Sixteen-year-old Alexandra Poff said her parents already have laid down the law on texting and talking on the cell phone while driving.
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"They've definitely made it clear that if I'm driving, and they catch me on the phone, I'm done driving," said Alexandra, a sophomore at Lancaster Mennonite High School, who is hoping to take her driving test in a month or so.
Sarah Carlson, 16, a sophomore at Lampeter-Strasburg High School, said she won't be allowed to have friends in her car for at least the first three months after she gets her driver's license. That was the rule for her older brother, she said, "so that will also be the rule for me."
Teen drivers across Pennsylvania may be facing similar restrictions, if a bill recently passed in the state House of Representatives becomes law.
For teens, getting a driver's license and getting behind the wheel of a car isn't merely about getting from one place to another — it's about independence and socializing, a rite of passage usually accompanied by a very loud soundtrack.
The reality is that the first months of driving, however thrilling to teens, can be precarious. Public-safety experts say that inexperience, immaturity and distractions can make teens vulnerable behind the wheel.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, there were 8,628 crashes involving 16- and 17-year-old drivers in 2008. There were 64 fatalities.
In late April, the state House passed a bill aimed at strengthening training requirements for teen drivers and curbing some of the distractions that put them in danger.
House Bill 67, which now has to get through the state Senate, would prohibit teens with junior licenses from transporting more than one unrelated passenger under the age of 18.
Teen drivers with junior licenses or learner's permits would be prohibited from using cell phones or other wireless communications devices while driving.
The bill also seeks to add 10 hours of nighttime driving, and five hours of inclement-weather driving, to the 50 hours of practice that are currently required of teens preparing to take their driving test.
The bill was supported by the Pennsylvania AAA Federation, which surveyed members and found that 96 percent of respondents favored limiting the number of teen passengers a teen driver could transport, and 98 percent favored prohibiting drivers with junior licenses from using a cell phone while driving.
The bill passed in the House by an overwhelming margin, but Lancaster County state Rep. Gordon Denlinger (R-99th) cast an opposing vote.
"In these days of high gas prices, I felt the impact of forcing more cars and more teen drivers onto the road was a negative," Denlinger explained last week.
In his rural district, which includes Ephrata, it would be a hardship for families if teens were forbidden from driving friends to school and extracurricular activities, he said.
Denlinger said his 16-year-old son carpools with friends to school. He said he's "highly confident" that his son and his son's friends are mature enough to handle the responsibility.
"As a parent, if I did not have that confidence, I would be the first one to take the [car] keys away," Denlinger said.
He said he might feel differently if he lived in a "heavy-traffic, urban area." He said he was open to revisiting the issue, if refinements are made to the bill in the Senate.
A safety matterDanielle Klinger, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation, which strongly supported House Bill 67, said PennDOT officials understand that teens need to get where they need to go.
"But this is a matter of safety," Klinger said. "And passenger restrictions have been implemented in other states and have proven effective in other states."
There's a push at the federal level, she said, for states to implement such restrictions.
Klinger said crashes and fatalities involving 16- and 17-year-old drivers have been reduced significantly since the state introduced its Graduated Driver Licensing program in 1999.
It's time now to build on that progress, Klinger said, asserting that the provisions in House Bill 67 will "further reduce crashes and fatalities among young drivers."
According to the Young Driver Research Initiative at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among American teens, and the fatality rate for teen drivers is four times that of drivers between the ages of 25 to 69.
That hospital's Center for Injury Research and Prevention is conducting research into the causes of car accidents involving teen drivers. The center surveyed nearly 5,700 public high school students about their experiences and perceptions related to driving.
Suzanne Hill, the center's director of advocacy and outreach, said the human brain is not fully developed until about the age of 25. So, she said, a teen driver may be hampered when he needs to make a split-second decision in a dangerous situation on the road.
Teenagers tend to be focused on "the here and the now," she said, and they make rookie mistakes, because they can't draw on the memory bank of experiences that helps more mature drivers to negotiate risks on the road.
Hill said that even one teen passenger significantly increases a teen driver's fatal crash risk. Three or more teen passengers can increase that risk by four to five times.
The risk goes both ways: Both teen drivers and teen passengers are at greater risk, Hill said.
By contrast, adult passengers provide a "protective factor" for teen drivers, she said.
The Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP wants to see House Bill 67 made law, Hill said. Research makes it clear that certain privileges — such as transporting friends — should be delayed until teens get experience behind the wheel, she said.
Isabel Bentz, owner of A-1 Mumma's Driving Training School Inc. in Lancaster, said she has spoken to teens who wonder why they should be targeted for new restrictions, when adults also can be distracted drivers.
But she said that more mature drivers, "unless they're under the influence," can more easily anticipate problems on the road. She said she tells her teenage students: "Your business is driving. Disassociate yourself from the socializing in the car. Your friends don't want you to be an idiot driver."
Steve St. John, owner of St. John's Driving School in Millersville, said that when driving is new to teens, they're preoccupied enough with just learning street names, directions and street signs. "There's a lot of visual stimulation that they have to worry about and react to," St. John said.
So eliminating needless distractions is a good idea, he said.
Dick Hibshman taught driver education at Penn Manor High School for three decades, and now has his own driving school. He said that driver education — particularly behind-the-wheel training — has been dropped from many schools. So some kids are getting less instruction about defensive driving, at the very time when they face more distractions than ever, he said.
East Hempfield Township police Officer Jeremy Henry, who is the school resource officer at Hempfield High School, said he has talked to students about fatal accidents he's investigated, and about the harrowing times he's had to notify parents after their children have been killed.
But "nowadays, they're exposed to so much information, and to so many shocking things," Henry said, "it's hard to shock the fear into them. Now it's like, 'Oh yeah, I saw it on TV five times last night.' "
Their apparent need to be connected to their friends every moment of the day also can be problematic, he said, noting that many teens seem to feel that if they don't answer their cell phone when it rings, or respond to a text right away, "their friend is going to hate them forever."
A cell phone ban that only applies to junior drivers might be difficult for police officers to enforce, Henry said. (An amendment to House Bill 67 doesn't ban cell phone use for adult drivers, but does allow for tougher penalties for all drivers who are cited for careless driving, if it's determined that they were distracted by the use of a cell phone or similar device.)
But Henry said he believes teenagers need some help in getting through the period when they are new to driving.
Kevin Robinson, who teaches driver education at Ephrata High School, said he really hopes to see House Bill 67 become law. He said he thinks teens need to practice driving in challenging conditions, such as in the dark and in bad weather. He is enthusiastic about the prospect of limiting the number of passengers junior license-holders can have in their cars.
"Until they get experience," Robinson said, "too many kids in the car just spell trouble."
As for using a cell phone while driving, he said he tells his students, "Don't do it. It's as bad as drinking and driving. ... Your life is more important than texting somebody."
Limiting passengersLocal teens interviewed for this story said they would welcome more nighttime and inclement-weather training. They were on board with a ban on text-messaging and phoning while driving (they said they know friends who do it, but they said they think it's a scary thing to do).
They balked, however, at the proposed legal limit on the number of friends with whom they could drive.
Megan Stauffer, 16, a sophomore at Ephrata High School, said she wants to be able to carpool with friends to school and to track practices. She thinks teen drivers should be allowed to make their own decisions about how many passengers they can safely transport.
"If the driver is responsible, I don't think they'll have a problem with a lot of passengers as long as the passengers are also responsible and not creating a lot of distractions," Megan said.
Alexandra Poff said that the parking lot at her school, Lancaster Mennonite, "is not made for everyone to drive their car." She said that she and her friends take driving very seriously, and if she were driving friends, it would be for a reason. "We wouldn't really just hang in my car to be stupid," Alexandra said.
Sarah Carlson, the L-S sophomore, said, "If we can't have our friends in the car, that means there are going to be a lot more cars out on the road, which is going to hurt the environment," she said.
Sarah said that if a teen driver's parents don't want her to have friends in the car, those parents should be the ones imposing the restriction — as her parents have done.
"For the most part, I think it has to rest with the parents," said her mother, Carolyn Carlson.
But, she added diplomatically, "There are a lot of parents we run into who, well, make different decisions than we do."
Some parents, she said, don't seem willing or able to impose limits on their teen-age drivers, "and that's a big problem."
Carlson said that a year or so ago, when her daughter was being driven home from cheerleading practice by a friend, the friend's car hit a telephone pole. The girls weren't seriously hurt, but Carlson said it "could have been much worse." She said she hopes the experience will remind her daughter to be safe when she's behind the wheel.
Teenagers, she said, tend to feel invincible. "I think to a certain extent, we all like to think, 'That's not going to happen to me.' It takes some years and some maturity to get over that," Carlson said.
Julianne Poff, Alexandra's mother, said she is all for new restrictions on teen drivers. "If they raised [the driving age] to 18, I wouldn't have a problem," she said.
Poff said teen drivers are susceptible to so many distractions: They get in the car, and they turn up the music loud. Their cell phones ring and beep constantly. They scroll through the menu on their iPods looking for the right song. ("I tried that once in the car and I said, 'This is harder than trying to dial a cell phone,' " Poff said.)
"I can see the boys saying, 'Let's go faster! Let's turn up the music! Let me punch you while you're driving! Let me take over the wheel,' " said Poff, whose three children include a 14-year-old boy.
Poff said she is "so happy" for Alexandra that she'll have some independence once she gets her license. She's a "great kid," she said.
But she admitted that she is terrified by the prospect of her daughter on the road. "Every stage brings on its challenges," she said.
Suzanne Cassidy is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is scassidy@lnpnews.com.
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