Young drivers will always have two major disadvantages to deal with — their brains and decision-making abilities still developing and a marked lack of experience behind the wheel. That’s why a teen’s first car should be as safe as possible while also being cheap enough that you won’t miss it when they inevitably crash. As bad as teen drivers are on average, you’d think parents would be more worried about their safety, but according to U.S. News & World Report, a new University of Michigan study found that only about a third of parents were worried their young driver will cause a crash.
Of course, it makes sense that parents would want to believe the best about their children, but especially considering how dangerous driving is in the U.S., how are more parents not worried their kids will screw up and crash? And yet, as U.S. News put it, “However, these worries don’t appear to weigh heavily on parents. Nearly all parents believe their child drives as well or better than other young drivers, and only a quarter said they’d imposed consequences for unsafe driving habits, the survey found.”
Wait, so not only are two thirds of parents not worried their kid might cause a crash, but about three-quarters wouldn’t discipline their young drivers if they saw them driving dangerously? What the hell? I could maybe accept that most parents think their kids drive at least as well as other young drivers, but 75% of parents wouldn’t step in if they noticed their kid playing with their phone while driving or not wearing their seatbelt? You’re a parent! That’s when you’re supposed to intervene!
“Our report suggests a disconnect between parents’ concerns about risky teen driving and their confidence in their own child’s skills behind the wheel,” Sarah Clark, Co-Director at the University of Michigan Health’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, said in a statement.
Parents are the problem
Of course, teens tend to reserve their worst, most dangerous behavior for times their parents aren’t around, so maybe only 25% have seen their kids do something dangerous behind the wheel. Except the study found that more than half of parents had witnessed their young drivers exhibiting at least one unsafe driving behavior. At least 44% of respondents said they’d witnessed aggressive driving behaviors such as speeding, tailgating, or road rage, 25% reported seeing distracted driving behaviors such as texting or multitasking, and 17% said they were aware of impaired driving, such as driving while sleepy, emotionally upset, or intoxicated from alcohol or weed.
That’s, of course, a problem. As Clark put it in another statement, “Distracted, impaired and aggressive driving are major contributors to crashes. Even behaviors that seem minor, like glancing at a phone or driving while exhausted, can significantly slow reaction time and increase crash risk.” You wouldn’t think we’d need someone to say that, but clearly we do:
Despite this, 96% of parents said their child’s driving is either average or better than that of their peers.
Even parents who’ve observed distracted or impaired driving tended to give their child good marks for their driving ability.
And shockingly, parents who’ve witnessed aggressive driving were actually less likely to rate their child as a worse driver compared to peers, the poll found.
“Many parents do not connect risky driving behaviors to being a good driver,” Clark said in a statement. And why is that? “Often, parents engage in these same risky driving behaviors and may not view them as dangerous.” Ah, there we go. The key to understanding this whole study. Parents aren’t worried about their kids crashing and don’t punish dangerous driving behaviors because many of them are also dangerous, distracted drivers. If they took their teen’s driving habits seriously, that might involve re-examining some of their own habits, and we can’t have that now, can we?
