A message to young drivers. This is an exciting time of your lives -- you have so much to look forward to. We know that the very last thing you want to do is to ruin it all by getting hurt or hurting someone else in a car crash. Nevertheless, young drivers (ages 16-20) caused over 15,500 crashes in just one year (2009) in Alabama. That is on average about a crash every 15 minutes during normal driving hours.
In 2009 these crashes resulted in 63 deaths and injured almost 4500. But these numbers are meaningless if they do not get you to realize that it can, and almost certainly will happen to you if you do not do something now to establish some basic habits to prevent it.
What can you do? You know the rules of the road, you passed your drivers test, you have great reflexes ... what else do you need? One answer lies in the recognition that very few (if any) people cause a crash when they are anticipating that it can happen to them and really thinking about it.
Thinking about this must become an established habit. How do you establish it? Take out your car key and look at it right now. Concentrate on it, and make a promise to yourself that every time you put that key into the ignition you will bring to your mind the real possibility that you could kill someone or end up spending your life in a wheelchair.
Think about it and concentrate on it. Do not think that you will increase the chances of it occurring by thinking about it -- that is pure superstition, and just the opposite is true. If you become complacent it will get you when you least expect it. Ask any of your friends who have been there!
In addition to obeying the rules of the road, here are some tips to keep you safe:
- Recognize that without taking constant action to prevent it, you are always moving from a relatively safe to a relatively more hazardous situation. Notice this as you run up behind slower cars and encounter intersections, curves and other potentially hazardous situations. Safety does not come by default.
- Counter this by actively moving from a less safe to a more safe situation. The following are some ways that you can do this.
- Look well ahead for hazard indicators -- cars putting on their brakes, an approaching curve, warning signs ... these are advanced warnings ... do not ignore them and allow the hazard to overtake you.
- Keep distance between you and other vehicles. Do not become part of the herd instinct to tailgate. These groups of tailgaters are called "slugs" of traffic. Don't be part of a slug. Maintain your speed so that you can stay between slugs. You might arrive about five seconds later, but you will arrive.
- If you are being tailgated, just look for a safe place where they can pass and then gradually slow down and give them a chance to pass. Don't let others do your driving for you by forcing you to speed up and become part of a slug. Stay in control.
- Be aware of the environment. It can take twice as long to stop going down a hill as on level ground. Adjust your driving accordingly.
It is totally in your control -- you do not have to be the cause of a collision.
Click here to see teen-created videos from the Alfa Sponsored DRV NOW TXT L8R online video contest.
Articles to the right include a synopsis of Alabama's GDL and a PPT on youth risky driving.
See links to the right for several youth program activities.
Click here for SALTEENS
Youth Risk Taking
The chart on the left compares the proportion of speed crashes (red bars) against those not related to speed (blue bars) according to age. Each set of two bars represents an age. Both the blue and the red bars are much higher for young people, but it is clear that young people are extremely high in their proportion of speed-related crashes. In fact, one out of every ten speed crashes is caused by a 16-year-old. Correspondingly, middle and older ages have a considerably smaller proportion of speed-related crashes than what is expect by their non-speed crashes (shown by the blue bars being higher than the red bars for these ages). Source:
Risky Driving Behavior and the Odds of Being Killed.
This page is maintained by Dave Brown ...
brown@cs.ua.edu