Pubdate: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA) Copyright: 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Contact: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/letters/sendletter.html Website: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28 Author: Ariel Hart Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth) YOUNG PEOPLE REV UP DANGERS OF DRIVING What you don't know won't hurt you - unless you're on Georgia roads. A new report on young drivers is shedding light on what goes on behind some of those windshields whizzing by. According to results released by the Joshua Brown Foundation, 6.6 percent of about 900 Georgia drivers, mostly teenagers, said in questionnaires that they always or often took illegal drugs before getting behind the wheel. It's more than the number that said they regularly drank and drove. "That's truly frightening," said Pat Wilder, director of the foundation, which is named after a teenager who died after losing control of the car he was driving. There were other distractions and dangerous behaviors, too. More than 40 percent said they sometimes, often or always raced or sped aggressively, and about half said they joked around or drove aggressively. Well over half said they used cellphones and ate while driving. It may be frightening, but it's no surprise, said a handful of young people interviewed last week in metro Atlanta. Dennis Sutton, 21, said teenagers might take dangers seriously, "but once you get your friends in the car, it's a whole other situation." His friend Anthony Fernandez, 20, agreed. He said when he started driving at 16 he knew drinking and driving was dangerous, but he only took it seriously after doing it and seeing he couldn't control his car. Fortunately, he didn't crash while drunk, he said. But he did crash three times in his first year of driving, he added. Not since. "In all actuality, experience is going to really do it," Fernandez said. He said no classes, awareness campaigns or laws could make kids drive safely until they felt the dangers personally and were financially responsible for the damage. "Kids are funny. They say, 'Oh Mom, I don't do that.' But their peers have more power." The study results don't claim to represent Georgia teens overall, just the assertions by about 900 mostly teenage subjects who were questioned about their own driving, their peers' and their adult drivers. They were in four Georgia high schools and some commercial driver's education programs; some were in National Safety Council defensive driving classes, many of whose students are there by court order. Results from a youth detention facility weren't used in this study but will be used later. Wilder and Dr. Carol Pierannunzi, director of the A.L. Burruss Institute of Public Service at Kennesaw State University, who worked on the study, said the scientists hoped its results could be used to shift driver's education toward experiencing realistic situations - not just rote understanding of the rules - and to highlight the role that attitude and personality play in driving. The foundation has set up a classroom at Cartersville High with computer driving simulators, and Wilder said it hoped to develop a more elaborate simulator. "It's that risk-taking personality," Pierannunzi said. "If they're willing to do drugs, they're not going to have any second thoughts about doing that and driving a car." As striking as the figures are on the students' driving, she added, they are probably low, because polled people in general tend to underestimate their own bad behavior. While 19.6 percent of the students said they often or always used a cellphone while driving, they said 29.8 percent of their friends and 29.5 percent of the adults they rode with did. Wilder said the adult statistics also showed that kids are learning the behavior they observe in their parents. She added that they even see their peers as more law-abiding role models than adults. Bob Dallas, director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety, agreed that kids learn what they see. "When do our kids learn to drive? As soon as you take them out of the hospital and put them in the car seat," he said. He also praised the changes to Georgia law in 1997 that helped the fatal crash rate involving 16-year-old drivers fall 37 percent. That law gave new drivers their independence gradually, placing restrictions on driving at night and having passengers in the vehicle. Michelle Fontaine, 19, said real-world education helped her. She took a two-day course where students drove in a big parking lot and learned firsthand how to deal with dangerous driving situations. Shortly afterward she found herself making a turn too fast near the Mall of Georgia, she said, quashed her instinct to just slam on the brakes, and managed to control the car. "It's saved my life in some situations," said Fontaine, whose aunt works at the state Department of Transportation. When it comes to taking drugs and driving, Fontaine, a photography student, said she never would, but she knows others do, maybe thinking that police can't detect drug use if there's no paraphernalia in the car. "I actually hear a lot of kids [say] like, 'I drive better when I'm high, it makes me more calm.' " She said trying to explain they're wrong is "just a waste of breath." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek