Your child has just earned his or her driver's license and now comes "can I borrow the car?". As a parent or an adult, we have all seen the news and heard the stories of young drivers getting injured or killed in horrific accidents. The problem is we as adults are not educating our young drivers to help prevent accidents.

Teens often think that going through Driver's Education is enough and once they receive their license it spells freedom. The thought of a car crash nover realy enteres their minds and the "it will not happen to me" attitude is omnipresent. While a formal driver's education course is great, do we realize that long before our children take these courses they have a preconceived idea of what it means to drive? Do we understand that our kids have been watching our behavior while we drive and everytime we do something that violated the rules of the road they are processing this?

Learned behavior can often determine how new drivers will operate vehicles and if they are exposed to running red lights, stop signs, speeding and sometimes even road rage, they are often inclined to repeat those behaviors they observed so many times while passengers.

When I was taking driver's ed back in the early 80s, the instructor would use all the old shock movies that depicted horribly wrecked cars and covered bodies. Often an empty alcohol container would be shown emphasizing "don't drink and drive". Did these films work? In my opinion they did not for several reasons. First, they were boring and fake. We all knew that as teenagers and at that time the teen culture was all blood and guts as far as movies, music, clothing just to mention a few. Kids thought the wrecks were "cool".

Public Safety officials began to realize that driver's ed was not enough to really get messages through to kids. They took a good response and began to initiate mock accidents at high schools just before prom time. These mock drills are very realistic and the students actually observe a scene where kids are killed and seriously injured. The witness Firefighters, Police Officers and Paramedics using the Jaws of Life to pry apart a smashed car. The "victims" are made up to look like they have sustained real injuries and they appear very real. In my experience in participating in these drills, I have seen kids cry, express shock and horror and some not even being able to believe what they are witnessing. Of course you have the "macho" kids that always make jokes but if you look at their eyes, they too are a bit frightened by the reality in front of them.

At this point we are now well aware that teens are at risk while driving but what preconceived notions do adults have regarding the cause? Unfortunately we hear all too often "they must have been drinking" or "I bet they were on drugs". These uninformed opinions can not be farther from the truth. In fact, the leading causes of car crashes involving teens are speed and inexperience. Other causes do in fact involve alcohol but so does not wearing a seat belt, emotional distractions and lack of sleep.

Here are some statistics I found on the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicle web site:

Nationwide teens are 4 times more likely to be killed and 14 times more likely to be injured in a car crash than any other age group.

Teens are more than likely to kill someone with them than themselves by a 2-1 margin.