Medford mail tribune., May 29, 1960, Image 30

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WHY ARE OUR
SONS SUCH BAD DRIVERS?
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By EDWARD R. SAMMIS
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IF you have a young, unmarried son in your fam
ily who drives, have him read this.
Maybe it will jolt him into realizing the mathe
matical risk he runs of harming himself and others
every time he takes out the family car.
Maybe he will grasp the disastrous consequences
physical, psychological, and financial, to himself
and to you, his parents which inevitably follow
the serious auto accident.
He will read here facts drawn from the files of
the casualty insurance companies. From them he
will learn about one of the greatest crises facing
American families. Having learned, maybe he'll
be less inclined to drive like an irresponsible child
and more like a mature man.
First of all, he should know that his age group
is the most dangerous on the road. Single, "under
25" males show up in more than twice as many
fatal accidents as their elders, all out of proportion
to their numbers.
Their record for "one-car accidents" is even
worse. A "one-car" accident is one in which a car
jumps the road or hits a stationary object It is usu
ally caused by speeding or carelessness, or both.
None of this applies to your daughter. In the
eyes of the insurance companies, she is stable and
dependable. Nor does it apply to your son after he
marries, which seems to settle him down.
There are exceptions, of course but not many.
And you, his parents, pay for this irresponsible
record through a two- or threefold increase in.
your insurance premium. Does the young male
driver in your family understand this?
Why are our sons such bad drivers? When your
boy says to you, "Dad, I've got the skill, the re
flexes, and the coordination," he's quite right. But
when he tells you, "I've got the judgment and
experience," he's quite wrong.
If he confronts you with, "Nothing's happened
to me yet," he's also on shaky ground. By the sta
tistics, the boy who has not yet had an accident
is about as likely to have one before he reaches
25 as the boy who already has had a mishap.
Take any average impulsive kid, give him com
mand of a car, turn him loose without training,
supervision, or control add parental laxity and
community indtflerence and you have the in
gredients for tragedy.
High Cost of Bad Driving
In nearly every accident, somebody and often
more than one somebody did something wrong.
But if there's a teen-ager involved, fair or unfair,
he's going to get blamed.
"The average citizen today is censorious of teen
agers," says a claims attorney, "and he's not going
to change when he gets into the jury box."
Now let's back up these blanket statements with
actual cases that show what can happen:
Dadv County, Fla.: A pleasant evening, warm
and dry; S:3t p.m. A youth, II, driving the new
car his mother bought hint, is on the way to the
movies with a family of friends. Another boy dares
him to try a "panic stop." He accelerates to more
than 55 miles an hour within a couple of hundred
feet. He tries to jam on his brakes too late. He
crashes. His passengers are injured, one boy suf
fering a possibly permanent brain injury.
The case goes to trial. The jury awards damages
totaling $418,000. For the driver, unending re
morse; for his mother, a crushing financial bur
den; for the victim, a lifetime of impairment All
the result of a single, foolish chance few grownups
would take.
Here's another case which shows the serious
consequences of an apparently minor mishap:
A youth in an Ohio town is driving in traffic on
a clear afternoon. His brakes fail. He smashes into
another car, whose driver sustains torn ligaments
and broken bones. Because the boy did not use his
hand brake, which appeared to be in working or
der, the judge directs a verdict against him. The
jury awards the plaintiff $37,500.
Games That Shouldn't Bo Playod
The gruesome game of "chicken" among young
drivers appears to be dying out. But it has been
replaced by an even more deadly "sport" chang
ing drivers while the car is speeding. Here's one
that shows the awful consequences of this gambit:
Four Midwestern high-school boys pooled their
savings to take a vacation trip to Florida. A 17-year-old,
driving the family convertible with his
father's permission, was at the wheel. The boys
had agreed to take turns driving every hour or so.
On a straight, clear road in Arkansas, they tried
to change drivers at 45 miles an hour. The car
went out of control, hit a ditch, and rolled over.
One boy was left with a severed spine, crippled
for life. The case is still pending. The young driver
and his father are being sued jointly for $500,000.
And another instance of wholesale horror that
can result from the impulse to create a dangerous
situation for "kicks":
A 17-year-old Illinois boy kept his pick-up truck
after work and invited half-a-dozen boys and girls
for a joy ride. The passengers stood in the back,
but the driver's girl friend sat in the cab with him.
To give the kids in the back a thrill, the girl
grabbed the wheel and stepped on the gas pedal.
The boy lost control, and the car hit a tree. The
standing passengers were hurled to the ground.
One girl, unconscious for 32 days, is still sub
ject to seizures. Another has had to undergo con
tinuous bone grafting and may lose a foot. A third
suffers a -nervous disorder. The girl friend may
not live; if she does, she may be mentally impaired.
A case in South Carolina had a shocking twist
A teen-age boy was driving at night when his car
left the road on a turn. A girl passenger was killed.
Subsequent newspaper stories revealed that the
boy was to appear in court the next day to answer
charges for an almost-identical accident in which
another girl had been killed several months be
fore. Had he been kept off the road, a life might
have been saved.
There also are economic aspects to the "kid
stuff" mayhem our sons pull on the highway.
Insurance companies aren't reformers. They're in
business to make a profit, and they're not going to
underwrite drivers on whom they lose money. But
many states have compulsory insurance laws. So
if your son is a frequent driver, he may be thrown
into what is known as the "assigned-risk" pool, a
quota of undesirables which insurance companies
are required to take on in proportion to the busi
ness they do in the state.
But the liability limits available in the assigned
risk plans in most states are "10, 20, and 5," that
is, $10,000 for an injury to one person, $20,000 for
any one accident, and $5,000 for property damage.
These figures don't come within shooting dis
tance of what a jury can hang on your son if he
causes a serious accident. There is no fixed price
tag on a human life, nor on an injury. Because of
a revolution in the public attitude, which has made
average awards climb by 300 or 400 percent in the
past 10 years, a death settlement in six figures is
possible. One jury awarded a victim $150,000 for
the loss of a leg.
Financial Ruin A Possibility
What does this mean to your son? Simply that
he is going to have to pay his share of any judg
ment in excess of his insurance limits for any seri
ous accident he causes. He may find his salary
attached when he goes to work. It can conceivably
ruin him financially for the rest of his life.
Nor are you, his parents, going to escape, either.
States have various laws. Some call it the doctrine
of dangerous instrumentality; some, vicarious re
The high rate of auto accidents
among people under 25 is mainly
Mf7 I attributable to the fact that they
Vx ' ' I don't value their own lives and,
J'S' J consequently, others' lives highly
enough. I feel that home training
does not emphasize sufficiently the very miracle
of life. If it did, cars would not be used for reckless
self-indulgence.
While the auto safety programs of the Boys'
Clubs and other organizations have a very definite
value, it's my opinion they cannot do the maximum
good unless receptiveness to these programs is
built up by moral and religious training in the
home. Safety programs are of no value unless home
training has opened the child's mind and condi
tioned him to absorb and accept it.
Nichola, D. Beck, 17
"Boy of the Year"
Boy' Club of America
sponsibility; some, doctrine of family purpose. All
have the same end result: you, the owner, become
codefendant with your son, the driver. This means
that everything you own car, home, life savings
could be wiped out by a heavy judgment.
We're all caught in a kind of social squeeze. On
the one hand, as victims, we expect to be well
compensated for any harm done us. On the other
hand, 'we resist, through our politicians, efforts to
punish severely those who do the harm, because
this threatens our own freedom as drivers. Right
in the middle of that squeeze stand our sons.
Parents Must Act
Given this situation, what can we do? Wake up
to the seriousness of it; know the odds against us;
support tough legislation; change our attitudes.
But if we wait for this slow social process, a lot
of people are going to be killed including, pos
sibly, our own sons or their pals. Who, then, can
act in the meantime?
We, the parents.
Know the facts. Take them seriously. Tighten
the controls. Explain. Train.
It's not easy. You won't win any popularity
contest with your son if you take the car away
when he's picked up for jumping a red light. Or if
you make him earn the money to pay the fine.
But family discipline is a lot less painful than the
public discipline that follows a bad accident.
Regarding one area, there must be special em
phasis. Two beers in a boy unused to drinking can
have disastrous effects. Have you ever discussed
this with your son? Does he know how even a
couple of ounces of alcohol can impair his judg
What Others Say About the Young-Driver Problem
As figures of the National Safety
Council and other agencies show,
teen-age drivers are involved in a
disproportionately large number of
traffic accidents. But when you sep
arate teen-age drivers into two
groups those who have had formal driver train
ing before obtaining their licenses and those who
have not you will find that the safety record of
the first group is significantly better.
Connecticut believes that driver education is one
answer to the problem of making teen-age driving
less hazardous. By statute, no Connecticut boy or
girl under 18 may be examined for a license before
passing a driver-training course approved by the
Motor Vehicle Commissioner.
Parental attitudes are very important, too. Ob
viously, boys and girls are apt to drive as well or
as poorly as the parents with whom they rode
during Urair impressionable formative years.
Abraham Ribicoff
Governor of Connecticut
ment of distance? Has he any idea how long alco
hol stays in the blood stream? Does he know, for
example, that no airline pilot is permitted to take
a drink 18 hours before take-off?
True, many youngsters are becoming smart
enough not to drink before they drive. Yet they
still cause accidents. How? It seems to work like
this: a boy alone in a car with his girl may be a
model of behavior. But get two or three cars with
four or five kids and it's different. One taunts
another; the other tries to prove his skill and
manhood by taking chances. His judgment fails.
Then it happens. Have you ever pointed out to
your boy that it takes real guts to ignore taunts?
Speed, insurance men say, is the great killer.
Not just speed itself, but speed for the circum
stances. Sixty may be all right on a thruway,
while 40 on a curve can be lethal.
How often do you ride with your boy and point
out his mistakes? Not just once or twice, but
under all sorts of conditions: rain, sleet, wet leaves,
clear, dry, fast? Do you have the moral right to
entrust someone else's life to him until you can
be sure of your own?
High-school driver courses are excellent, as wit
ness the fact that insurance companies will give a
10 percent discount to their qualifying graduates.
But less than half our high schools have them.
And the ones that do are so crowded there's a
waiting list. Are you going to assume your son has
been trained? Or are you going to check?
Maybe if your boy is impressed with the facts
of life and death in automobiles, he will use his
native skills to avoid tragedy instead of courting it
If a life can be saved, isn't it worth a mighty try?
The problem of the young driver
the reason for his relatively poor -accident
and violation record is
mainly a case of attitude, of lack of
respect for the driving privilege. It
isn't a lack of skill or perception or
quickness of reaction; in these, the young driver
should be superior to his elders. It is a question of
respect for laws and regulations and for the limi
tations of the automobile.
We build correct attitudes through education,
and driver education is an essential for living in
the modern world. It is our one best hope for
instilling the proper attitudes in the young driver.
J. Dewey Dortett
General Manager
Aitociation of Carnally
and Surety Companies
Family Weekly, May 29, 1960
Family Weekly. May 29, I960
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