Part II: ‘Overdriving their capabilities’

Woodstock wrestles with teen driving

 

By SUSAN W. MURRAY and MIKE NEUMANN The Independent

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In a three-part series, The Woodstock Independent is examining teen driving in Woodstock, at both Marian Central Catholic High School and Woodstock High School. “Part I: An ‘intolerable’ situation” appeared Feb. 13. It is available for readers at www.thewoodstockindependent.com, along with descriptions of police “ride-alongs” near both high schools, a comparison of insurance rates for adults and teens, and the full text of Illinois’ new graduated driver’s license law. Next week, the third part of the series will look at ways to keep our teens safe and how Illinois’ new graduated driver’s license law attempts to increase teen safety.

 

 

Seven Marian Central Catholic High School students have died in four car crashes since 1999. Alcohol did not factor into any of them. Parents cling to the belief that most teen crashes are the result of drunk driving; 49 percent say so, according to The Allstate Foundation. The Naional Highway Transportation Safety Administration reported that in 2004, alcohol was a contributing factor in less than 13 percent of fatal crashes involving 16-year-old drivers. That figure climbed to 25 percent for 17- to 19-year-old drivers.
The top three factors for fatal crashes involving teens are speeding, running off the road and driving in the wrong lane, according to the NHTSA. Woodstock Police Chief Robert Lowen sums up teen driving habits as “overdriving their capabilities.”

 

They’re old enough, but are they mature enough?
Illinois teens can get a learner’s permit at age 15 and a driver’s license at age 16. Writing for The Allstate Foundation, Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, said that 15- and 16-year-olds’ logic and reasoning abilities are on par with adults. “Their emotional and social development at this age, however, is still relatively immature,” he added.
Dr. Tom Flaherty patrols Marian’s parking lot after school. He has witnessed students hanging on to a moving car, doing doughnuts and burning rubber. Flaherty asked one student why he had just burned rubber in the parking lot. “They (my friends) dared me to do it,” was the student’s reply.
“(Teenagers) don’t think about tomorrow; they think about right now,” said Officer Fred Eiselstein, whose Beat 23 includes Woodstock High School.

 

Does driver’s education go far enough?
As of January, to obtain a driver’s license, 16-year-olds must have had a learner’s permit for nine months, completed 50 hours of supervised driving with an adult and a state-approved driver’s education course that includes 30 hours of classroom instruction, six hours of behind-the-wheel driving and six hours of observing while another student drives.
“They teach the basics, which is good,” said Rick LeFevour, who has coordinated car stunts in movies, including “2 Fast 2 Furious.” Driving in adverse conditions, however, is largely theoretical.
Northwest Suburban Driving School, which began providing instruction to Marian students this year, teaches “in-class strategies” for defensive driving, according to instructor Ed Pudlo. The strategies include tips for driving in bad weather and reminders during practice sessions to leave a gap between cars.
John Theriault, a driver’s education instructor at WHS for more than 30 years, said that instructors teach off-road and skid recovery at a speed of between 20 to 30 miles per hour. While it doesn’t simulate the exact experience of a faster off-road recovery, he said, it’s the best the school can do.
The lack of training and experience means, said LeFevour, “in a panic situation, there is no muscle memory for what to do.”

 

Teens’ inexperience meets a host of challenges
In each of the four accidents that have claimed the lives of Marian students, the teenage driver lost control of the vehicle and either crashed into a car in the opposite lane or went off the road. In the October crash that killed two students, the car entered the southbound shoulder of Haligus Road. Likely, the driver overcorrected, causing the car to cross the center line.
Experienced drivers know to ease back onto the road if the car wanders onto the shoulder. A panicked driver will “cut the wheel or slam on the brakes,” said Chief Lowen.
The roads themselves, particularly those traveled by Marian students, and in the coming years, by students at Woodstock North High School and Faith Lutheran High School, present another concern. Speed limits on the two-lane county roads are 40 to 55 mph, and people tend to drive five miles over the speed limit, noted Lowen. “Crashes at those speeds are more serious than an urban crash at 30 mph,” he said.
Marian’s Dean of Students Chuck Maveus deals with speeding before and after school. “Our young people are not allowing enough time to get to school,” he said. “They drive in a hurried situation.”
After school is the same story. “They have to be first to the stop sign,” he said.
Marian students are not alone. According to The Allstate Foundation, 55 percent of teens say they sometimes exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.
“They don’t listen to weather reports,” Maveus said further of students, and their experience driving in bad weather is limited.
Illinois’ new graduated driver’s license law was “a good compromise,” said State Representative Jack Franks. Legislators from Chicago and the close-in suburbs supported raising the driving age, while those from rural areas without public transportation largely opposed that move. Driver’s education instructor Theriault feels that experience counts more than age in driving safety. “It’s not going to matter if it’s an 18-year-old or a 16-year-old who is just starting,” he said. Insurance companies would support raising the driving age to 17, said Wauconda Farmer’s Insurance Agent Kevin Kirwan. “That year of maturity as a person would help,” he said. The evidence supports the latter view. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the crash rate per miles driven is twice as high for a 16-year-old as for 18- to 19-year-olds.

 

Doing everything but driving
Maveus observes Marian students every day as they exit the parking lot onto Broadway Avenue. As students drive, “they’re taking their sweaters off, putting in a CD or talking on their cell phones,” he said.
“Back when I was a kid, yeah, we had our friends and we’d goof around sometimes,” said Woodstock insurance agent John Jones. “Today you add the phone and the Internet and everything. They’re texting and talking and really not paying attention to the driving.”

 

Teen driving takes burden off parents
Kirwan sometimes gets calls from worried parents of 16-year-olds whose children do not want to drive. But Quinn Keefe, a parent of a WHS student, admitted that the prospect of having a third driver to help with the family’s transportation made him share his son’s eagerness to drive. “As a parent,” he said, “I couldn’t wait for (my son) to get his license.”
“I’ll look at these parents who have a dry-erase board filled with schedules,” said Brian McAdow, principal of WNHS. “It’s not like they’re just sitting at home. A lot of times, they need their 16-year-old to be able to drive.”
Jones noted that years ago, teens gradually became accustomed to driving. “I think, in some respects,” he said, “we are pushing our kids a little too much and giving them too much responsibility.”

 

 

Do as I say, not as I do In a survey of 1,000 parents of teenagers, the parents say: • Less than one-third say teens drive safely. • 88 percent trust their own teens to drive safely. • 48 percent say more lenient parents make it difficult to control their own teen’s driving privileges. • 38 percent say they disagree with the teen’s other parent about ground rules for their child’s driving. • 99 percent believe that demonstrating good driving behavior is helpful in teaching their teen safe driving, yet • 71 percent have talked on a cell phone while driving. • 62 percent have operated a radio, MP3 player, game or other device. • 26 percent have broken the law.   In the first few months after their teen received a driver’s license: • 90 percent allowed their teen to drive after dark. • 77 percent allowed their teen to drive with friends. • 70 percent allowed their teen to drive in bad weather.

 

 

Two mothers, unanswered questions   Luke Adams and Danielle and Kevin Trueblood are three of the seven Marian Central Catholic High School students killed in car accidents since 1999. Their mothers still grapple with questions about the accidents that claimed their children’s lives. Luke died on a Friday night in November 2003. At age 15, he had only a learner’s permit. He and another 15-year-old were out with friends. The two got into a car one of the friends had been driving and drove away, seatbelts unfastened. On Lucas Road, the car failed to negotiate a curve and ended up in the wrong lane. The driver overcorrected, sending the car sideways across the lane, off the road and into a plowed field, where it tumbled. Both boys were ejected from the vehicle, making it impossible to tell who was driving. Luke died; the other boy sustained serious injuries. The following Monday, Cindi and Jay Adams, Luke’s parents, went to Marian. Cindi addressed the student body gathered in the gym. “I told them that even though Luke was an honor student and a good boy, he made a bad choice,” Cindi said. “It was probably a very quick decision, and you better think long and hard before you make that deadly mistake. I also told them that Luke would be alive today if he had worn his seatbelt. “That behavior came out of the blue,” Cindi said recently. “You don’t know what your kids are going to do.” Danielle and Kevin were driving home from school on a rainy September day in 2002. From Marian, Danielle turned left onto Route 120. Just east of Queen Anne Road, police speculate she lost control of her car. She entered the westbound lane and was struck by an oncoming vehicle. Danielle died at the scene. Kevin died at Rockford Memorial Hospital a few hours later. “Nobody really knows what happened,” said their mother, Monica Trueblood. There were no skid marks on the road. Monica wonders if Danielle was distracted. She was not supposed to use her cell phone while driving; was she trying to make a call? Was she putting in a CD? Were she and Kevin arguing? Neither the Truebloods nor the Adams have ever learned the full story of their children’s accidents. “We would like to know,” Cindi said.

 

Part I: An ‘intolerable’ situation

Part III: ‘No easy answers’

This article was published in the February 20, 2008 edition of The Woodstock Independent.