Fatal Mistakes: What Driver’s Ed Isn’t Teaching Teen Drivers (or Adults!)

Summary
In this episode, The Car Chick® discusses the tragic incident involving a teen driver that resulted in multiple fatalities, highlighting the dangers of teen driving and the inadequacies of the current driver's education system. She emphasizes the need for better training and experience for young drivers, as well as the importance of modeling safe driving behavior as parents. The conversation also explores statistics related to teen driving accidents and offers solutions for improving road safety for teenagers.

Takeaways

• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers.
• Inexperienced drivers are often handed the keys without proper training.
• Driver's education programs focus on passing tests rather than real-world skills.
• Teens are three times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than older drivers.
• Advanced driving courses can significantly improve teen driving skills.
• Anticipatory driving and car control are crucial skills for safety.
• The frontal lobe, responsible for judgment, isn't fully developed in teens.
• Parents must model safe driving behaviors for their children.
• We need to prioritize safety and better training for all drivers.

Resources
TeenDrivingSolutions.org
PutOnTheBrakes.org

You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here.

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Copyright ©2024 Women’s Automotive Solutions Inc., dba The Car Chick. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Heartbreaking Incident
• 2:43 Teen Driving Statistics and Safety Concerns
• 5:46 The Flaws in Driver's Education
• 11:54 The Importance of Experience and Training
• 17:35 Modeling Safe Driving Behavior
• 23:21 Solutions for Safer Teen Driving

Transcript

LeeAnn Shattuck (00:00)
Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Straight Shift, the podcast that slices through the spin and calls out all of the crap to help you be a smarter car buyer, owner, and hopefully driver. Today's episode is going to be a tough one. It's emotional. It's raw. And yes, I'm going to rant because something happened in Charlotte last week that has left a hole in the hearts of a lot of families and has certainly left me heartbroken.

And it's also reminded me just how dangerous our roads can be, especially for our youngest drivers. On Saturday, July 26, just after 11 a.m., a 16-year-old boy was driving a Honda CRV on I-485, which is our big outer loop freeway. For reasons that we will probably never fully understand, the investigation's ongoing, but he merged into the lane

with a Chrysler minivan - just drove right into it. The minivan was carrying a young family of five who were on their way to the Carowinds theme park. And it caused both vehicles to veer off the road and slam into a parked tractor trailer that was broken down on the shoulder of the road. And both vehicles went underneath the tractor trailer. The pictures were absolutely horrific. And if they had not

reported that it was a Honda CRV, not even I could tell what it was. I mean, you couldn't even tell really that it had even been a car. I have seen scrap metal that was more recognizable. I only recognize the Chrysler Town and Country minivan because the grill was still intact. But unfortunately, the teenager in the CRV died,

as did five of the six people in the minivan. The lone survivor was a 16-year-old girl who was sitting in the third row of the minivan. She suffered a pelvic fracture but is recovering from her injuries. I mean, that's six lives gone in a matter of seconds on a Saturday morning, nice and sunny, no alcohol, no speeding tickets, just a regular teen driver doing what

tens of thousands of kids do every day just trying to navigate the real roads with not a lot of experience. So today we're going to talk about teen driving and adult driving and how we are failing both groups when it comes to safety on the road. I'm going to give you a little disclaimer before we get rolling. This episode is going to get very real. I'm talking about a crash that killed six people, including three young children.

And so I'm not going to sugarcoat anything and there will be some cussing - like more than there normally is in this podcast because I'm pissed. I'm really pissed. I'm really upset that this has happened and that these families lives have been so devastated. So,

if cussing bothers you or perhaps you have young ears nearby, you might want to save this one for later or maybe just pop in your earbuds. So let's get into it.

Let's start with some hard truth. Motor vehicle crashes are still the leading cause of death for teenagers in the United States. The leading cause of death for teens. In 2023, more than 3,000 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19 died in car crashes. And almost a quarter of a million were injured. That averages out to eight teenage deaths

per day. Not an exaggeration, that's just math. That is eight families shattered every single day. Teen drivers 16 to 19 are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than drivers age 20 and older. That stat alone should make every parent pause. And it's not just about dying behind the wheel. These kids are also putting

others at risk. Teens make up just 5 % of licensed drivers, but they account for 12 % of police reported crashes and more than 8 % of drivers involved in fatal collisions. They are just overrepresented in all of the most tragic statistics when it comes to traffic fatalities. And it's not because these are bad kids, these are not bad kids. They are inexperienced drivers that are just being handed the keys and thrown into traffic

without all the tools that they need to succeed or even to survive. So let's take a look at this in a little bit more detail. Teenagers aren't idiots. Well, okay, teenagers are idiots, but that is not what is the problem here. At least I was an idiot when I was a teenager. It's just that they are new, they're inexperienced. They don't understand what a car is going to do, how it's going to behave, react, in a split second emergency,

usually until it's too late. And teens aren't the only ones. It depends on your level of driving experience and the conditions and any crazy stuff that you might have gone through.

Most of them have never felt what it is like to hydroplane in the rain, especially when you have worn out tires. They've never experienced what it feels like to have the back end of the car to come around because it was too slippery or they went into a curve too fast to maintain traction. They've just lost grip on a cold, icy morning. They've never gotten to practice avoiding a deer at 65 miles an hour or how to recover from a slide on wet pavement.

Instead, we give them like this glorified roadside scavenger hunt, a few hours of driving around a parking lot and say, hey, yeah, here's your license. Good luck. Most of the Drivers Ed programs in the US are focused on helping kids pass the test, not necessarily teaching them how to stay alive. And that's why the crash numbers remain high year after year.

I was really lucky growing up. I didn't just learn to drive. I was taught how to drive. And starting when I was about seven years old. I was not taught by the DMV. I was not taught by the high school football coach who taught driver's ed in my high school. In fact, my father specifically said you were not learning to drive at school, not happening.

My dad taught me. After my figure skating practices, because I was a figure skater growing up. Dad dad would pick me up sometimes on Sunday nights after practice. And in the winter, we would go to the big snow covered parking lot behind the ice rink. It was at the big Wisconsin State Fairgrounds. So there were these huge open parking lots that would get covered in snow. And he taught me how to do donuts, like on purpose every night after practice. Because he said,

it's gonna happen. We live in Wisconsin. You are going to end up slipping and sliding all over the place. You might as well learn how to do it intentionally so that you learn that car control. He wasn't trying to scare me and we didn't really tell my mother about this because it definitely would have scared her. But he was teaching me car control. And I already had an idea because I was a skater. I'm used to maneuvering on ice, but it's a lot easier actually on ice skates than it is on tires in a car.

But it taught me what it felt like to slide, to spin and how to recover. You can reach the limits of a car's capabilities and friction at extremely low speeds when you're on snow and ice. So it's kind of like training these conditions in slow motion so that you have time to think and make decisions about what to do and experiment. Is this going to make things worse or is it going to make things better? And that's how we learned - trial and error,

along with a lot of physics lessons. My dad also taught me what he called anticipatory driving. How not to just look at the car in front of me and then, my gosh, if something happens, react, but to look ahead, look around, be hyper aware of everything going on around me so that I could anticipate what would happen. If that light up there, it's pretty far away, it might be green now, but it's been green a while.

Probably not going to be green by the time we get there. Oh look, it's starting to turn yellow. Let's just back off the gas now. There's no point in continuing to accelerate and then at the last minute slam on the brakes - waste gas, waste brakes, and it's not safe. So anticipate your driving, and you can only do that by looking ahead and paying attention and being focused on the driving, not on the radio, not on your conversation with your passengers,

and sure as heck not on your phone. I'm so grateful that I grew up learning to drive long before there were cell phones. And he also taught me to always have an exit plan. And this is something that was reinforced when I started becoming a race car driver. Always look for your out. Where can you put the car if the shit hits the fan in front of you? Which at some point it will happen. Where can I put my car to avoid hitting the person in front of me,

getting hit by the guy behind me, getting hit by the people beside me, just where can I go? Is there a open space of safety, of a little bubble I can move my car into to avoid any type of impact? We call that your exits, your outs. And just expect people on the road around you to be doing something stupid. Just expect stupidity as the default because one, it's probably true and you are better safe and prepared

than sorry. That kind of coaching saved my ass more times than I can count, both on the road and on the track. And so when I started getting into racing, because obviously learning drive like this is also a whole lot of fun and I've always had a passion for it, but it also made me more prepared. I came into the race car training with more base fundamentals than some other drivers.

It's a lot of fun, but it also gives you a respect for the vehicle, your equipment, a respect for physics and the road conditions. So once I got into wheel-to-wheel racing, now you've got to have this car control with a hundred other cars on the track. And especially when I was racing Lemons, a hundred other cars on the track all held together by duct tape and a prayer going flat out on a road course for 24 hours. What could possibly go wrong there?

But that's where I truly learned to become a very safe driver, in terms of handling that car control. The mentality and the mindset of driving is another thing that I don't think they do a good job of teaching in driver's ed for the most part. And that's learning how to react without overreacting, without panicking. When you feel that Oh Shit moment, because that's gonna happen. That's how we're wired, it's the adrenaline. But how do you then just stay calm,

stay focused and make a rational, logical decision based on the data available, the physics involved? Because what our gut reaction is to do is usually the wrong thing to do physics wise. So you have to drive like you're playing chess and always thinking three moves ahead and be able to anticipate what you would do in any given situation. Let me give you an example, because I have had

some seriously crazy shit happen on the racetrack. I know how it feels to hydroplane at 80 miles an hour. Yeah, that's fun. I know it feels like to be rear-ended at speed because the guy behind you did not anticipate the braking and you had better braking than he did. Or to get sideswiped at speed because, you know, rubbin's racing, it happens. I even know what it feels like to have a wheel come off the car in the middle of a 70 mile an hour turn.

Not something I really want to repeat, but I now know what it feels like. And fortunately, nothing really bad happened in any of those situations except not winning the race. But nobody got hurt. Car got some new dents, certainly, but no humans were harmed. Why? Shear dumb luck, for one thing, but also because of the training I had. I knew how to control the car under those circumstances. As much as you control a car that suddenly only has three wheels.

But because of that training, just the seat time, the experience that I had, I didn't panic. I got pissed and I cussed a lot when the wheel came off, but that was because I knew that we were gonna lose the race. But all of those skills transfer to real life. And that's one of the reasons that I'm able to avoid most bad situations on the road. The only car accident I have ever been in in the last, gosh, probably,

25 or so years was when I was sitting in a traffic light and someone rear ended me because she was looking at her phone and not at the traffic light and the eight cars parked behind the traffic light and she didn't stop in time and slammed into me. There was nothing that could be done. But, I still looked in my rear view mirror and I saw what was going to happen. I'm like, she is not going to stop. And so I was able to press my head firmly back against the headrest, and intentionally relax my body and

prepare for that impact. And so I was really not injured. Saw my chiropractor a few times and honestly, I was fine. though I couldn't avoid the situation I knew what to do to minimize the damage to my body, even though I couldn't minimize it for the car. So again, you these are

things that I was trained to do because of the type of driving that I have grown up doing that we just don't get in driver's ed today. Driving isn't just about operating the vehicle. It's about reading your environment and managing risk constantly. This is why you have to pay attention. And this is why I'm also passionate about being a high-performance driving instructor because I like to teach these skills to newer drivers.

I love teaching the newbies at the track. I call them track virgins. They're getting out onto a road course for the first time. They're excited. They're terrified, whether they'll admit it or not. And it's a lot of fun that these same foundational skills that we teach the drivers at the track are the same skills that I taught my nephew when he was learning to drive, you know, the same skills my father taught me when I was learning to drive. These are street appropriate skills because the physics are the same.

It's just, they happen a lot faster at speed. So one of the very critical things that I see people screw up is they will hit the brakes while they're in the middle of a turn. So for example, I was with a friend of mine several years ago and we were just driving down some normal, slightly curvy roads and she was carrying too much speed into a curve.

She didn't realize it until she got into the curve and realized she was losing traction. And she did a very natural human thing. She hit the brakes. It's like, I'm going too fast. I'm going to hit the brakes. But it was too late. The car was already turning. The wheels were turned to the left. The car's weight was already transferred over to the right tires. We call that loading. The right tires were loaded. The left tires were unloaded because when the weight transfers, that's what happens. Then when you hit the brakes,

all the weight of the car goes to the front. So now all the weight was already to the right side on the two right tires. Now you hit the brakes. Now all of the weight transfers to that one front tire. How long do you think that tire is going to be able to hold traction? Hmm, not very long. And we ended up spinning out quite spectacularly and ended up on the other side of the road in a ditch facing backwards. Thankfully there was no traffic.

And we didn't hit anybody. We didn't even get stuck in a big ditch. We were okay. We needed new underwear, but we were okay. But she did the instinctual thing, which was the exact wrong thing to do. And unless you are trained for those scenarios and you practice overriding your instincts, that panic to have your brain say, okay, the right thing to do in this situation is, and then do the right thing.

not the shit thing. And we just don't learn that in basic driver's ed. Well, that kind of car control isn't just for wannabe racers. This is what keeps you alive in a panic situation on the road. And so many adult experienced drivers don't know how to do this. So how can we expect our teenagers to do this if they have never had that training? I was really lucky that I got trained

by my dad who was a good driver, not just because he grew up driving the back roads in the mountains of East Tennessee, but because he had been trained at the racing school at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, where they, in addition to training F1 drivers, they also train FBI agents, secret service, to do that kind of really crazy, protect the president type of defensive driving. My dad got to go through that course. It was really cool.

He was able to transfer those skills to me when he taught me. I was really, really, really lucky. Most kids don't have that. And so, you know, we do our best. We put our kids in the driver's ed program, but I'm just not going to sugarcoat this. Drivers ed in this country absolutely sucks. It hasn't evolved sufficiently. It doesn't cover car dynamics. It doesn't necessarily teach crash avoidance. It focuses on

check boxes and the rules of the road, which we need to know, but it's based on passing a test, not actually staying alive every time you get behind the wheel. So what can we do about that? Yeah, your kid needs to learn the rules of the road. We could all probably use a refresher on that. Hey, maybe they're actually taught to learn to use their turn signal, which the rest of us aren't as good at doing.

Can they avoid a rollover, especially if they're driving an SUV? How do they know how that car can handle? Can they recover from a skid if they do start to slide? Do they know how to adjust their speed, how to assess what speed? Am I going too fast for this upcoming curve? Maybe I should back off now. Especially here in the where...

we have the luxury of driving on mostly dry roads most of the time. We see snow once every three years and everybody stays home and there's no milk and bread and it's fine. But we don't get that practice of driving in it every day. And honestly, the fact that we're not doing better to train our teenagers and even have more advanced drivers training for adults is borderline criminal.

56 % of teens that were killed in crashes weren't even wearing their seat belts. And 44 % of those crash deaths happen at night. So I applaud states that have probationary licenses. I would have hated this when I was a teenager, but now that I'm an adult, I understand. It's so much harder to drive at night. It's so much more dangerous, especially for inexperienced drivers.

You know, even I don't even like driving at night as much anymore. I can't race overnight anymore because I don't have the vision. I'm getting old. My vision's not that great. I have a little night blindness. So I know this and I am extra careful when I drive at night or I avoid driving after dark just because I prioritize safety. It's very, very frustrating. OK, so I've ranted quite a bit. I admit that. But how do we fix this? What can we do?

Don't just rely on driver's ed or parent ed to teach your kid to drive. Different schools probably have different driver's ed programs. I have yet to see one that's really any good at all, that teaches the basics, beyond the basics of just passing the test. But there are some more advanced schools and yes, they are private. Yes, they cost money and not everyone can afford them. But you know what? If...

You know, want something for your kid's 16th birthday. Have everybody chip in and get them one of these driving courses. That's what we did for my nephew when he was a teenager. The family, we all chipped in to send him to the Teen Driving Solutions School. I'm going to talk about this school specifically. It's here in the southeast and it's one of the best schools in the entire country. They are not paying me to say this. They don't even know I'm doing this, but...

I have been through their instructor training and it was founded by some friends of mine who are professional race car drivers. And one of them lost his teenager in an accident. That's how a lot of these programs get started. And so this is an incredible program that isn't just running your kid through a parking lot with an instructor. This puts the kids behind the wheel with a trained instructor on a closed race course,

and they're behind the wheel all weekend. It's not a little four hour course. Those are better than nothing. Believe me, if that's what you can afford to do or that's what's available in your area, it is better than nothing. They will definitely learn something. But this course, they're behind the wheel a good eight to 10 hours total over the weekend. It's exhausting. And they put the kids through hell. They get them on a wet skid pad. You they learn what it feels like to be on snow and ice because when you have no traction at all.

They teach them how to go through slaloms. We'll have them driving through a slalom course and then just kind of randomly toss a water bottle into their lap. So they panic, you know, to simulate what if something falls off a truck that's driving in front of you. They're supposed to have those Oh Shit moments in a controlled environment with an instructor who can then teach them, okay, now you know how that feels. Take a deep breath, change your underwear if you need to. Now let's talk about what is the

logical decision that you should make if you feel this again, if it happens on the real roads. So having that experience, being able to simulate those emergency situations is what regular driver's ed just doesn't do. It doesn't have the capability for the most part because it's generally being taught on regular roads or in a parking lot. You really have to be able to get the car up to 35, 45, 55 miles an hour

and then have something crazy happen, but doing it where you have an instructor who can take control of the car, who can, you you've got a wide open space around you on the track. You know, if you do go off, you're going to be okay. So that is why I love Teen Driving Solutions School. I will put a link to their website, teendrivingsolutions.org in this description. There's always a wait list, so definitely plan ahead, but they teach panic breaking, evasive maneuvers, skid recovery,

and the situational awareness and the mindset, the mental focus and logical decision-making because teenagers, their brains are not fully formed. The frontal lobe, which is the judgment center of the brain, does not fully form until after our college years. Like that's probably a really bad idea and explains a lot of my college years, but we can't expect teens to have good judgment. They're biologically not capable of it yet.

But, the logic center of their brain is formed. So this course was developed not just by race car drivers, but by a psychiatrist. And so learning how to teach them in a way that their brains can actually do it is really rather brilliant. So if you're looking for a program for your teen, really look at what it teaches, how much seat time

are they gonna have? Are they only gonna be behind the wheel a total of maybe 15 or 20 minutes? Because there's four kids that have to rotate through the same car and maybe they're only gonna learn a couple skills. Might still be totally worth it because any additional skills are better than no skills. But you really wanna look for the most thorough program that is available in your area and that you can afford to go to. Now I'm gonna pick on you grownups for a second.

We love to shake our heads at teen drivers on the road, but let's not pretend that the adults out there are not acting like NASCAR rejects. They're tailgating, they're weaving in and out of traffic, they're road rage, and get your damn phone out of your hand. Seriously, people, we are all guilty of distracted driving and bad driving behaviors. I am equally guilty. I'm good about not being on my phone, but...

I am not patient, so I drive more aggressively than the average bear. So not always the best behavior, but we need to be safer drivers ourselves because our kids are in the backseat watching or they're in the passenger seat watching. They're listening. They are learning from us for better or for worse. So as parents or, you know, my case, an aunt, we have to model safe driving behaviors, better

driving behaviors. means, hey, learn to use your turn signals. I'll give you a hint, they come free with the car. Leave space for that car in front of you. Don't tailgate, especially in the rain. Did you know that when the roads are wet, especially if your tires aren't brand spanking new, the tread's just even a little bit worn, your stopping distance, multiply it by four over what it is in the dry. So really account for the conditions,

leave that space, be respectful. And, you know, really, we're all just trying to get to go to the same place. And this is what I'm bad at. I'm not patient. But I do have more patience with other drivers because I recognize these people don't have the skills that I have. And even though I have the skills and the car control to drive like a complete douchebag, it's going to scare them and might cause them to freak out and do something that's going to get them hurt or someone else hurt. So I have to take responsibility

for that as well. It's like, okay, let's not scare the other drivers. Let's be a little more patient. Don't drive like a douche bag. Because I do tend to do that. And I have to check myself on it on a regular basis. Our kids are sitting in the back seat and we think about them as teenagers, but they are learning these behaviors from us at a very young age. two-year-old, you got strapped into the car seat in the back. They are listening to everything you say. They are watching everything that

you do. So if you've got any small humans of any age in the backseat, start modeling good driving behavior now. I mean, how do you think I learned all the good cuss words? Yeah, from riding in the car with my dad.

Thank you for listening to my rant and hopefully the advice is helpful to make you a safer driver and to help you keep your kids safer. Just because they passed that test and they got that shiny new license does not necessarily mean they are ready to just go forth and drive on the four lane on each side highway in rush hour traffic or even on a Saturday morning. And we're not sure what caused this horrible crash in Charlotte and I am certainly not

pointing fingers at anyone, but clearly we had an inexperienced driver. We had a young family in a minivan that was excited about going to Carowinds. Maybe they were a little bit distracted. I mean, they had a one-year-old and I think a three-year-old in the back. Sadly, those kids are gone now. So, you know, we just, we have to be more careful. We as a society, as drivers have to do better. We have to do better by our kids. We have to do better by our neighbors.

around us. Be careful out there, folks. Look around, look ahead, anticipate your driving. Get all your braking done before the turn. Leave a three second following distance to give yourself time to react. Put the damn phone away. There is nothing on that phone that cannot wait until you get to where you're going. Drive for the conditions, not just the speed limits.

Expect that everyone around you is an idiot and is going to do something stupid. So anticipate that and model the driving behavior that you want your kid to actually learn because they are watching. Thanks for joining me on The Straight Shift folks. If this episode has resonated with you at all, please share it. Share it with a fellow parent, with your own teen, with that coworker who's still checking their Instagram while they're driving in traffic or putting on their makeup in the morning in rush hour.

Let's all please do better because the cost of getting it wrong is way too high. So until next time, folks, drive safe, drive smart, and drive like your life depends on it because it does. I'm out here.