Although home-schoolers have won their freedom to teach their children at home in every state, one issue continues to be a problem. It’s whether parents should be allowed to teach their children how to drive.

Despite the freedom to teach every other subject at home, parents in most states are forbidden to teach classroom driver’s education. (Maryland does not allow parents to teach the classroom portion of driver’s education, but Virginia does. The District has no classroom requirement.)

HSLDA strongly supports the position that since parents are able to teach all the other subjects and parents are responsible for the well-being and safety of their children, they also should have the right to teach their own children the classroom part of driver’s education.

It was not always this way. In the 1940s and ’50s, parents were the primary driver’s education teachers for their children. In the 1960s and ’70s, the focus shifted to school-taught driver’s education programs. This shift was made in the hopes of assisting teenagers with their driving skills and tests. However, this has not improved teenage driving safety.

More 16-year-old drivers are dying in vehicle crashes than ever before, even though the number of traffic deaths has declined among the driving population in general. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2006, 6,964 people were killed in crashes involving drivers age 16 to 20, and 3,374 drivers age 16 to 20 were killed in 2005.

The crash risk is particularly high during the first year a teenager is eligible for a driver’s license. The problem is worse in the United States than in many other countries because we allow teenagers to get driver’s licenses at an earlier age, and licenses are inexpensive and easy to obtain.

If there’s a better method of training teens to drive, shouldn’t parents be allowed to make that choice?

In October 2000, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs conducted a research project on the effectiveness of parent-taught driver’s training. In comparing teens who had completed a National Driver Training Institute parent-taught driver’s education program with National Insurance Co. statistics for teen drivers, the study found the parent-taught teens had fewer speeding tickets, fewer accidents, fewer tickets for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and fewer traffic fatalities.

The insurance industry and many state legislatures have been moving toward a system of graduated driver’s licenses, in which a student has certain restrictions imposed — they must drive with an adult in the car, for example — until they reach a certain age. The requirement for driver’s education has been maintained in many states as part of this program. Also, due to financial challenges, many public schools are dropping their driver’s education programs. This forces parents to pay for commercial driving schools when they could just do the job themselves.

If you live in a state that doesn’t provide for parent-taught driver’s education, the only way to change the law is through the legislature. At a time when our country needs to see more parent-child interaction, parent-taught education is the right step to encourage more quality time for parents with their teens.

We have no doubt the effectiveness of parent-taught driver’s education will become evident because of the same principles that make home-schooling successful academically. The tutorial method with the low student-teacher ratio and individualized instruction produces outstanding results.

The bottom line is that no one cares more about the safety of their children than the parent as no one has more to lose than the parent when a child is ill-prepared to receive a driver’s license.

If you would like to see your state adopt parent-taught driver’s education as an option, contact HSLDA at 540/338-5600 or www.hslda.org.

• Michael Smith is the president of the Home School Legal Defense Association. http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/17/home-schooling-choice-sought-driver-training/

PERSONS REQUIRED TO HAVE CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION:

Comprehensive education

Any person under the age of 16 who wants to obtain a permit in Colorado must first complete a driver education requirment. Comprehensive driver education in Colorado consists of 30 class hours and may be completed in an actual classroom setting or it may be completed at home at the teen’s own pace and time. National Driver Training offers both classroom lecture and home-study programs to allow 15 year olds to obtain a permit.

Driver Awareness

Teens who seek a permit between the ages of 15 and 6 months and 16 years may choose to complete a 4 hour driver awareness lecture instead of comprehensive driver education. These classes are not available online and must be completed in a classroom setting. Although this class may be completed before the student turns 15 and 6 months, the teen will not be eligible for a permit with this class until 15 and 6 months.

When five high school cheerleaders in western New York died in an automobile accident after going out to celebrate their graduation, a community was crushed.

Now, authorities say it is possible that the fiery, head-on collision with a tractor trailer may have been caused by a distracted driver sending text messages.

“Cell phones are a distraction and could be a contributing factor in this accident,” said Ontario County Sheriff Phillip Povero.

Cell phone records show a text message was sent from the phone belonging to the driver, Bailey Goodman, at 10:05:52. A reply was sent to her phone at 10:06:29. Thirty-eight seconds later, someone called 911 to report the accident that killed Bailey and her friends.

“Cell phone records indicate the phone was in use,” Povero said. “We’ll never be able to clearly state that she was the one doing the text messages.”

Text messaging may be one of the most dangerous distractions for any driver.

“Clearly, the problem with texting is the same portion of your mind that you need to be using when you’re focusing on the road is the same portion that you’re using when you’re texting,” said Michael Pina of AAA.

For young, inexperienced drivers, texting could be even more dangerous. And yet, 46 percent of teens in a new AAA/Seventeen magazine survey admitted to texting while driving. Fifty-one percent said they talk on cell phones while driving, another distraction.

“I do and it’s very dangerous,” one woman said. “I have these little flashes in my mind of thinking about getting into an accident while I’m doing it.”

Four states have made it illegal to drive and talk on a cell phone without a hands-free device. But so far, only Washington state has enacted a law banning text messaging while driving.


Corey Reynolds
October 27, 2006

Many headaches and potentially dangerous situations can be cured with adequate preparation. Every car should have a kit with certain important winter driving items like a blanket, water, jumper cables and a first-aid kit.


Learning to drive to Pueblo
by Rich Tosches

There’s a feeling you get when your son begins the process of learning how to drive a car, a feeling that’s indescribable. Although, if I had to take a whack at describing the feeling and put it on some kind of list, I’d say it’s somewhere between watching Linda Blair’s head spin around in The Exorcist and the intestinal pain you experience when you eat a plateful of rancid sea bass.

However, it’s important to note that I’m going into the whole thing with a good attitude.

Nick has driven before. He drove my truck on a gravel road high in the mountains when he was 13, his keen driving skills sending tens of thousands of terrified deer, chipmunks and porcupines stampeding over a cliff to their deaths. And he drove my truck on a friend’s sprawling ranch when he was 14. On that day, Nick came to a narrow spot in the road and had to choose between driving over a little stick that was lying on the right side of the road or plunging off the left side of the road, down a steep ravine and into a pond. His brain gathered the information, quickly processed it in that teen-ager way and then he made his decision. I reacted by screaming, grabbing the steering wheel and swerving the vehicle back onto the road. Over the little stick.

But Nick turned 15 in March and this driving thing has become real. Fortunately, he’s spent most of his life observing the world-class driving skills of motorists here in Colorado Springs. Because he’s been studying us so intently, he’s confident that now he, too, can roar mindlessly through a red light at 60 mph while talking on his cell phone.

Serving number 6

A few weeks ago I enrolled him in a National Driver Training Institute program. He was allowed to take the learner’s permit test that same day and he passed it, somehow correctly answering really tough multiple-choice questions that they put on the test, questions such as:

The speed limit in a school zone when the yellow warning lights are flashing is:

A) 20 mph

B) The Adriatic Sea.

C) Chester the Wonder Horse

D) Who Let The Dogs Out?

E) Coal!

Nick got that one wrong, but according to the woman at the Driver Training Institute, he only got two others incorrect and therefore had passed his learner’s permit exam. Thinking he might be legally allowed to drive my vehicle home that afternoon, I suddenly felt a great sense of pride in this young man as I calmly walked outside and threw my set of car keys onto the roof of the building.

Luckily for me — and the 15 nuns, each of them carrying an orphan that I’m pretty sure Nick would have run over in a crosswalk on our way home — the state of Colorado would not allow him to drive just yet.

First, he had to take his test results to the Department of Motor Vehicles, fill out some more paperwork, have his picture taken and obtain his actual permit. The DMV office was next to the driving school office on Austin Bluffs Parkway, so we walked over and took a number. I didn’t write this down anywhere so I’m not positive, but I believe we had number 894 and the red neon sign on the wall announced that they were currently serving number 6.

In and out in 40 minutes

We joined a huge throng of mothers and fathers sitting with their teen-aged children. The scene could have been a Norman Rockwell painting — you know, if Rockwell had painted angry teen-agers slumped in chairs, impatiently clicking their metal tongue studs against their teeth.

After a few minutes, I asked the guy next to me how long he’d been waiting. He said he’d been there for four hours. I thought he was kidding, so I laughed and jokingly asked, “What kind of an idiot would wait four hours for anything, unless, of course, you were waiting in a line to slap the hell out of Doug Bruce?”

The guy moved to the other side of the room. Turns out he wasn’t kidding.

Our state is experiencing budget problems, as you know. Experts believe that by 2010 Colorado will be so broke it will only be able to hire 4,000 new workers to lean on their shovels at the intersection of Woodmen Road and I-25. Because of these budget problems, our village now has just one DMV office where you can get a driver’s license or learner’s permit. And people are, indeed, forced to wait four and even five hours for their licenses.

So I did the sensible thing. I took my son to Pueblo. In Pueblo, there’s hardly ever a line for anything. The exception comes each September, when State Fair executives set up a carnival booth and invite people to “Step right up and watch us guess how much money the State Fair lost this year!”

Anyway, we were out of the DMV office in Pueblo in 40 minutes. My son had his learner’s permit. And because of a new law that went into effect July 1, he must wait one year before he gets his license. So it looks like I’ll be the passenger in my Chevy Suburban for the next 12 months.

As soon as Nick climbs onto the roof of the Pueblo DMV office and finds the keys.

– richt@csindy.com

STATE KEEPS INCREASING RESTRICTIONS ON YOUNG DRIVERS

By MEGAN ROLLAND THE GAZETTE

To a 16-year-old squirming with excitement, a six-month delay in attaining speed, freedom, a driver’s license, can seem like an eternity.

And restraints that kick in even after the rite of passage has been granted seem beyond unjust.

“We’ve had teenagers who have said, ‘I think the governor is just trying to keep me from dating,’” said Steve Williams, Colorado Springs office manager of National Driver Training, a nonprofit driver education program.

Seven laws enacted in the past two years have complicated the original graduated driver’s license law, passed in 1999, to ensure that minor drivers have experience before obtaining complete driving privileges.

Colorado parents, teens, police, driver education instructors, and even licensing agents aren’t certain anymore who can do what at what age without consulting a complicated chart.

“They change all the time, and I have found that very few people understand them,” said Ken Hughes, manager of American Driving Academy Inc. in Colorado Springs. He agrees with the principle of the 1999 law, but said he is still waiting to see the benefits of the many additions since then.

Automobiles are the leading killer of people under age 25, and police officers who respond to fatal crashes are applauding the legislators’ many restrictions.

“A little bit of confusion to save handfuls of lives every year is worth it,” said John Anderson, program manager for Alive at 25, a Colorado State Patrol driver awareness program.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently released a study that said the most comprehensive graduated driver’s license programs, including Colorado’s, have achieved about a 20 percent reduction in the number of 16-year-old drivers involved in fatal accidents.

The study compiled information from 36 states with graduated licensing programs and seven without. Forty-one states have some type of program.

In Colorado last year, 47 people ages 16 to 20 were killed in wrecks involving teen drivers. In 2004, that number was almost double, with 81 such fatalities, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Anderson said he has helped pound the sobering statistics of teenage driving into about 12,000 young drivers’ minds every year.

About half of the people enrolled in Alive at 25 are court-ordered traffic violators; the other half are enrolled to get their instructional permits at age 15½.

Instructional permits are restricted licenses that allow minors to drive only with someone 21 or older.

Minors in Colorado have three options: take a 36-hour driver’s education class and get a permit at age 15, take a much shorter driver awareness program such as Alive at 25 and get a permit at age 15½, or take no class and get a permit at age 16.

“I really didn’t want to waste my summer away,” Kristen Zumback said as she waited this month for a four-hour driver awareness class to begin at National Driver Training, 4432 Austin Bluffs Parkway.

The 15½-year-old planned on heading straight to the Department of Motor Vehicles after the class with proof of completion so she could get her permit.

“I think it’s good so everyone knows how to drive,” she said, referring to the awareness class, but she she said she could do without the curfew and passenger laws — especially because her boyfriend just turned 17.

Before getting their licenses, drivers under age 18 must have their permits for a full year and log 50 hours of driving, including 10 hours of nighttime driving.

Legislation passed this year also mandated attendance in the shorter driver awareness programs for minors convicted of traffic offenses such as reckless driving, drunken driving or causing serious crashes.

Nationwide, 11 out of every 20,000 drivers and passengers under age 24 will be killed in car accidents, he said.

If a teen forgoes driver education, perhaps because of the approximately $300 price tag for a full course and around $30 for an awareness course, he or she must wait until age 16 to get an instructional permit.

“People who have the money to spare are able to get their permits sooner,” Williams said.

LAWS AFFECTING MINOR DRIVERS

Colorado adopted the Graduated Driver’s License law in 1999 because statistics showed minors were involved in fatal accidents at a rate far exceeding that for older drivers. Eight additional bills have been passed since then, tightening restrictions on minor drivers. The following rules apply to those drivers.

GETTING A DRIVER’S LICENSE

Minors under the age of 18 must hold an instructional permit for one year and log 50 hours of daytime driving and 10 hours of nighttime driving with the person who signed the liability affidavit; a person appointed by the signer; or a driver education instructor.

The signer of the liability affidavit takes legal responsibility for a minor’s actions while the minor is driving. Acceptable signers are a parent or stepparent, a grandparent with power of attorney, a guardian or a foster parent.

As of July 1, if the signer does not have a Colorado license, an alternate, who is at least 21 years old and has a valid Colorado license, may be appointed. Also, military personnel with out-of-state licenses are now permitted to monitor permit driving.

At age 16, a minor becomes eligible for an instructional permit, without taking any type of driver education. The earliest age possible to receive a license in this situation is 17.

At age 15½, a minor becomes eligible for an instructional permit if a state-approved driving awareness program is completed, which takes about four hours and doesn’t include behind-the-wheel training. The earliest possible age to receive a license in this situation is 16½.

At age 15, a minor becomes eligible for an instructional permit with proof of enrollment in a 30-hour driver education program, which includes six hours of behind-the-wheel training. The earliest possible age to receive a license in this situation is 16.

RESTRICTIONS ON DRIVING

Minors with instructional permits may drive with anyone who is at least 21 years old and has a valid Colorado driver’s license. The adult must be in the front seat, and the time cannot count toward logged hours unless the signer of the liability affidavit is in the car.

Minors with instructional permits may not use cellular telephones while driving. This is a secondary offense, meaning drivers cannot be pulled over solely for the use of a cell phone.

Drivers under age 18 may have only one person ride in the front seat, and no more passengers in the back seat than there are seat belts.

Drivers under age 18 who have had their licenses for less than six months cannot have passengers under age 21. Minors who have had their licenses for at least six months but less than a year can have one passenger under the age of 21. The following exceptions apply to both rules:

The signer of the liability affidavit is in the vehicle; an adult who has held a valid driver’s license for at least one year is in the car; there is a medical emergency; or a passenger who is under 21 is an immediate family member.

Drivers under age 18 can’t drive from midnight to 5 a.m. unless they have held their licenses for one year. They can drive during those hours if:

- Someone in the car is a signer of the liability affidavit or is at least 21 and has held a valid Colorado license for at least a year.

- The minor is driving to school or a school-authorized activity and the school doesn’t provide transportation. A dated and signed statement from the school official is required.

- The minor is driving because of employment. A signed statement from the employer is required.

- The minor is driving because of an emergency.

- The minor is emancipated, but his or her parents haven’t canceled the minor’s license by withdrawing their liability affidavit.

Texas implemented a Parent taught Driver Education Program on April 1, 1997. The Parent Taught Driver Education Program requires students to acquire the essential knowledge, skills and experience to perform reduced-risk practices in the total traffic environment. To achieve this goal, students are required to master the following elements: applicable Texas traffic laws, rules and procedures for operating and owning an automobile; benefits of occupant protections, use of a space management systems; factors and behaviors that effect driver performance including alcohol and other drugs; and protection of Texas natural resources, including litter prevention.

The Parent taught Driver Education Program is available to teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17. However, before the instructor (parent, stepparent, grandparent, step-grandparent, foster parent or legal guardian) begins teaching this course, the instructor must have a valid TEXAS driver license for the preceding three years. Active US military personnel and their spouse may participate as instructors if they hold a valid license from their state of permanent residence or last duty station for the preceding three years..

The instructor cannot have a conviction (including a probated sentence) of criminally negligent homicide or driving while intoxicated. The instructor’s license may not be suspended, revoked, or forfeited in the past three years for traffic related violations. Furthermore, the instructor may not be disabled due to mental illness. Questions as to mental stability will be forwarded to the Medical Advisory Board for determination.

It is the responsibility of the instructor to check both their criminal and driver records prior to requesting the packet. The Department will not check the instructor’s record until issuance of the instruction permit or provisional driver license to the student. If at that time it is determined that the instructor has a prohibited conviction the instruction permit or provisional driver license will be denied and all prior classroom or behind the wheel/in car instruction credit is invalid.

In order to apply for a Parent taught Driver Education Program, you must complete the DL-92 Request form and submit with a $20.00 non-refundable fee (check or money order only) to: Texas Department of Public Safety, License Issuance Bureau, P.O. Box 15999, Austin, Texas 78761-5999. An additional Request Form and $20.00 non-refundable fee are required for each student who will be participating in the Parent taught Driver Education Program. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery.

The Request Form must be completely filled out with original signatures or the process will be delayed.

Upon receipt of your Request Form, a DE-964 Certificate will be assigned to the student and forwarded to the designated Driver License Office where the student will apply for the license and take the required tests. The DE-964 Certificate will be maintained and available at the designated Driver License office for the instructor to complete. The Parent Taught Driver Education packet will be mailed to the instructor’s address.

Before you can obtain your permit, you must study the Texas Drivers Handbook. It contains all materials related to your permit test that you will need to take when you visit the DPS for your permit.

Level 1 instruction can be started at any time. However, immediately after Level 1, behind-the-wheel instruction begins. At this point, the student must be at least 15 and ½ years of age, possess a valid Oklahoma Driver’s Instruction (Learner’s) Permit, and the parent must submit an affidavit and have it accepted by the Oklahoma Dept. of Public Safety stating the parent is a licensed driver and the vehicle is properly insured. An affidavit comes with any of our packages A through D.

Virginia Department of Motor Vehicle