Parents have car keys

I would like to offer a brief response to the letter, “Educate young drivers” (BDN, Feb. 3), by Tracey Field, of Brewer, saying it is ludicrous to give a teenager without winter driving experience a license. Having a license doesn’t give a teen the ability to take the family car out of the driveway. Having the keys does. It is parents who must decide whether their teen should be given the keys and allowed to drive in any situation.

As to her suggestion that driver education courses be seasonally split to require both summer and winter driving, I do not see this as very practical. The splitting of the course would be disruptive to learning. Furthermore, even if two weeks of winter driving were scheduled, there is no guarantee there would be a snowstorm in that time.

The state currently gives only a learner’s permit upon graduation from driver education. It is the responsibility again of the parents to provide experience to the young driver while still on his or her permit before allowing him or her to take a license exam.

If the state were to improve driver education, I would recommend its first step be to make a section on sharing the road with trucks mandatory. When my own two daughters took driver education from Kennebec Driving School, in Gardiner, they received more than an hour of such training from the experts on the subject, the Maine Professional Drivers Association. MPDA’s program is offered free of charge to driver education schools requesting it on a first come first serve basis.

Roger Sproul

Augusta