Painful statistics on teen drivers

An hour into Tuesday’s driver-instruction class at the Northeast Auto-Cycle School in Bangor, Randy Rudge dropped a bomb on his 25 or so teenage students.

In case they had not heard, he told them, the minimum driving age in Maine would be raised to 18 on June 1. Because of the timing of the new law, he said, just about all of the students would be affected.

The announcement, a purposeful ruse on the instructor’s part, caused a collective groan and uneasy shuffling of sneakered feet among the teens in the classroom. One of them asked why the students weren’t told of this before they signed up for the course. Another complained that the law would be terribly unfair to 16- and 17-year-olds who needed licenses so they could drive to their jobs.

Rudge listened patiently to the students’ protests, said he understood their disappointment completely, and then explained the intentions behind the law. A committee formed by the secretary of state, he said, felt that raising the age would help reduce the disproportional number of injuries and deaths among teens by giving them more time to mature before getting behind the wheel. On average, nearly one teenager a week dies in a car crash in Maine, he told them, and another 60 or so are injured.

The law-change announcement might have been bogus, but the statistics, which the kids had heard before in class, were painfully real. To press his point further, Rudge talked about the recent crash death of 16-year-old Elliot Larson, the third car-related fatality among Old Town High School students this school year, and the profound grief and suffering such tragedies cause to family and friends.

“The secretary of state and his committee don’t think they can let this happen any longer,” Rudge said.

Then, to the enormous relief of the students, Rudge revealed his deception and the reasons for it. Short of raising the driving age, he asked, what programs or laws could they come up with that might help make teens safer and more responsible drivers?

“I want you to be the secretary of state for the rest of the afternoon,” he said, before dividing the class into groups of three and four. “I want all of you to do some serious thinking.”

They did, too, mindful of Rudge’s sobering introduction to the project. After about 20 minutes, they reassembled to talk about their ideas. One group suggested that traffic safety be incorporated earlier into the school curriculum, perhaps in health classes and the like, so that youngsters are made to think about the risks of the road long before they attend a driving school. The students talked about increasing the number of hours they spend with instructors in the car, and later with their parents, so that students could learn how to drive in a variety of weather conditions.

The students suggested that new drivers, who too often disregard safe-driving practices once they get their unrestricted licenses, be made to take once-a-month refresher courses until they turn 18. The kids talked of a harsher point system for young drivers, more rewards for teens with good-driving records, and even the possibility of installing security cameras in towns to keep drivers honest when a cop isn’t there to do it.

The class also discussed the potential benefits of taking defensive-driving courses and of global-positioning systems in cars that would allow parents to monitor their children while they drive. One group proposed that teen drivers could be made to take a written and a road test every two years until they turn 20.

When Rudge suggested, however, that teens be required to carry a “New Driver” sign in their car windows, the class groaned in unison at the very uncool nature of such an idea.

“We’d be, like, targets out there,” one boy remarked. “People would just be honking their horns at us for no reason.”

When the brainstorming session had ended, Rudge thanked the students for the thoughtful consideration they’d put into the task. It didn’t matter if their ideas would never be made law, he said. The point of the exercise was instead to make them think hard about the importance of safety regulations, and of the tragic consequence that so often result from even a momentary lapse in judgment.

Rudge then read a few lines from the Larson boy’s obituary that told of all the loving family members he had left behind to grieve, including a woman who would never again hear her son say “Love you Mom” as he went to bed each night, a woman who had forever lost the light of her life.

So enjoy the independence that a license will soon bring, he told the students, but always control the unnecessary risks, for there’s no law ever written that could do it for them.