Latest / Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations / May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor. Celebrating 20 years of improved young driver safety.

Transcript

May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor. Celebrating 20 years of improved young driver safety. · Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations

• 0:16
  Bernie Fette (host): Hello again.
• 0:16
  Bernie Fette (host): This is Thinking Transportation, a podcast about how we get ourselves and our stuff from one place to another.
• 0:25
  Bernie Fette (host): I'm Bernie Fette from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
• 0:28
  Bernie Fette: Car crashes are, far and away, the leading cause of serious injury for people under age 25 in America.
• 0:38
  Bernie Fette: And for many years, also the leading cause of death for teenagers.
• 0:43
  Bernie Fette: Things are actually getting better because the number of deaths is declining.
• 0:48
  Bernie Fette: Still, only suicide claims more teen lives every year than car crashes.
• 0:54
  Bernie Fette: Laws have gotten stronger and vehicles have gotten safer.
• 0:57
  Bernie Fette: And hundreds of high schools across the nation have adopted a peer-driven program called Teens in the Driver Seat, aimed at reducing teen traffic injuries and fatalities.
• 1:09
  Bernie Fette: Russell Henk, a senior research engineer at TTI, started Teens in the Driver Seat almost 20 years ago.
• 1:16
  Bernie Fette: As a parent himself, he knew that teenagers are much more likely to listen to each other than they are to listen to parents or other adults.
• 1:25
  Bernie Fette: He's with us today to talk about the progress toward making driving safer for novice drivers, and the work that still remains on that front.
• 1:34
  Bernie Fette: Welcome to Thinking Transportation, Russell.
• 1:35
  Russell Henk (guest): Thanks for having me.
• 1:37
  Bernie Fette: So car crashes, number-one cause of serious injury for people under the age of 25 throughout this country and for most of the last few decades, the leading cause of death for teenagers.
• 1:49
  Bernie Fette: Why is that?
• 1:51
  Russell Henk: It really comes down to two things.
• 1:53
  Russell Henk: One is brain development.
• 1:55
  Russell Henk: It's not that we have anything wrong with any of us individually.
• 1:59
  Russell Henk: It's just the way the Good Lord made us.
• 2:01
  Russell Henk: Our brains are not fully developed until about the age of 25.
• 2:05
  Russell Henk: The front part, the prefrontal cortex in particular, helps us with executive decision-making.
• 2:12
  Russell Henk: And we are all, just as human beings, at a fundamental disadvantage until that happens.
• 2:17
  Russell Henk: So, you know, in most states in America, young people start getting behind the wheel for the first time at age 15 or 16.
• 2:23
  Russell Henk: They have another 10 years before they're really fully equipped in terms of their brain making good decisions, particularly short decisions on the fly, until they're age 25.
• 2:35
  Russell Henk: The other thing as it relates to driving is, there is just no substitute for hands-on, real-world driving experience.
• 2:45
  Russell Henk: Nobody's born a great driver.
• 2:46
  Russell Henk: We all need that training.
• 2:49
  Russell Henk: You know, we'll probably talk about things like driver training and other things like that, but that's the bottom line.
• 2:54
  Russell Henk: Until we can get them, you know, the national standard suggested guideline is 50 hours of hands-on practice behind the wheel before they should be driving by themselves.
• 3:04
  Russell Henk: And it's just a rarity.
• 3:06
  Russell Henk: There are very, very few young people, novice drivers, you know, especially in the teenage age bracket that are getting those precious hours behind the wheel.
• 3:17
  Bernie Fette: So whether it's driving or learning to play the guitar or the piano, you just really need quite a few hours of on-the-job training, so to speak, to get it right.
• 3:26
  Russell Henk: Yeah.
• 3:26
  Russell Henk: Absolutely.
• 3:27
  Russell Henk: Yeah.
• 3:27
  Russell Henk: That's a good comparison.
• 3:28
  Russell Henk: There's just absolutely no substitute for it.
• 3:31
  Russell Henk: There's some things we can do to help, but that's the bottom line.
• 3:34
  Bernie Fette: Yeah.
• 3:35
  Bernie Fette: Are there any ways that driver training, driver education, has changed since the days that you and I got out there and got into the car with the Department of Public Safety trooper?
• 3:47
  Russell Henk: Well, you know, many moons ago when we were young, driver education was still offered in a lot of schools and, and sometimes it was even free.
• 3:55
  Russell Henk: And that's non-existent.
• 3:56
  Russell Henk: So unless a parent, a family is going to pay for that driver training, whether it's after school on campus from somebody who's trained to do it or going to a local driving school, it's a little more difficult.
• 4:09
  Russell Henk: It becomes to be...
• 4:10
  Russell Henk: becomes a cost issue for some folks.
• 4:13
  Russell Henk: And there have been some developments.
• 4:14
  Russell Henk: There's definitely in the past five, ten years, much more online access to driver training.
• 4:23
  Russell Henk: There's driver simulator-type of training.
• 4:25
  Russell Henk: But again, what the research bears out is there's precious little evidence that that is actually influencing(decreasing, to be specific) the frequency of car crashes involving young drivers.
• 4:40
  Russell Henk: Again, it's back to that hands-on practicing.
• 4:43
  Russell Henk: Given our COVID environment, piling three or four, you know, young people in the car to get that hands-on experience with a trained driver training expert--that's really not happening right now, either.
• 4:55
  Bernie Fette: So whenever it comes to trying to keep them on the straight and narrow, whenever they do finally get behind the wheel, we have the benefit of traffic laws, traffic enforcement.
• 5:07
  Bernie Fette: But if we consider that to be the stick, how much of the remedy here really depends more on the carrot?
• 5:15
  Bernie Fette: And I think that you guys have actually been working in that area a bit, haven't you?
• 5:18
  Russell Henk: We have.
• 5:18
  Russell Henk: There's an important role for enforcement and good policy.
• 5:23
  Russell Henk: And we have a lot of good examples of that.
• 5:26
  Russell Henk: The bottom line is there's no silver bullet.
• 5:28
  Russell Henk: We need lots of tools in the safety toolbox and what we've really tried to do, you know starting with Teens in the Driver Seat at the high-school level and branching out to junior high and college peer-to-peer initiatives, is really as opposed to kind of a"cuffs and clubs" approach to things.
• 5:47
  Russell Henk: And there's a time and a place for that.
• 5:49
  Russell Henk: Ours is really what I would call more of an incentive-based"cameras and cash"[approach]. We really try to put young people in the forefront as an engaged part of the solution. And when they do great things in their community, we shine a light on it. And we have an awards program that they can win, you know, a thousand dollars cash for their school. If they're doing great outreach in their communities, we've seen it to be quite effective. Again, more of a positive, carrot approach to things is as you coined it.
• 6:19
  Bernie Fette: Yeah, and of course, it's hard to talk about anything these days without putting it in a context of the pandemic that we're all still trying to get through.
• 6:28
  Bernie Fette: When we consider that as you know, the public health crisis that it's been, it's probably not a stretch to consider young people and car crashes as its own public health crisis that's been going on for quite a while.
• 6:42
  Bernie Fette: Don't we have some parallel between those two in terms of personal responsibility?
• 6:47
  Russell Henk: I absolutely agree with what you're saying there.
• 6:49
  Russell Henk: I see a clear parallel.
• 6:52
  Russell Henk: And the way I look at it is just as you know, given COVID, just as we mask up for our own personal safety, but also the well- being of others that we're going to interact with out there in the public, we should do that when we're behind the wheel.
• 7:07
  Russell Henk: You know, your smartphone would be a good example--of putting the phone down for your own sake and then the sake of everybody else you're going to interact with out there when you're on the roadway.
• 7:18
  Russell Henk: And to me, you know, we've got kind of a catch phrase that I've been using as a part of our programming with young people--be safe, be smart, be socially responsible.
• 7:29
  Russell Henk: It clearly applies to the COVID environment as well as being a good, responsible, safe driver out there in your community.
• 7:37
  Bernie Fette: So sticking with that parallel between the pandemic and car crashes, what it comes down to is one precaution may not be enough, but maybe a combination of more than one might do the trick?
• 7:49
  Russell Henk: Exactly.
• 7:50
  Russell Henk: It's a probability issue to me in some ways.
• 7:53
  Russell Henk: In the pandemic context, in the safe driving context, you want to put the odds in your favor.
• 7:58
  Russell Henk: You know, maybe the mask isn't a hundred percent perfect solution, but it mitigates the risk.
• 8:04
  Russell Henk: And that's what, you know, again, buckling up and putting down your phone and not excessively speeding--it all mitigates your risk.
• 8:12
  Russell Henk: It doesn't guarantee the fact that you're not going to be in a car crash or somebody else is maybe even going to hit you even when you're doing the right thing, but it puts the odds in your favor.
• 8:21
  Bernie Fette: Right.
• 8:21
  Bernie Fette: Just because you've got your seatbelt on doesn't necessarily mean that you are you've got any guarantees, but it sure offers some assurances.
• 8:29
  Russell Henk: Well, and it greatly enhances your chance of survival.
• 8:32
  Bernie Fette: Right.
• 8:33
  Bernie Fette: And especially when you combine it with following the speed limit and the possibility that in a crash, you might have the assistance of your airbag also.
• 8:41
  Russell Henk: Exactly.
• 8:41
  Bernie Fette: Russell, let's talk just a minute about when we're having this conversation.
• 8:48
  Bernie Fette: People are hearing this during Distracted Driving Awareness Month.
• 8:52
  Bernie Fette: Was that a lot of the motivation behind the app that you guys developed?
• 8:55
  Russell Henk: It was.
• 8:57
  Russell Henk: We've been working on a smartphone app.
• 9:00
  Russell Henk: We have recently launched the latest generation of that as an entire TTI in-house project.
• 9:08
  Russell Henk: We're excited about that, but yes, one of the primary goals of that smartphone app is to deter distracted driving.
• 9:15
  Russell Henk: So yeah, April's absolutely a timely part of the calendar, National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, to focus on that.
• 9:22
  Russell Henk: We've seen a lot of success.
• 9:24
  Russell Henk: We did a pretty rigorous analysis of the early pilot project, and we were able to decrease the frequency of distracted driving by 65 percent.
• 9:34
  Russell Henk: So we saw some really good success and very similar to, you know, again, back to the way we really try to run this whole program and everything we do.
• 9:42
  Russell Henk: It's very incentive-based.
• 9:44
  Russell Henk: Our slogan--kind of, call to action--for the smartphone app is"responsibility has its rewards." So the way the app works is that the young drivers, their reward system is really structured for the drivers aged 25 and younger.
• 9:59
  Russell Henk: And if you have a safe trip, you're going to earn points.
• 10:03
  Russell Henk: And as you accumulate safe trips, you're going to earn gift cards, and you can cash those gift cards out for$10 gift cards for Amazon, Chick-fil-A, and Starbucks at this point in time.
• 10:14
  Russell Henk: So we released the Apple iOS version back in early October--so, just a few months ago.
• 10:19
  Russell Henk: We're seeing a really nice steady increase in downloads and users each month.
• 10:25
  Russell Henk: And we've already given out about$2,000 in gift cards.
• 10:27
  Russell Henk: So it's great.
• 10:28
  Russell Henk: It's exciting.
• 10:29
  Russell Henk: And the early evidence of this last generation of the app is it's, once again having the impact, the positive influence on driving that we had hoped.
• 10:38
  Russell Henk: It is also targeted at extreme speeding.
• 10:41
  Russell Henk: So not just distractions, but distractions again, back to your question, is a huge part of what we're trying to prevent.
• 10:48
  Bernie Fette: That sounds really encouraging, like the whole idea of the carrot in this case seems to be bearing some fruit for you; seems to be working out pretty well.
• 10:57
  Russell Henk: Yeah.
• 10:57
  Russell Henk: So a couple of unique things about our smartphone app is that it's all or nothing.
• 11:04
  Russell Henk: There's no partial credit.
• 11:06
  Russell Henk: And if there is a distraction at any point in that trip or excessive speeding at any point in that trip, you will have points deducted from your driving score.
• 11:15
  Russell Henk: You get a driving score at the end of each.
• 11:17
  Russell Henk: So if you get a hundred--score of a hundred--that means you were a safe driver; that was a safe trip and you're going to earn points.
• 11:23
  Russell Henk: Again, there's maybe some instances of some apps out there that will give partial credit.
• 11:28
  Russell Henk: So that the time you spent not messing with your phone, you're still gonna earn points.
• 11:33
  Russell Henk: I feel that sends the wrong message.
• 11:35
  Russell Henk: That was not a safe trip.
• 11:38
  Russell Henk: Another distinction is that we also give extra credit and they can earn points towards their all-star awards program for their school each year, which again is an integral part of what we do with our youth transportation safety program--again Teens in the Driver Seat is our largest component of that at the high school level--so they can earn points for themselves personally, but they're also helping their team and their school earn points and cash awards as well.
• 12:05
  Russell Henk: Sometimes an individual is more motivated to do something for the sake of others than even themselves.
• 12:13
  Russell Henk: So in this case, you have that dual motivation to use the app.
• 12:19
  Bernie Fette: We talked a little bit earlier about the statistics and how you can look at the statistics from one perspective or another over the last few decades.
• 12:31
  Bernie Fette: One thing we've noticed is that crash deaths have been dropping steadily for a period of years and sort of leveling off recently, which makes me wonder, have we reached a point of diminishing returns on our efforts?
• 12:46
  Russell Henk: Well, you know, thinking of(again) the tools in the toolbox and policy being one of those that I think has definitely helped over the last 20 years, at least in America, for sure, and that's graduated driver licensing.
• 12:59
  Russell Henk: You know, barring the prohibition of driving to the age of 25, again, going back to brain development, I think it's going to be difficult to move the needle as much as we have the last 20 years.
• 13:11
  Russell Henk: Again, there's some good news there.
• 13:13
  Russell Henk: You know, the downside is we're still losing young people by the thousands.
• 13:18
  Russell Henk: You have 2,500 to 3,000 a year; and injuries multiply that by a hundred.
• 13:22
  Russell Henk: So I think, you know, I think our best bets in relative terms are probably expanded education and technology.
• 13:30
  Russell Henk: I think technology is probably our single best hope.
• 13:34
  Russell Henk: And that's, again, what we're trying to accomplish in a sense with our smartphone app.
• 13:38
  Russell Henk: Autonomous vehicles--I think we're still a ways out.
• 13:43
  Russell Henk: That will help; I think we're still probably 10-plus years away for a couple reasons.
• 13:47
  Russell Henk: One is market penetration in general.
• 13:49
  Russell Henk: I don't think that a large portion of our population can afford it even as adults.
• 13:54
  Russell Henk: And then you factor in a family, parents being able to afford a car with those bells and whistles for their youngest driver.
• 14:02
  Russell Henk: It's going to take us some time to get there.
• 14:04
  Bernie Fette: Yeah.
• 14:04
  Bernie Fette: That's not all that practical for most families, I guess.
• 14:08
  Bernie Fette: You raised a really important point though, I think about the age.
• 14:11
  Bernie Fette: Even if we delay the time that a young novice driver begins to drive, we've still got the brain development issue, and there's still the experience issue, right?
• 14:21
  Russell Henk: Sure.
• 14:21
  Russell Henk: No, you're absolutely right.
• 14:23
  Russell Henk: And that's been, I think an unintentional consequence, at least a little bit of a way with graduated driver licensing.
• 14:30
  Russell Henk: What we're seeing in the data is a shift where the fatality, serious injuries for novice drivers, used to be centered around the age of 16-17 years old.
• 14:42
  Russell Henk: It's now shifted a bit to 18-19 years old and some instances, not everyone of course, but they don't want to mess with the graduated driver licensing constraints and restrictions.
• 14:52
  Russell Henk: So they're waiting until the age of 18 when, and most states that doesn't apply anymore, but you're absolutely right.
• 14:57
  Russell Henk: They're still a novice driver.
• 14:59
  Russell Henk: They've shifted that timeframe a couple of years in ballpark terms.
• 15:04
  Russell Henk: And we're seeing an increase in again, fatalities and injuries for 18- and 19-year-olds.
• 15:10
  Russell Henk: So it's a little complicated.
• 15:12
  Russell Henk: And again, I'm not suggesting that if we had, you know, an idealistic world and it's probably in the range of fantasy where, you know, the law in the United States would be, no one starts to drive till the age of 25.
• 15:26
  Russell Henk: I think the science suggests that that clearly should help us, but they're still going to be brand-new drivers.
• 15:33
  Russell Henk: And there's that hands-on learning experience.
• 15:36
  Russell Henk: They're not going to be the best drivers on the road.
• 15:39
  Bernie Fette: So in terms of experience, it's a classic example of us, you know, with a policy like that, kicking the can down the road.
• 15:45
  Russell Henk: Yes.
• 15:46
  Russell Henk: I would agree with that.
• 15:47
  Russell Henk: At least to an extent, yes.
• 15:50
  Bernie Fette: We have heard from some corners of this discussion over the years about how there's a certain acceptance of risk that we pay as a society for the freedom of mobility.
• 16:02
  Bernie Fette: What are your thoughts on that?
• 16:04
  Russell Henk: I think there's no question that it's absolutely true.
• 16:08
  Russell Henk: It's the double-edged sword.
• 16:10
  Russell Henk: It's the Catch-22, call it what you will, but it absolutely is--if we want to continue to have the freedom of flexibility, you know, individually and collectively in our society, again, at least for now, and has been the case for decades.
• 16:26
  Russell Henk: It's a by-product of that system.
• 16:30
  Bernie Fette: What it comes down to is not eliminating risk entirely.
• 16:33
  Bernie Fette: We're really minimizing risk to the best of our ability.
• 16:37
  Russell Henk: Yes.
• 16:37
  Russell Henk: Our role, our mission is to mitigate that risk.
• 16:41
  Russell Henk: And in many cases, prevent it.
• 16:43
  Russell Henk: That's the good news in the big picture.
• 16:45
  Russell Henk: Car crashes are 99 percent of the time preventable.
• 16:48
  Bernie Fette: Right, right.
• 16:50
  Bernie Fette: You've been for close to 20 years now, you're coming up on the 20-year anniversary of the Teens in the Driver Seat program that you created.
• 16:58
  Bernie Fette: So you've been studying the teenage brain from a distance; but as a dad, you've been studying the teenage brain up close and personal.
• 17:06
  Bernie Fette: How has one of those influenced your approach with the other?
• 17:11
  Russell Henk: I think a lot of us, as parents, as we raise our children and they get to their teenage years, which are challenging.
• 17:20
  Russell Henk: In many cases, we're viewed as some of the dumbest people on the planet.
• 17:24
  Russell Henk: They are not going to necessarily listen to us as much as we would hope, we like.
• 17:28
  Russell Henk: The reality is they do.
• 17:29
  Russell Henk: They listen to...
• 17:30
  Russell Henk: they're listening a lot of times we don't think they are.
• 17:33
  Russell Henk: So, you know, my approach to this, knowing what I knew, I went out and I paid a professional driving instructor because my hope and my belief was there was a higher probability they would listen to that person.
• 17:45
  Russell Henk: This was a trained professional.
• 17:46
  Russell Henk: We were paying for that.
• 17:48
  Russell Henk: And then I supplemented that with many, many hours of on-the-road, real-world driving experience.
• 17:57
  Bernie Fette: Right, and reinforcement.
• 17:57
  Russell Henk: And I worked and they, you know they...
• 18:02
  Russell Henk: I wasn't their favorite person at that stage of things, but I was not, knowing what I knew, I was not just going to cut them loose.
• 18:09
  Russell Henk: Okay.
• 18:10
  Russell Henk: Well, you went to driver's ed; you're fine.
• 18:11
  Russell Henk: We practiced, practiced, practiced.
• 18:14
  Russell Henk: You know, we did our best to get to that 50 hours of hands-on, on-the-road practice.
• 18:19
  Russell Henk: I wasn't gonna be able to have a clear conscience and sleep well at night, knowing that I didn't do what I felt like I needed to do.
• 18:26
  Russell Henk: And that's,--it's hard.
• 18:27
  Russell Henk: People are so busy, but you know, if you're a parent and you've got a teenager in your life, maybe you're a grandparent, you got a teenager in your life.
• 18:35
  Russell Henk: That is the best thing we can do is help them get that practice.
• 18:38
  Bernie Fette: Right.
• 18:38
  Russell Henk: And it is, I mean, you know, carving out 50 hours; it's going to take you months, but it's worth it.
• 18:46
  Russell Henk: It could save their life.
• 18:47
  Russell Henk: And it can spare you from one of the hardest things that we as parents...
• 18:52
  Russell Henk: we're just not programmed to experience the loss of our child.
• 18:55
  Russell Henk: It is worth it.
• 18:57
  Bernie Fette: Right.
• 18:57
  Bernie Fette: So over those 20 years, this has been personal for you, hasn't it?
• 19:02
  Russell Henk: It has.
• 19:03
  Russell Henk: This really started in response to a horrible string of crashes that we were experiencing in the San Antonio, Texas, area.
• 19:10
  Russell Henk: We lost 10 teenagers over a six-week period back in 2001.
• 19:14
  Russell Henk: Both of my children were born, but they were very young.
• 19:18
  Russell Henk: Christian was a toddler, and it was just being played out in the news every day--radio, television.
• 19:25
  Russell Henk: And I was watching the response from the community, and it was more of the same.
• 19:30
  Russell Henk: It was all,"we need stricter laws.
• 19:31
  Russell Henk: They were just a bunch of dumb teenagers.
• 19:33
  Russell Henk: They're probably all drunk." Alcohol was not involved in any of the crashes.
• 19:37
  Russell Henk: And it was making me sick to my stomach to see it play out in the media, having two young children of my own.
• 19:43
  Russell Henk: And, I just felt really strongly motivated to try and do something different.
• 19:51
  Russell Henk: You know, we're a research organization.
• 19:52
  Russell Henk: So I did some research and there was evidence that peer-to-peer had been very successful for things like teen pregnancy and smoking, but nobody had ever really leveraged it for the leading cause of injury and death for our young people in our country, and that's car crashes.
• 20:08
  Russell Henk: So, we did a pilot project.
• 20:10
  Russell Henk: We set out, we learned a lot.
• 20:12
  Russell Henk: We've been fortunate enough to build upon that and turn it into a national best-practice program.
• 20:17
  Russell Henk: And it's been great.
• 20:19
  Russell Henk: There's no question that we've saved families and friends from misery.
• 20:25
  Russell Henk: I think we've probably saved hundreds of lives at this point.
• 20:28
  Russell Henk: It's been an honor and a privilege to work on it.
• 20:31
  Bernie Fette: Well, congratulations on the 20-year mark, Russell.
• 20:34
  Bernie Fette: Keep up the good work, man.
• 20:34
  Russell Henk: Thank you.
• 20:35
  Bernie Fette: Every car crash death is tragic and most are preventable--given the right approach.
• 20:44
  Bernie Fette: What resonates for one young driver might be in-one-ear-and-out-the-other for a different driver.
• 20:51
  Bernie Fette: That's especially true if the brain between those ears is still a long way from mature development.
• 20:58
  Bernie Fette: In trying to minimize risk and keep things safe for the youngest people behind the wheel, it helps to know when and where the carrot holds more promise than the stick, and to remember that the messenger is often just as important as the message.
• 21:16
  Bernie Fette: Thank you for listening to Thinking Transportation.
• 21:19
  Bernie Fette: We hope that you'll subscribe to our podcast and share it, too.
• 21:24
  Bernie Fette: In our next episode, we'll visit with Brianne Glover, an expert on the economics of transportation infrastructure.
• 21:31
  Bernie Fette: She'll help us understand why the way that we've always paid for roads and bridges worked pretty well for a number of years, but maybe not so much anymore.
• 21:42
  Bernie Fette: Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System.
• 21:51
  Bernie Fette: The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau.
• 21:54
  Bernie Fette: I'm your writer and host, Bernie Fette.
• 21:57
  Bernie Fette: See you next time.