Texting and driving remains the norm among teen drivers, a new study shows. But parents aren't talking about it. (Pat Wellenbach/AP)
Most teens are texting and driving; parents silent
Texting and driving is still the norm among teen drivers, a new survey says, and few parents are talking about it.
Only 22 percent of parents talk regularly about safe driving with their teenage children who have driver's licenses, the study found, while most young drivers continued to view texting and driving as less dangerous than drunk driving.
And despite years now of high-profile campaigns against distracted driving, 57 percent of teens with driver's licenses admit to texting while driving, according to the report commissioned by State Farm insurance. While 83 percent of these teens agree that they will get into an accident if they regularly drink and drive (which makes you wonder, really, what’s up with the other 17 percent), only 63 percent feel the same about texting behind the wheel.
Yikes.
It’s worth recapping here: When people text, it’s as if they are closing their eyes behind the wheel – often for the length of football fields, depending on how fast one’s driving.
The dangers surrounding texting while driving are so intense because there are multiple sorts of distractions wrapped up into one act – physical (the actual texting takes hands off the wheel), visual (the driver takes his or her eyes off the road), and cognitive (the driver’s mind focuses on something other than the road).
And while lots of people think they can multiprocess – they’re the ones, of course, who can text and drive without danger – research shows the vast majority of people far overestimate their abilities.
At the University of Utah’s Applied Cognition Laboratory, for instance, David Strayer and other professors used neuroimaging and a drive simulator to observe people who claim to be able to text, tweet, or talk at the wheel safely. For 98 percent of the population, the likelihood of a crash while on the cellphone increases fourfold. And that number goes up exponentially when you look at texting and teen drivers.
If that’s not scary enough, study after study add to the details. (Although some critics do wonder why, if this is all so dangerous, we haven’t seen even more deaths on the road.) In 2010 the National Safety Council estimated that at least 200,000 crashes a year are caused by texting and driving. Teens are more likely than any other age group to be involved in a fatal crash where distraction is reported, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Association. And 40 percent of all American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger, according to the Pew Research Center.
None of this information, though, seems to have impacted behavior among teens. Neither have a slew of new state laws against texting and driving. The State Farm survey shows almost the exact same results as a similar survey taken two years ago.
But the silver lining for moms and dads:
What does seem to work, the survey discovered, was parent intervention.
Teens who do not text and drive were more likely to report having frequent talks with their parents about safe driving – 82 percent compared with 67 percent who do text and drive.
The survey showed that teens and parents tend to talk less about safe driving after the teen actually gets his or her license – just the time when those conversations should increase.
So start talking.
Hunger Game fans in Hurst, Tex. on March 22, 2012. Our contributing blogger doesn't get what's so great about children who are forced to compete in a live, televised death match. (AP)
Hunger Games: What's so great about a teen fight to the death?
I know I am going to make myself pretty unpopular with this post but … here goes nothing.
I do not “get” what is so great about “The Hunger Games.” There. I said it. I started this book weeks ago and got to the point where Katniss and Gale were out in the woods, just before the reaping – I believe I was on page 11. And then I put it down because – seriously? – 24, 12 - to 18-year-old children fighting until their deaths? Horrifying!
So I put it away for a few weeks because I was mad at it. Yes, mad at a book – I get that way sometimes. Nevertheless, after hearing all of the hype this past weekend for the opening of the movie, I decided to give it another chance. This time, I got to page 39. Katniss has volunteered as tribute to take the place of her younger sister Prim, whose name was pulled as the reaping winner for the girls of District 12.
And then, Peeta Melark, was named the reaping winner for the boys. “Peeta looks me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze," says Katniss. "Oh well, There will be 24 of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.”
Next they are taken into custody, where they say emotional goodbyes to their families, who will have to watch them compete with the other winners from the districts, and fight until there is one left standing. Meaning, all of the other 23 children have been killed. It’s just … how do you …how do you keep reading from that point?
Back when the Harry Potter books were coming out, they captured my attention early in the first few pages. Same for the Twilight books, although I never did finish the fourth book as I also found that to be incredibly disturbing. I guess that’s where I need the die-hard fans to step in and tell me what I’m missing because I simply don’t get it.
So dear readers, I’m handing this dilemma over to you. It’s yours now. Help me get it.
– The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. This blogger's own site is Spill the Beans.
A Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology concept drawing from remains found of Y. huali made us wonder if the big fuzzy – extinct – T. rex was somehow related to the PBS Kids Barney and what this means for evolution of kids' toys. (Brian Choo/Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology/AP)
Could PBS Kids Barney be an extinct T. rex – in a good mood?
I feel bad even writing this (it doesn’t seem fair to give parents even more to keep them up at night) but a great piece the other day by the Monitor’s science writer, Pete Spotts, made us at Modern Parenthood wonder: Could the PBS Kids Barney be real?
The news, in case you missed it, is that scientists have discovered the remains of a great, big, fuzzy dinosaur – the first one that could be, well, Barney-like in appearance. (Pete assures us that it was not, in fact, purple, but we’re not letting down our guard.)
Since dinosaurs are big around here (most households with kids go through at least a short T. Rex phase, even if they miss Barney and Friends), we asked Pete to tell us more. Will this new creature change the image of Tyrannosaurus Rex? Will we soon see stuffed dinosaurs covered with feathers? (Hello, choking hazard.) Is there any chance that this Barney-like creature has modern day descendents?
RELATED: Dressed to kill: A feathered tyrannosaur is discovered in China
Here’s his parent slice of the story:
Remember museum sleepovers, where kids jostled each other to unroll a sleeping bag under the towering, ferocious T. rex?
How intense would the jostling be if T. rex looked more like Barney? Not purple, perhaps, but still fuzzy – covered with chick-like, downy feathers?
A new look for T. rex is not out of the question now that scientists have found the first giant Tyrannosarus-like dinosaur covered with feathery down. The creature, Yutyrannus huali, lived between 145 million and 99.5 million years ago, stomping around what is now northeastern China. It is one of T. rex's ancestors.
Researchers studied three extremely well-preserved, nearly complete specimens. The largest of the three animals would have tipped the scales at about 1.5 tons and stretched 30 feet from snout to tail.
Scientists have found feathered dinosaurs before, but the creatures were much smaller. The little guys needed the insulation feathers gave them to help them retain body heat. Because of their bulk, big dinosaurs, however, are at greater risk of overheating than of getting too cold, so they didn't need feathers – or so the thinking goes.
Yutyrannus huali's downy coat suggests otherwise, at least in some cases. Scientists who made the discovery suggest that the creature needed the coat because it lived at a time when Earth's climate was cooler than it was during the later period when T. rex lived.
Some scientists say baby T. rexs may have had feathers when they hatched, but lost the coat as they matured and grew. This new discovery leads some researchers to suggest that even a full-grown T. rex may have sported feathers as well, although no feathery T. rex fossils have year appeared.
Hans-Dieter Sues, who is in charge of animal fossils at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., calls the new find “remarkable.”
“It's very intriguing to think of this very large fuzz ball running around with a mouth full of killer teeth,” Dr. Sues says.
Recent Monitor articles about kids and families started us talking about creating the Modern Parenthood blog as the Monitor's new community for parents, grandparents, friends – anyone, really – who believes in raising compassionate and engaged global citizens. (Ann Hermes/Staff)
Welcome to Modern Parenthood
Hi. My name is Stephanie. Stephanie Hanes in my professional life, Stephanie Hanes Wilson to the folks in the little Massachusetts town where I live, “Mamamamama” to my munchkin of a baby girl who inspired this project in the first place.
That first bit of information you could have gotten from the little tag we put above stories. We call them “bylines.” You know, “By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent.”
You wouldn’t have heard it from me, though. We journalists are a shy bunch, believe it or not, and we tend to try to keep ourselves out of our stories and let other people talk instead.
RELATED: Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect
But a few of us at the CS Monitor decided recently that we wanted to try something different. We were talking about some of the stories we had worked on in the past months about kids and families – pieces like Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect and Toddler to Teens: Relearning how to Play. And then, of course, we started talking about our own lives – how one editor’s daughter insisted on leaving the house wearing "that," how another noticed that his kids didn’t run around outside, how one reporter wanted to make a frilly pink bonfire of all the baby girl gear gifted by a grandmother.
We started talking about you, as well. Yup, you. All of you readers – and there were just tons of you – who shared your own stories, argued with us, asked questions, and wanted more. More stories that explored parenting and family culture and growing up, but with the Monitor’s signature approach of reporting with compassion and diligence; reporting that was global in both spirit and practice.
We realized we wanted to keep the conversation going. And so we decided to start this blog as a community for parents, grandparents, friends – anyone, really – who believes in raising compassionate and engaged global citizens. Because we think that families and children are important. We think that stories about kids are not “fluffy,” but crucial for policy decisions, international relations, the global environment, and building the sort of world we’d love to leave behind for the next generations.
We have some thoughts about parenting, too. We think it’s hard and humbling, frustrating and hilarious, world-changing and invigorating, beautiful and exhausting, delightful and boring, fascinating and, above all, joyful. But more importantly, we want to hear what you think. And we hope you’ll share your responses to the news, life and commentary that we will be posting on this site.
This will be a bit different than the other Monitor blogs. Parenting is unique in its blend of personal and political, local and global, small and big. So while we still are going to offer fair, thorough and balanced reporting here, we’ll be also sharing a bit more about ourselves.
Bear with us on this last part. Pretty please. Like I said, we’re kind of shy, so we might have to work on it. I’ll tell you more about me soonest, since I am going to be the Monitor's main parent blogger here, and it’s only fair for you to know about the person behind all of these words.
In the meantime, welcome. We’re really glad you’re here. And we can’t wait to get to know you better.
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