Danger call: teen drivers, cell phones
Doug Robinson
If legislators really want to know the realities of teenage driving, they should talk to the soldiers on the front lines, the guys who risk their lives to teach teens to drive. I speak, of course, of driver's ed teachers, the test pilots of the highway.
Should teens have cell phones, I asked several of them? They laughed, as if I had just asked them if toddlers should be allowed to play with handguns and crack.
This is what they all agree on: Teenagers are lousy drivers even without a cell phone in their hands.
"I would have been dead 500 times if not for my brake," says Dan Cowan, who has been teaching driver's ed for 27 years, most recently at West Jordan High.
In just the few minutes I talked to Cowan, Jordan High's Dave McConnell, Riverton's Steve Galley and Alta's Morgan Brown — who have about 100 years of driver's ed experience among them — I had enough stories about bad teen driving to scare Dell Schanze off the road. If these guys had their way, teenagers wouldn't get licenses until they were 17.
"They're not even close to being ready," says McConnell.
The stories they can and do tell:
• One girl got out of her car on the driving range and forgot to put it in park. The driverless car stopped only after it struck a fence.
• One girl thought she was depressing the brake, but she hit the gas instead. The car hopped a curb, crossed a road and parked itself in a basement.
• A boy pulled into the middle lane to make a U-turn, which he executed perfectly, except he turned to the right and drove against traffic.
• One girl was told to turn at the next light. She turned at the next light — a lamppost — and onto someone's lawn. "Now I make sure I tell them to turn at the STOPlight," says McConnell. • One girl was merging onto the freeway with a semi bearing down on her. By the time Cowan glanced at the driver, she had taken her hands off the wheel and covered her eyes.
"She had given up," he says. "I spend half my time with my hand inches from the wheel."
• Years ago, a girl suddenly, for no apparent reason, veered sharply to the right and crashed into a ditch. When the instructor asked the girl why, she explained it this way: While she was driving she had noticed that the car's insignia in the middle of the steering wheel was upside down.
Look, it's not their fault. They're teenagers. They have other things on their minds, like hormones, video games and Jessica Alba. They have a difficult time processing everything at once. Tell them to watch their speed, and they stare at the speedometer. Meanwhile, they blow through a stoplight. They turn right when you tell them to turn left. They pull in front of oncoming cars, mistakenly thinking they have the time and space to cross the road.
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