Trying to prevent bad driving behaviour

Teenagers asked to sign up for program

Hamilton father wants to boost road safety

May 15, 2004. 01:00 AM

JIM KENZIE

It seems that, like the weather, everybody talks about traffic safety, but nobody does anything about it.

Except Gary Direnfeld.

In February, 2000, the Hamilton-resident social worker was commuting to Toronto with his soon-to-be-16, soon-to-be-a- driver son on his mind.

Having previously worked on a research study involving brain injuries, he knew from direct experience the toll that trauma, especially car crashes, takes on young people.

As a young driver zigzagged crazily through the heavy traffic, Direnfeld noticed the 1-800-How's-My-Driving? phone number on the back of a transport truck.

"What if we had a system that allowed other drivers to report poor driving to kids' parents, like the trucking companies do with their drivers and safety officers?'' he said.

That was the beginning of the "I Promise" program.

With support from various friends, the local Kiwanis Club and a grant from the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, Direnfeld got the program off the ground three years ago.

The program involves parents sitting down with their new teenage drivers and having them sign a pledge in which the kids promise not to drive drunk, to always wear their seat belts, to drive defensively and to always keep their minds on the driving task.

Optionally, they can agree to put a sign in the back window of the family chariot with that tell-tale toll-free number.

It seems to work.

As part of a broad public safety campaign, Lancaster County in South Carolina ran a widely publicized campaign last year to sign citizens up to the I Promise program.

After a year, crash and traffic violation statistics were compared by Lieutenant-Colonel Russell Roark of the South Carolina Highway Patrol to those of Greenwood County, demographically, if not geographically, similar to Lancaster, but which did not run the program.

Lancaster came out well on top.

According to Tracey Garrell, executive director of Healthy Lancaster, only a few dozen families actually signed up and they didn't receive a single phone call about poor driving behaviour.

But as Direnfeld says, "Our objective is to prevent (poor driving), not catch it.''

Garrell theorizes that media coverage of the program presumably led to discussions about the topic even among non-participants.

Parents also reported that they were driving better, a significant finding since it is well-known that bad-driving kids tend to have bad-driving parents.

It's just one data point, but at least it is a point in the right direction.

The I Promise program originally cost each family $49. But after signing up only 175 families in three years, in 13 states and three provinces, largely just through people surfing the Net, Direnfeld concluded that even this small fee was a deterrent to membership.

"Since going free in the second week of March, less than two months ago, we've had 524 requests for the program — almost exclusively for the parent-youth safe-driving contract,'' he says.

"That represents 46 of the 50 states and nine of the 10 provinces.''

Confirming the South Carolina experience, he adds: "In three years, we received only one call on driver behaviour, and that was a report of `perfect driving' from Ottawa.

"Our research and focus groups tell us that both parents and kids are very leery about placing the (toll-free number) decal on the car, because they are very concerned about false calls, or that we might inform police or insurance companies about infractions.''

Concerned about how your kid is driving when you can't see him? Check out http://www.ipromiseprogram.com for more details.

The site is also a repository of links to a wide variety of sources on the subject of traffic safety.

A propos our discussion of the past couple of weeks, the "A-word" (accident) is conspicuous by its absence in virtually all of these sources.

Contact:

Gary Direnfeld, MSW, RSW - Executive Director
Interaction Consultants / I Promise Program Inc.
20 Suter Crescent,
Dundas, Ontario, Canada
L9H 6R5

(905) 628-4847
garydi@sympatico.ca
Teen safe driving: www.ipromiseprogram.com
Parenting:           www.yoursocialworker.com

Gary Direnfeld is a social worker and expert on matters of family life. He is in private practice (Interaction Consultants), writes and provides workshops and is the developer of the "I Promise Program" - teen safe driving initiative. Courts in Ontario, Canada, consider Gary an expert on child development, parent-child relations, marital and family therapy, custody and access recommendations, social work and an expert for the purpose of giving a critique on a Section 112 (social work) report. His opinion helps resolve child custody and access matters. Feel free to call him for your next conference and for expert opinion on family matters. His services include counseling, mediation, assessment and assessment critiques.