Lookin' Out Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Lookin’ Out podcast, a service of Erie Insurance, where we’re steering teens to drive safely. The Lookin’ Out program partners Erie Insurance Agents with local high schools in order to educate teenagers about being safe and responsible behind the wheel.

Now, here with the Lookin’ Out podcast is Lookin’ Out program coordinator Matt Bresee.

Matt Bresee: Hello and welcome to podcast number three of the Lookin’ Out program. As that voice at the start of the program just told you, I’m Matt Bresee, your humble coordinator of the Lookin’ Out program and I hope all is well wherever you might be today.

This podcast will continue to be used to keep you up on what’s happening with the Lookin’ Out program. But we also will strive to give you an in-depth perspective of some of the teen driving issues that are current right now.

And to do that, today we are honored to be joined by a special guest. She is Dr. Anne McCartt. She is the senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Dr. McCartt has worked in the highway safety area for more than twenty-five years and has been with the Institute since 2002. She’s authored more than 120 technical reports and scientific papers in areas such as distracted driving, alcohol impaired driving, young drivers and many more. So, we’re very pleased to offer Dr. Anne McCartt.

So without further ado, I’d like to welcome her. Anne, thanks for joining us today. If we could, before we get started about specifics about teen driving, could you please, first, tell us a little more about IIHS for some of our listeners that might not be familiar with the organization and also, particularly, your role with the organization.

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, we’re the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and we’re an independent, non-profit research and communications organization. Our goal is to identify ways to reduce injuries, property damage and fatalities that result from highway crashes.

I’m the senior vice president for research and what I do in my job is direct projects that identify problems with highway crashes, try to identify things that can be done to reduce them. I have a group of people, there are about 12 of us, and they include people with psychology backgrounds, statisticians, traffic engineers, people with public health backgrounds. And so we use all these different perspectives to try to do research on highway safety.

Matt Bresee: And one of those recent research projects was included in the IIHS status report newsletter from June with a story titled “Good News About Teen Drivers.” Anne, can you tell us what is that good news?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, over the last decade or so, almost every state has changed pretty drastically how teenage drivers are licensed and that’s through something called graduated driver licensing that has established, sort of, tighter rules for how drivers do get licensed.

So we took a look at fatal and all kinds of crashes over the last ten years between 1996 and 2005. And our goal was to see when we looked across the nation whether crashes involving teens were improving, whether they have gone down or not. And we found, the good news was, that we found really substantial reductions both in fatal crashes and in crashes of severity among teenagers. And the biggest decrease we found, which was 40 percent, was for 16 year olds. Sixteen year olds are the teens who are the most influenced by graduated licensing laws, but we found declines as well for 17 year olds and also for 18 year olds.

The reason this is important is that we believe this provides evidences that graduated licensing programs are having their intended effect, which is to reduce teens involved in crashes. The other good piece of news about it is that there were concerns when these laws were being passed that crashes would still occur but they would occur when teens were older, when they were 17 or 18 or 19 and as I have said, crashes fell throughout the teen years so we think that concern hasn’t been borne out.

Matt Bresee: OK, so in your opinion then, based on some of this research and the impact of the graduated driver’s licensing, what does IIHS say makes up a good set of graduated driver’s licensing laws?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, one thing we believe is that the minimum age for getting a learner’s permit should be 16. We think before that teens are really just not mature enough to be able to handle the fairly difficult task of driving. So we recommend the learner’s permit at 16 and then we recommend that you stay in the learner’s permit stage for at least six months and during that period we recommend that parents certify that their teen has had at least 30 hours of supervised driving.

Then the second stage of a graduated licensing system is referred to sometimes as a junior license, sometimes as an intermediate license. We believe this stage should last until the teen is at least 18 and that there should be two important restrictions placed on driving. One is a night driving restriction, and we recommend that begin at 9 or 10 p.m. And we also recommend that there be a strict teenage passenger restriction that would allow no teenage passengers or no more than one teenage passenger. We believe that this makes up a good, optimal system of graduated licensing.

Matt Bresee: OK, so during that junior phase, you say the nighttime driver restriction and the teen passenger restriction. We often hear parents on both sides of that argument saying that could be good or bad.

What would your response be to anyone who would question why you would want to limit the passengers with — I guess, let me back up a step and say it might be because there’d be more cars on the road: kids traveling to a high school dance, a high school football game, what have you. What might your response to them be?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, looking at the teenage passenger problem, we did a study several years ago that showed that the risk of having a crash goes up with each teenage passenger in the vehicle. And we’ve also found that, even if all those teenagers were to drive alone in the cars, the risk of having several teenage passengers in a car is greater. It adds to the level of distraction for the driver.

It also can add just to the level of risk taking. Sometimes a teen passenger can encourage the driver to speed or take risks that, when the driver is alone, the teenager would be less likely to do that. The same would be true with nighttime driving. There isn’t a lot of nighttime, and I mean by this late nighttime, after 9 or 10 p.m., among teenagers, but the risk per mile driven is very high at night.

So we think in both of these cases, although it may provide a little bit of inconvenience at times to parents or to teens, it’s just not worth the risk.

Matt Bresee: Speaking of risk taking, cell phone use by drivers for both cell phone calls and text messaging is a hot topic right now. Is there any kind of research that shows the impact that mobile devices are having?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, there is a lot of research now on phones and now text messaging and other kinds of mobile devices. And there is a lot of concern, enough concern that now 16 states do have laws that restrict the use of cell phones by young drivers.

There are studies that show, for example, an institute study showed that the risk of having a crash that involves an injury to the driver is four times higher if the driver is on the phone. And somewhat surprisingly we found that the risk of having a crash isn’t significantly different whether the phone is a handheld phone or a hands free phone.

So we know that talking on the phone is a risk, and there’s a particular risk for teenage drivers because teenagers have a greater problems with distraction in general. There are several studies that show, not even just technological distractions but other distractions to the driver are harder when a driver is young and inexperienced.

The other big concern about these technologies is that we know from surveys that look at drivers as they travel by in their vehicles, we know that teenagers tend to use phones and tend to text message more than other drivers. So there’s a good basis for concern about young drivers using these devices when they drive.

Matt Bresee: Shifting gears, getting back to the report, you also conducted surveys among parents of teen drivers and asked particularly about the types of cars they are putting their teens in. What would you have to say to parents that are on a budget, maybe looking to get their kids into their first car and to the kids that, often times, are willing to drive whatever it is that’s going to get them from point A to point B? What kind of advice could you give about the type of vehicle that young drivers should be getting into?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, I’m glad you asked us because we believe a lot of parents may not think about the vehicle their teen is driving as a really important decision they are making, but it is.

So the advice that we would have for parents, recognizing that parents are often on a budget, kind of comes down to a vehicle that is big and boring, unfortunately for the teen. We believe that the size makes a difference, a bigger vehicle offers better protection for a teen in the event of a crash. So we believe a mid-size or a large car or minivan would be a great car for a beginning driver.

Now, it’s true that SUVs and pickups are also large vehicles, but they have a higher tendency to roll over because they’re higher off the ground, have a higher center of gravity. And so we generally believe that SUVs and pickups are more difficult for teenage drivers to handle.

A couple of other suggestions we would have are to avoid vehicles that are sporty, that can accelerate quickly and are easier to speed in just because they encourage teens to do things that might be risky.

To the extent that a family can afford a newer vehicle, we would want parents to make sure that they look for vehicles that have good safety features. And two at the top of our list would be side airbags and electronic stability control. A lot of people haven’t heard about electronic stability control, but it helps control a tendency of a vehicle to turn over when you’re going sharply around a curve or when you’re on a slippery surface.

And I guess the final piece of advice we would have is to check our Web site, to check the government’s Web site. Our institute crash tests vehicles and rates their safety in a crash. And even if a family can’t afford a new vehicle, you can get a good safe vehicle, a used vehicle that does well in our crash test.

Matt Bresee: Anne, you know the unfortunate crash and fatality figures better than anyone and from what I understand, you yourself have a teen driver that is going through the licensing process right now. What’s the main message that you would like to get across to teens and their parents that are also going through the licensing process?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, as you say, I have my son. He’s actually taking his driving test this week and what I’ve seen with him is putting some of the research I’ve done in practice. The more practice a teen driver gets with his parents in the vehicle, the better prepared that teen is going to be. And that should involve driving in all sorts of situations: high speed roads, suburban roads, going through lots of intersections, trying to put that teen in as many situations as possible so that he or she won’t encounter something new the first time.

The other piece of advice I have, and I see this so clearly with my son, is that it’s really important to focus on the driving task. That might be ignoring a passenger. It might be ignoring a vehicle behind you that wants you to go faster than you should be going. It definitely includes not answering that cell phone that’s ringing or sending that text message. Teens need to appreciate that, especially when they’re just beginning to drive. They need to focus all their energy and all their mind on the driving task.

Matt Bresee: That is so important and often pretty difficult for any of us to do in some circumstances. That’s a good thought. As for IIHS, what role do you see the organization having in the future of enforcing, or helping to enforce, graduated driver’s licensing laws?

Dr. Anne McCartt: Well, one of the things we do is we summarize all of the states graduated driver’s licensing laws on our Web site. And we have a system that rates them. We believe that this is an effective way to encourage states to pass stronger restrictions for teen drivers and we will certainly continue to do that. We’re also doing other research.

We really see parents as having a very important role in their teens’ driving. Actually, not just important, they have the primary role in making sure their teens are safe drivers. And there’s a lot of interest now in monitoring devices that can be placed in a teen’s vehicle to give the parents feedback, and sometimes the teens feedback, on things like speeding or making sure the teen is wearing a seatbelt or sudden breaking, other things that may be a problem when they’re driving.

We hope to do some research to see how effective these kinds of devices are and whether parents and teens are willing to accept them. We think they have potential to help teens navigate those first few months of driving safely because we know when the parents are in the car with the teen, the teen is a very safe driver. When the teen begins to drive on his or her own, without the parent in the car, that’s when the crash risk is highest.

So we continue to try to find ways to help the teen get through those first few months to become a safer driver.

Matt Bresee: OK, very good. And anything else you’d like to add?

Dr. Anne McCartt: I could add one more thing. You asked me for one tip — this might be my third tip, but when we’ve done studies that look at why teens get into crashes when they first begin to drive without their parents in the car what comes through really clearly is speeding. And it’s not necessarily exceeding the speed limit by a lot, but it might be going around a corner too fast, or trying to navigate an intersection too fast. So I think when parents are helping their kids learn to drive and when the teenagers are driving on their own, they need to remember that speeding is probably at the top of the list for the way that teenagers get into trouble and end up in a crash.

Matt Bresee: Very good. She is the senior vice president for research for IIHS. You can find out more about IIHS at their Web site at iihs.org. Anne McCartt, thank you very much for joining us today.

Dr. Anne McCartt: Sure thing.

Matt Bresee: So there you are. As you’ve heard, IIHS, along with so many other organizations, have done extensive work on uncovering the root causes of teen crashes. And certainly it sounds like they’re working towards getting teen crash rates to continue to decline. So, I guess, more good news is what we hope to hear in future reports from IIHS.

So, that’ll do it for this time. Thanks for listening. I’m Matt Bresee for Erie Insurance and until next time, buckle up and drive safely.

Lookin' Out Podcast Transcript

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