It's time to have The Talk with your teens. It might even be time to have it with your spouse, or your parents. But it's definitely time to have it with your kids.
The Driving Talk. The getting-your-licence-is-only-the-beginning-talk. I think we should talk about our near-misses. The times – our fault or not – when things could have ended tragically. The times we've screwed up, driven over our heads or miscalculated. The times we've been saved only by an empty road, a passenger's alarm or a reflexive move rather than a conditioned one.
A new year began in northern Ontario with two collisions claiming the lives of seven teenagers, injuring three people and leaving two other teens in critical condition. The stretch of Highway 69 that claimed four of those lives is notorious. I've been driving it for 30 years, and locals know the carnage it produces. Undivided icy highways are unforgiving. Narrow shoulders, deep rock cuts towering over the road and a couple of strips of paint protecting you from oncoming traffic.
We don't prepare our new drivers well. In both cases, teens behind the wheel crossed into oncoming traffic. With drugs and alcohol ruled out, it becomes a guessing game as to what occurred in those cars. Hitting some ice would do it, especially if tricky conditions warranted less speed. It's easy to drop a wheel off the pavement, and overcorrect to get back on the road. In snowy conditions, drivers may perceive the road as being narrower, and reflexively keep to the left.
Driver distraction is a huge concern. Even without friends on board, today's cars are travelling entertainment systems, and cellphones are hard to ignore. There's wildlife in these parts; shadows, especially from those rocks, can play tricks on drivers. The road curves, a lot. Access from side roads or driveways can appear abruptly. On white snow, bright sunshine produces glare. Darkness here is unbroken by street lights.
I'm sure I'm leaving out even more. Now put a driver with a year or two of experience under his or her belt into those conditions, and have even one thing go wrong. Would your kids be ready for it? Would you?
I drove with a carful of teenagers from my cottage one time. It was nearly 30 years ago, but I can still run the video in my head as easily as my sons can pull one up on their computers. Loaded into an early 1970s Jeep Wagoneer, five of us were heading south on that same notorious Highway 69. It was a clear beautiful summer day, but northbound traffic was heavy. A girlfriend of mine was driving – her father, a mechanic, had insisted nobody else was to drive the hulking great beast of a car.
As we nattered and chattered, I looked out the windshield to see a semi coming directly towards us in our lane. It was executing a pass on the crowded two-lane highway, and it had nowhere to go except through us. You think you'll have time to scream; you don't.
My friend expertly steered that Wagoneer on to the narrow shoulder, then back onto the road. To this day, I am amazed that she not only had both hands on the wheel the entire time, she'd seen the truck pull out and planned her escape in a split second.
How did she know all this? Her father. He'd insisted on boring her with techniques above and beyond the training we'd all yawned through in driver's ed. We used to tease her about it.
Two years ago on icy roads in northern British Columbia, a massive lumber truck crossed a line and loomed in front of the Smart car I was driving. In a whirl of snow and monster headlights, I landed the car in the only escape open – a sloping snow-covered shoulder.
I often wonder what would have happened if I'd been driving that day 30 years ago. I was licensed, I was familiar with the road, and yet that potentially deadly situation was beyond anything I'd been taught, let alone been prepared for. Fast forward three decades, and I knew exactly what to do that night in northern B.C. I credit extensive advanced driver training; you learn something every single time.
Those devastated families lost wonderful kids. Don't lose yours. Start talking. Own up to those moments it all could have ended horribly wrong. Send your teens to advanced training, winter training or skid schools.
Better yet, join them.