both in her schoolwork and in her personal life. She also was somewhat forgetful, and she was a little uncoordinated when she played sports.

None of these things was serious, and all are common traits in a developing teen, but driving demands concentration and control. If my daughter’s physiological development didn’t yet meet the requirements of driving, in my judgment, then as a responsible parent I would have to make her wait. It wasn’t easy, because I knew it would hurt her feelings. Nevertheless, I did it. She didn’t obtain her license until after her 18th birthday.

As a consolation for the wait, I bought her a car, a 1975 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, with a massive steel frame and 16-inch wheels—a tank. She learned to drive in this behemoth and kept it for a year after she obtained her license. During that time, she had three collisions, all minor but nevertheless her fault. She has had none in the years since, but had she been driving at a younger age, she might have had more.

The two-year delay became a trying time for both of us, but I remain convinced I made the right decision. I am grateful that her early mishaps were not more serious. I feel deeply for parents who have had to deal with the worst—and I have met several.

This is not to say everyone should be made to wait. It’s just that I want to encourage all parents with driving-age teens to approach this subject with care and contemplation. There may be no simple criteria for making this decision, but if you determine that your child is not ready, if he or she has not yet exhibited the necessary level of attention, maturity or self-discipline, then there is a simple answer. It is a two-word answer, very difficult to utter, but perhaps the most important, loving, caring words you can say: “Not yet.”