Mountain Lake’s initial Supplemental Parent Course of Driver’s Education held Monday
A standard definition of the phrase, “point of impact,” is – “the place where forces meet.”
When it comes to parents and their teenagers studying in the classroom and behind-the-wheel to become licensed drivers – both forces in their own right – the point of impact is the family car, and the lessons to be shared by the adults and learned by the young drivers.
A new Minnesota law bumped the amount of time a driver must spend practicing behind-the-wheel with parents from 30 hours up to 50 hours. It also gave added importance to the log kept of these hours of driving time.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) Office of Traffic Safety, has created the Supplemental Parent Course of Driver’s Education, a state curriculum called “Point of Impact.” Parents of teen drivers are the focus of this education program, which aims to teach parents the important role they play in developing teen drivers.
On Monday evening, October 27, Mountain Lake Public High School driver’s education instructor, Annette Kunkel, led a class for parents of freshmen students who will beginning the required 30 hours of classroom instruction next Monday. Parents who attended the course received a certificate recognizing their attendance, reducing the logged hours required from 50 to 40. Mountain Lake Police Chief Doug Bristol also served as a presenter at the class. This was the first local group of parents to participate in the new law’s parent curriculum program.
A main component of “Point of Impact” is an eight-minute video that presents stories of Minnesotans impacted by crashes that involved teen drivers – a young woman from Detroit Lakes who suffered a serious brain injury, a woman left paralyzed from a crash years ago when she was 15-years-old and a Mankato police officer whose father was seriously injured in a crash involving a teen asleep at the wheel. The video can be viewed at http://youtu.be/jOkVMa3g5gQ, or download a broadcast quality file athttps://www.dropbox.com/s/w762bu9mmw8rnfm/Point-of-Impact-wmv-video.wmv.
“We need to break the mindset of parents that a newly-licensed teen driver is a safe driver,” says Gordy Pehrson, DPS Office of Traffic Safety youth driving programs coordinator. “The ‘Point of Impact’ program educates parents that the safety of their teen behind the wheel is up to them. Our goal is to make parents aware that while it may be convenient for their teen to drive themselves, that convenience can’t be put ahead of safety.”
Among the key points that “Point of Impact” stresses are for parents to –
* Provide significant supervised driving training, and continue to do so even after they are licensed, especially during the potentially dangerous first year of licensure.
* Train teens on a variety of road types (city, highway, rural) and a variety of conditions (night, snow, rain).
* Reinforce teen driving laws – such as seatbelt use (front and back seats); passenger and nighttime driving limitations; no use of cell phones and no texting/e-mail/Web access (including when stopped in traffic).
* Also reinforce additional steps that will eliminate common distractions that can lead to inattentive driving (which accounts for one-in-four crashes in Minnesota) – setting music, air and mirrors before driving; avoid eating and drinking or reaching for food or drink; knowing trip directions in advance and driving well-rested.
* Use a driving contract to set family driving rules and follow through with consequences.
* Encourage teen to speak up when they feel unsafe in a vehicle to stop unsafe driving behaviors.
Traffic crashes are the leading killer of Minnesota teens — 102 teen motor vehicle occupants were killed in the state during 2010–2012. Inexperience, distractions, risk-taking and poor seat belt compliance are the primary factors for teen traffic tragedies.
The DPS Office of Traffic Safety is an anchoring partner of the state’s Toward Zero Deaths (TZD) traffic safety initiative. A primary vision of the TZD program is to create a safe driving culture in Minnesota in which motorists support a goal of zero road fatalities by practicing and promoting safe and smart driving behavior. TZD focuses on the application of four strategic areas to reduce crashes — education, enforcement, engineering and emergency trauma response.
