As a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Science Ambassador in Atlanta, I have to admit I was disappointed in the project I was assigned. While my colleagues were working on projects related to the West Nile virus and the effects of cadmium on the human body, by luck of the draw, I was assigned to study teen driving.
For a science person, this topic seemed a bit boring, but my mentor explained its importance. Car crashes are the top killer of teens and young adults in the United States.
Let's fast-forward to the end of June 2013. I am sitting in the parent meeting for drivers' education in Rochester, where I am taken aback, not by the dramatic car crash videos that have just been shown, but by a simple comment made by the driving instructor.
He stated that as parents, we support our kids during hundreds of hours of practice with sports and musical instruments, but when it comes to driving, we rush them into getting their license.
I looked at my daughter. She swims a couple of hours per day, six days per week. Would we be able to make that same commitment to learning how to drive? I'm not talking about the 30 hours of required classroom time. This guy was asking for a commitment of hundreds of hours of behind-the-wheel parent instruction time before even thinking of taking the driver's license exam.
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The session really got scary when the teacher suggested that once the teen driver is competent in Rochester, parents take him/her for some driving in the Twin Cities in heavier traffic.
His point was that we have a responsibility to our children to make sure they are very comfortable and skilled drivers before they take their driver's license exam. The time for new drivers to develop driving skills is with a responsible adult in the car, not having just walked out of the licensing office.
Deb Las, an eighth-grade science teacher at John Adams Middle School, is a member of the Post-Bulletin's Editorial Advisory Board.
