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"The car culture in this country is a huge problem," says Tim Hollister, a teen safety advocate in Connecticut. Cars and unsafe driving habits are ingrained into the culture, through video games, music, and even children's movies. And parents, he says, are largely blind to the problem. Our culture treats the process of getting a license as a rite of passage, when it should be more akin to getting a pilot's license. Indeed, many parents are relived when their sixteen and seventeen year-olds get licenses, cutting down on the amount of chauffeuring they have to do to school and friends' houses. "Properly supervising a teen driver in this country forces you to swim against the tide and put popular culture out of your mind," he says. Hollister doesn't believe there is any such thing as a safe teen driver. And he's got research and personal experience backing him up. Researchers have found that teen drivers don't think about risk the same way as adults, so they take bigger chances behind the wheel. And their inexperience when things go wrong compounds the problem, often ending with disastrous results. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance found that 75% of fatal accidents caused by teens were caused by one of three mistakes from the teen driver: driving too fast relative to road conditions or weather; not scanning the road well enough, identifying what was coming ahead or from the side; or distracted by something inside or outside the vehicle. Graduated licenses are one way states are attempting to cut back on fatalities. Adopted by almost every state in the U.S., graduated licenses put caps on the hours teens can drive, how many other passengers they can have in a car, and insist they do 30 to 50 hours of practice before moving on to an unrestricted license. But graduated licenses can only go so far. CHOP also found that parental involvement – involvement that is far stricter than many parents may feel comfortable with – helps some mistakes from happening. Hollister taught his son, Reid, to drive. Reid, 16 when he earned his license in Connecticut, was a cautious driver; very alert, and motivated to learn. He took classes through a local private driving school, and mastered everything his father asked. He got one ticket, for failing to signal before changing lanes, and then another for going 5 mph over the speed limit. Neither incident alarmed his father. Nothing else stands out as a red flag, Hollister says, when he thinks back on how his son learned to drive and what happened in the 11 months when Reid had his license. "Looking back, I don't think I understood anywhere near how dangerous it was," Hollister says. "The idea that he could go into an uncontrolled skid and lose his life never crossed my mind." On Dec. 2, 2006, Reid was traveling down an unfamiliar highway with two high school freshmen girls in a The roads were wet after a short rain storm passed through. It was around 9:30 p.m. when Reid entered a turn going about 65 mph near exit 34 on I-84 in Plainville, Conn. His speed was too fast for the turn, and the car began to skid. Reid panicked, and turned the wheel in the same direction the car was going, which did nothing to slow the vehicle down. The car spun several times. In a stroke of what appears to be incredibly bad luck – but may actually be a result of driver inexperience, the teenagers hit the end of the guardrail. The guard rail punctured the car at the driver side, and killed Reid. The two passengers survived. Months later, as a way to process his grief, Hollister started about teen driving safety. "I got into this not because I made an obvious mistake, but because I didn't and my son still had a fatal crash," he says. "He was an alert, coordinated driver. There was no alcohol or drugs. He wasn't on his cell phone." You can find brown motors at Tunnel Avenue, Greenwich, London SE10 0SL or visit website BMW and Mercedes servicing for more information.
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