Getting behind the wheel

It was shortly after 7:30 p.m. on a cold, icy Friday night when the phone rang. My daughter, Julie, and her friends, Sally, James and Cody, had left the house about 15 minutes earlier. On the phone, James was hysterical, barely comprehensible. The only words that were clear caused my pulse to race, my thoughts to run in a thousand circles and my heart to ache to the core of my inner being -- Julie had been in an accident.

Nearly every teen-ager looks forward to that day when they can break from the constraints of mom and dad and finally "be free." With their 16th birthday comes the ability to drive in Alaska -- which means no longer riding the school bus, the ability to get to and from work on their own, greater responsibility and more freedom to be with their friends. It is a great leap toward adulthood. For parents, it also means greater freedom. Their licensed teen can get where they need to be without a chauffeur, run to the store for necessities or drive younger siblings to their activities.

"When you get your license it's a coming of age," said 19-year-old Melissa Davis. "It's a lot of responsibility, but also the freedom to use that responsibility maturely."

Before the big day arrives, plans have to be made. What car will the teen-ager drive? What rules will accompany that privilege? And then, of course, there's the insurance. Why, many people end up asking, does insurance for teen-agers cost so much? The answer to that is repeated again and again in report after report from private and governmental agencies -- teen-agers get into more accidents than any other age group in the

United States.

The risk for motor-vehicle crashes nationwide is higher among 16- to 19-year-olds than among any other age group. Per mile driven teen drivers between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Teen-agers represented just 10 percent of the U.S. population in 2000, but accounted for 14 percent of all motor vehicle-related deaths. Forty-one percent of those teen motor-vehicle deaths occurred between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Moving a 3- to 4-thousand-pound piece of machinery at speeds of up to 65 mph is not something to be taken lightly. Experienced drivers often take automobiles for granted and forget that learning to drive is a difficult skill. Young drivers start out with very little knowledge or understanding of the complexities of driving a motor vehicle. Learning how a car handles and how people react takes a lot of time. To be a safe driver, teens must have technical ability, good judgment and experience, according to highway safety organizations.

The day before Julie's accident, Dec. 13, she drove me to work. I cautioned my 16-year-old about watching out for others, about taking time to slow down now that the roads were getting worse. 'Quit worrying mom,' she said in a tone that echoed her displeasure at hearing my consternation again and again. 'I'm a good driver,' she said confidently.

Here in Alaska, there were 14,127 traffic accidents during 2000. Ninety-three resulted in fatal injuries to occupants; nonfatal injuries were reported in 4,181 of all accidents; and 9,789 accidents caused only property damage.

Traffic accidents injured or killed 6,226 people in Alaska during 2000, and caused $52.3 million in damages to vehicles, plus $2.1 million in damages to highway structures and other non-vehicular property, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation's 2000 Alaska Traffic Accidents report.

When asked, many teens say they know people who have been involved in accidents. But when asked whether that involvement changed their driving behavior, the answers were mixed. One teen said his mother and father had been in an accident but claimed it changed his behavior little.

"Not really because I don't drive like them," 18-year-old Phillip Talley said.

Dec. 16: I'm holding her pink and shapely manicured hands that she was so proud of before she got into her car and left that night. 'Don't they look fake,' she had said. As she lays unmoving in Alaska Regional Hospital's Intensive Care Unit I wonder, is she scared? Does she have any conscious thought? I am aware she might die. I knew that Friday night. But she made it through the night -- the first 24 hours are crucial they told me. Then they told me the first 48 hours are crucial. So we passed 24 -- halfway there, I thought. At 36 hours I thought maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have to think about my only daughter dying anymore. The nurse at Valley Hospital Friday night told me, 'This is the beginning of a very long night for you, for you and your daughter, and its going to be a difficult one, so brace yourself, it won't be easy. But just be with her, let her know you're there -- and pray.' It seems like another lifetime ago when my daughter was just another teen-age kid going out with her friends, bugging me for 10 bucks and looking absolutely perfect in her size 7 jeans. I haven't stopped praying since.

NHTSA's Web site on teen driving warns that "adolescent impulsiveness is a natural behavior, but results in poor driving judgment and participation in high-risk behaviors like speeding, inattention, drinking and driving and not using a seat belt. Peer pressure also often encourages risk taking. Teens often drive at night with other teens in the car, increasing risk."

In Alaska, those same high-risk behaviors, unsafe speed, driver inattention and failure to yield -- in that order -- were the most frequently cited contributing factors for all crashes during 2000. Among all accidents in Alaska -- as reported nationwide -- more accidents involve teen-agers than any other age group. Teen-agers between 16 and 20 years old were involved in more than 6,000 car accidents in our state alone in 2000. The numbers drop significantly in other age groups, however. Reports indicate that after speed and inattention, drunken driving is the next-highest factor in accidents for young drivers.

Captain Dennis Casanovas, head of the Palmer post of the Alaska State Troopers, agreed that he sees more new drivers in accidents than any other group.

"My general sense is that high up there would be driver inexperience [as the reason]; as we would expect, brand-new drivers do make more mistakes than experienced drivers," Casanovas said. "It can be first-winter drivers or perhaps those not driving the same car every day, who swap vehicles with their parents and [the vehicle doesn't] necessarily handle the same, brake the same or have the same pick-up when passing. It's true teens take more risks and are often out in lower-light driving [conditions]. It always seems more tragic when you read about those [teen-related crashes]."

Friday night is the most common night for crashes in Alaska, and, the statistics show, more crashes occur on weekdays than on weekends here. Looking at road conditions, the number of accidents that occur when roads are dry, compared to roads that are packed with snow and ice, are relatively close -- 5,602 accidents on dry roads compared to 5,933 on snow and ice, but there were more accidents with major injuries and fatalities on dry roads than roads with snow or ice. The numbers may correlate with an increase in driving time, higher speeds caused by lower levels of driver caution and longer hours of daylight, according to the ATA report.

It wasn't until after Julie had been taken to Alaska Regional and a hole had been drilled into her skull to measure the pressure from her massive brain injury that I learned what had happened after she and her friends left my house that night. The two boys, driving in another vehicle, and later

Sally, Julie's passenger, told a similar story. They had stopped side-by-side at a stoplight heading into Wasilla. When the light turned green they both took off. Cody, driving a large truck, took off ahead of Julie. My daughter, not wanting to be outdone, said, 'I'm not gonna let them beat me,' and pressed the accelerator of her 1994 Chevy Beretta. Apparently they were nearly side-by-side when they approached a right curve in the road -- Cody slowed down coming into the turn. For Julie, it was too late. The car's rear end slid to the left on the icy road and she over-corrected, putting the car into a spin and crossing the lane -- right in front of an oncoming car. 'Oh sh*t, we're sliding,' Sally heard Julie say before looking up herself and responding, 'Whoa, we are.'

In 2000, Wasilla ranked fourth among Alaska's major cities in its motor-vehicle accident rate with 298 accidents, 11 with major injuries and one fatality. According to the ATA report, a high percentage of those accidents occurred along the Parks Highway, which runs through Wasilla. There were 83 crashes reported in Palmer, with no fatalities or major injury. Anchorage had the highest number with 8,286 crashes, 103

major injuries and 29 fatalities.

Of all the accidents in Alaska in 2000, most of them, 5,597, were motor-vehicle angle crashes or T-bone accidents, as they are more com-monly called. The next most common type of accident in Alaska is the rear-end collision, with 3,790 in 2000. Compared to the 660 reports of crashes involving moose during the year or the 685 reports of vehicles in a ditch can give cause for reflection. Though only one in four crashes nationwide is a side or T-bone collision, this type of accident is responsible for one out of every three highway deaths.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, almost 10,000 occupant deaths occur each year in side-impact crashes and more than half of these involve head injuries. Head injuries are the cause of death in 51 to 74 percent of single-vehicle side impacts and 41 to 64 percent of multiple-vehicle side impacts.

Dec. 19: 'The numbers are up a little,' the nurses say, or 'the numbers are looking good.' It's no longer, 'Julie's looking good, or bad,' our focus is on the numbers displayed on the large screen above her hospital bed that monitors the pressure on her brain. It's as if she's no longer there -- and, I guess she isn't, really. I don't mean her life is gone, but she's staying in a controlled state, hanging in the balance between here and there by the manipulation of buttons. Tubes, machines, bells and beeps, suction in, suction out -- this is my daughter's life right now -- and mine. I fall asleep, my head on a pillow at her thigh, her hand in mine, to the sound of the humming, rhythmic machinery. I doze, still hoping that this is all some weird other-worldly dream, but it's not.

When a car crashes, there are three collisions, or impacts, that take place. The first one is the impact of the vehicle itself against something. This causes a rapid deceleration. The second collision is the impact of the person inside the vehicle against objects in the car -- the windshield, steering wheel, seat belt, or another person. The third collision is within the person. This is when organs slam against bones or other organs. When a small object and a large object collide, the larger usually wins. This applies to two vehicles colliding or the person within the larger object, namely the car itself.

It is for this reason that safety standards applied by car manufacturers now include airbags, cars that "give" more and also why the industry is gearing toward vehicles that are lighter and about the same weight as other vehicles on the road.

Heavier cars subject their own occupants to more force at a given velocity than do smaller automobiles when they hit a fixed object, and in multi-car collisions, they strike the other vehicles with more force. A 2,000-pound car needs to achieve a speed of 46 miles per hour to generate as much force at impact as a 3,500-pound automobile traveling 35 miles per hour, according to an article entitled "Automobile Weight and Safety," at www.panix.com.

A common tendency when a child reaches driving age is to either buy them an older, "beater" car or to give them mom or dad's older vehicle. While many of these older cars may be heavier and seem safer, experts in the automobile safety industry warn that, because teens are more likely to get into an accident, they need newer cars with more safety features such as airbags, side air bags and construction made to crumple.

Dec. 20: My time is spent between sitting at Julie's side and updating everyone on her condition. The many friends and family that came to see her were astounded by her visible appearance. 'She just looks like she's sleeping,' they told me, astonished that, save for a wrapped arm and one small scratch on the side of her head there is no visible injury to my daughter. Yet the outcome is unknown. The swelling in her brain has not subsided as we had hoped, and other complications have emerged. But with her eyes closed and the remains of her favorite purple eye shadow still visible, her brown hair flowing across the white hospital pillow and her painted hands resting at her side, were it not for all the tubes and IVs, she would look at peace.

Experts agree that new drivers need continued supervision after they get their license. Area law enforcement officials suggest limiting the hours young or inexperienced drivers are out driving and prohibiting the use of tobacco, alcohol or

other drugs while driving. Although parents would like to believe their teen-ager will make good choices, it is important to make a "free call" agreement for a ride home in case they abuse drugs or alcohol, or are with a driver who is doing so. A driver education program is recommended for young drivers and parents are encouraged to set a good example. The use of seat belts is not only recommended, but is the law in Alaska. Still, Casanovas said, a lot of people don't use them.

"We still see roughly a quarter of the population in Mat-Su that fail to wear their seat belts," he said, adding that safe driving also means keeping the car is in working order, such as keeping headlights and windshield clear.

Parents, officials say, should take advantage of the two-year window between license eligibility and legal adulthood -- obtaining a license doesn't mean the training period has ended.

Currently Alaska law requires that anyone under the age of 18 who is seeking a license must first hold an instruction permit for at least 6 months. This permit, or provisional license, can be obtained any time after the age of 14 and requires the driver to have a licensed adult in the car with them.

A teen with traffic citations totaling six or more points in a 12-month period, or nine or more points in a 24-month period must also take a nationally certified defensive driving course. Many states are also instituting graduated licensing -- a system that allows beginning drivers to obtain a license with lower risks involved. (See above article.)

When signing for their child's driver's license, the parent and child are informed that parents have the right to suspend that license at any time. What many parents don't know, though, is that they also have the right to see their teen's driving record. In 1999, legislation was passed that enables parents to receive a copy of their minor child's driving record. According to that law, if a parent, foster parent or guardian requests it, the division of motor vehicles must release information about their under-18 driver, as long as the teen has not been emancipated. The law requires an "abstract" be released, free of charge, which includes a listing of accidents, convictions of vehicle, driver and traffic offenses and "any actions taken upon the driver's license, and information relating to financial responsibility."

At A1 Driving in Wasilla, Jim Moody teaches the National Safety Council's "Alive at 25" defensive driving course. The program is exclusively for young drivers from 16 to 25. While Moody doesn't offer any behind-the-wheel instruction, he feels the Alive course is very beneficial to young drivers.

The four-hour course focuses on common driving errors teens make and how to avoid them. Some local insurance companies offer discounts for teens who have taken the course, Moody said.

Although the class is available to any 16- to 25-year-old, Moody said 90 percent of the teen-agers he sees in the class come because "the law sent them here." No one else in the Valley is teaching the course, he said, and it is required for teens who have exceeded the number of points allowable.

The biggest mistake teens make when driving? "Speeding," Moody said.

Cost of the course is $40 plus tax, and it is offered twice a month. Call 357-2216 for more information.

Area schools may offer driver education courses as well, such as the course offered by Colony High School that incorporates driver's education with first aid training throughout one semester. In that course, 10 to 13 hours of training is done before ever setting foot in a vehicle, through the use of a high-tech simulator that incorporates different driving courses and helps new drivers develop good driving habits before getting behind the real wheel. There can be as much as a 5 to 20 percent discount on insurance for completion of the course, according to Mike Boyd of CHS

The driving portion of the program -- and use of the simulator -- is also available through the community schools program as a three-week course. Call 376-0831 for more information.

Students enrolled in Job Corps in Palmer can take advantage of the Alive at 25 defensive driving course, as well as preparation for written and driving tests. Will Owens instructs teens and young adults at the center and assists them through the process of licensing, right up to the driving test at DMV.

Dec. 24: The doctor has now told us that Julie's injuries were massive and that he is afraid we may have been given false hope. He tells us her brain injury was a shearing type, the worst kind, and the outcome would probably not be good -- he dashes away any hope we had. 'Wait and see,' the phrase we have heard for the last 10 days, has turned to 'she will not survive this.' We had been told that the swelling of Julie's brain would eventually subside and then we could begin to address other complications that had resulted from her comatose state. Even if she should live, I am told, it will probably only be with the aid of machines. The room spins and the floor disappears below my feet -- I feel like that first night is being played all over again. I cannot be with people at this time. I get in my car and drive aimlessly through Anchorage streets, stopping in a movie theater parking lot and sobbing until my nose runs red with blood. I scream, I curse -- I ask God why and ask for direction, for courage, for the strength to survive watching my daughter die.

Short of following teen-agers and spying on them, several new devices that enable parents to find out how their teen-ager is driving are now on the market.

Taking its cue from the trucking industry, the Am I Safe? Program is advertised as a youth safety awareness system. The system -- for a monthly fee of $39 per family -- works much the same as the "How am I driving?" sticker seen on the back of commercial vehicles. Parents receive a kit containing safety information, a parent-teen safe driving partnership agreement and a decal to affix to the teen-ager's car. The decal contains a toll-free number for other drivers to call with reports on the teen's driving. The parent receives immediate notification of reported driving behavior -- good or bad -- a quarterly summary of the teen's driving habits and a quarterly newsletter with safety tips, updates and news articles. The company claims an accident reduction rate of 40 to 50 percent. A registration form is available online at www.amisafe.net.

Although controversial, the "black box" is making its way into the automobile industry. These boxes work much like those in airplanes and have been used in race cars, armored cars, police cars and transit vehicles.

Although many drivers aren't aware, event data recorders are already in many cars -- all GM cars since 1999 and in many other makes and models since 1996 have them -- and controversy has risen over the information obtained from the recorders and who should have access to it. Insurance companies claim the information will end disputes about what happened in a car crash, such as a vehicle's speed before impact, engine speed, brake status and airbag status.

A similar monitor device is now being advertised for parents who want to track their teen's driving habits. The Auto Watch black box comes with a computer program that gives guardians information about how long a vehicle has been driven, at what speeds and distances the vehicle has traveled, among other things. The box is password protected and the program notifies the parent if it has been tampered with. The Auto Watch comes at the hefty price of $295, but if used in conjunction with guidelines and consequences, parents may consider this information about their teen's activities worth the cost. More information on Auto Watch is available at www.drivehomesafe.com/autowatch.

Insurance companies in the Valley may offer other programs that couple lower insurance rates with driving improvement courses for young drivers. Allstate, for example, offers Teen Smart, a course on a computer disk that teens can take. The course includes a test which, when completed, can be taken to an area office and, depending on the test score, may make the teen eligible for insurance discounts. They also offer discounts for young drivers who keep their grades up and for college students away from home.

"We believe if they're a good student, then they're also probably more of a defensive driver; so these [discounts] promote both," said Martina Edwards of Allstate's Michael Hughes Agency in Wasilla. "The discounts are well worth looking into."

Dec. 25: The hospital is quiet, alone. Everyone is gone for the holiday. Julie lies there, her cheeks looking both sallow and puffy at the same time. Her respirator speeds her breaths faster than before and to listen to it makes my breathing increase, my heart rate increase and my fears swell. This place is too quiet. She seems to be doing well today, and I try to take my mind away but I am numb from a night of little sleep, of crying, of panic attacks filled with fear and wondering how this could be real. Tired, I return to her room about 2 a.m. -- I need to be with her. My heart sinks as I look at the monitor -- her blood

pressure has dropped -- it is 90 over 70. The nurse, usually cheerful and optimistic, is distant as she busies herself with Julie's assortment of IVs hanging from trees with plastic tubes trailing to my little girl's arms and chest -- Julie's Christmas Trees I had called them earlier in the day. 'I assume you'll be wanting to stay with her tonight,' the nurse says in an assuming, almost demanding tone. I hold Julie's hand and speak to her as I watch in shock as each reading from the pressure cuff on her arm drops. The nurse comes in and closes the curtains -- an act that tells me more than I want to know. She explains that Julie's heart is failing, that they have tapped out all the medications available and she is getting very little oxygen to her blood -- and her brain. Her blood pressure continues to fall -- 80 over 60, over 50, over 40 -- as I share stories with the nurse and respir-atory therapist of the

once-spirited, smiling girl who liked to work on cars, sing loud, dance and had no qualms about farting in public. I want them to know who this girl is and I want her to know I am here.

Her body is giving up; whether or not my Julie is still there I do not know. Her skin is pale and ashen compared to the red glow of her previous feverish days lying in the ICU. I go up and wake her father, "I'm sorry, wake up; she's leaving us," I say. He doesn't hesitate, he doesn't question -- he knows.

Returning to the room the eyes of the nurses who had cared for her, hoped with us, prayed silently to save this young woman whose vitality and sense of humor they had never known are welled up on the brink of tears. They do their jobs then once again close the curtain, leaving us to say good-bye to our daughter. "Tell her it's okay to go," I sob to her father -- I already had. He falls to his knees beside the bed and tells her she can stop trying, it is okay, it's time to go to heaven. The monitor begins to beep and the nurse comes into the room in tears. She turns the monitor away from view, saying, "Don't look at the screen, look at her, don't let your memories be of this." The room is dark and, once warm, suddenly so cold as her father holds her hand and I stroke her face, watching the color drain away as her heart stops beating. The nurses return and one, then the other, puts her stethoscope to Julie's chest and listens, then steps aside and, eyes red and streaked, announce her time of death. 3:35 a.m. Dec. 26, 2001.

Two weeks after Julie's death, after leaving the hospital that had become our days and our nights, after making funeral arrangements, after putting relatives on a plane, after I have reached a point of numbness that prohibits me from feeling or crying, I am looking through her things. I come across a photograph of Julie on her 16th birthday. She is sitting cross-legged in her pink flannel pajamas, hair pulled back in a familiar ponytail and a wide, toothy smile graces her face. She is holding her driver's license. The tears begin to flow.

Graduated licensing sweeping the country

The Graduated Driver Licensing System is a program developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to give young drivers more time to learn how to operate a vehicle. Forty-seven U.S. states have adopted some form of graduated licensing, all but a few since 1994. Although each state's conditions vary, the system optimally involves three stages. The first is a supervised learner's phase, lasting a minimum of six months, as Alaska law now requires. Some systems also require a certain number of hours that a teen-ager has to drive to reach the next level - similar to accumulating a number of supervised flight hours before flying an airplane solo.

The intermediate step permits unsupervised driving, but only in less risky situations, such as during daytime hours, and with a limited number of passengers. California was the first state to ban teen-age passengers, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's October report, "Graduated Licensing: A Blueprint for North America." The ban applies to the first six months of a 12-month intermediate phase, unless an adult is present in the car.

Full-privilege licensing becomes available when conditions of the first two stages are met. This usually means the driver has incurred no violations or accidents during the first two phases.

In the U.S., graduated licensing applies to young drivers -- specifically those under the age of 18 -- because of the high incidence of accidents among this group, with the exception of Maryland and New Jersey. Those states have followed the lead of Canada, where graduated licensing has been instituted for some time and applies to drivers of any age on the basis that it is designed to address a lack of driving experience.

According to the IIHS report, though many states and provinces have adopted portions of the graduated licensing system, there is too much variation between them. The report rates each state as either poor, marginal, acceptable or good, in their new licensing requirements. Alaska was among 12 states rated as marginal, in the company of South Dakota, Nevada, Minnesota and Kentucky, to name a few. Rated poor by IIHS were Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Twenty-four states were rated acceptable, and nine received the top rating of good.