South Carolina Teens and Driver Training
In South Carolina only 15- and 16-year-old teens have to take a high school or commercial school driving course before seeking a driver's license. Unfortunately, less than 50 percent of new teenage drivers receive any formal driver training prior to receiving a license (AAA). I believe this is why teens in their first year of driving are
almost 10 times more likely to crash, why the fatality rate for drivers age 16-19 is four times that of drivers 25-69 years, and that motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of teenage deaths (State Farm). I also believe this is why Senator A. Shane Massey has proposed the S.86 bill that all teenagers and those under 21 years of age have to take driver education or driver training before trying to get a driver's license (the bill is currently residing in the Senate Committee on Transportation).
Teens need to have a driver education or driver training course to become better drivers and to make the highways safer. The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety recognizes that crashes are most common in the first six months of independent driving and that teen crash rates decline quickly as young drivers gain experience and become more mature. Such a course will help teens to recognize and respond to hazards.
“[When] well taught, [classroom instruction] not only improves driver behavior,…[it] seeks to produce the sophisticated traffic citizen needed in our society.”
– Dr. Richard W. Bishop
Good drivers are not born on their eighteenth birthday! They are developed under careful teaching through childhood and early adolescence. Certainly, driving constitutes the greatest hazard to survival through which American youth must pass successfully in order to reach adulthood. The end product should be accident avoidance, and a byproduct is accident reduction.
South Carolinians need to support the S.86 bill. We know that “youth are the hope of yesterday, the joy of today, and the guarantee of a better tomorrow” (Jacob M. Braude). Consider this, since we invaded Iraq in 2003, we've lost more than 4,300 soldiers, and this is totally unacceptable. Yet during that same period more than 40,000 15- to 19-year-old teens have been killed in motor vehicle crashes. This is not simply statistics—it represents our nation's DEAD KIDS. We say that 4,300 dead soldiers is not acceptable, but are we saying 40,000 dead teens is acceptable? If not, please do what you can to promote driver and traffic safety education for all of our South Carolina teenagers! Any safety education course before getting a driver's license is better than none! Ensuring that teenagers take driver education or driver training before getting a driver's license is an edge they need to help them drive and survive. May you help to make it so!
Joe Sabbadino
Driving Educator
SCDTSEA Public Relations