This week my son, Yousef, got his driver’s license. I’m writing this article to give all of you in the Eastern Province fair warning that for the next month or so, perhaps you should get off the road. Before anyone presumes that I am an overprotective mother, let me share a sad truth with you — my son can’t drive. I’m not joking. Although Yousef is holding a driver’s license, the only skill he really has in regards to driving is parking. He can parallel park his car quite nicely, but the moment he takes the vehicle out on the road, he becomes a menace to society.
I am not an irresponsible parent. When my son was 16, he asked me to help him get a driving permit. I refused and was branded a “mean mother.” That was okay. You see, shortly before Yousef thought of taking up driving, I read a 1998 report put out by the International Red Cross. The report said that traffic accidents cost developing countries $53 billion annually — almost as much as all the development aid they receive. The Red Cross found that the primary reasons for the accidents were lax driver training and poor road conditions. The report added that if current trends continued, by the year 2020 road crashes would be the third largest cause of death and disability, after clinical depression and heart disease. Traffic accidents ranked as the ninth biggest killer in the world in 1990.
In every motorized country, teenage drivers represent a major hazard. According to the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 2002 annual statistics, in America the risk of crash involvement per mile driven among those 16-19 years old is four times the risk among older drivers. The institute found that crash rates are high largely because of young drivers’ immaturity combined with driving inexperience. The immaturity is apparent in young drivers’ risky driving practices like speeding and tailgating. At the same time, teenagers’ lack of experience behind the wheel makes it difficult for them to recognize and respond to hazards. Crashes involving young drivers typically are single-vehicle crashes linked to driver error and/or speeding. They often occur when other young people are in the car with the young driver, so teenagers are disproportionately involved in crashes as passengers as well as drivers.
While it’s difficult to get precise statistics in Saudi Arabia about teenage drivers there’s one undeniable truth. The National Company for Cooperative Insurance (NCCI) refused to provide comprehensive vehicular coverage to my son despite his request being reviewed by an NCCI committee in Jeddah. Yousef was told that in general the company does not offer drivers under the age of 21 comprehensive insurance. The risk/return ratio is unacceptable.
Such an attitude on the part of the insurance company is not surprising. In “The Primal Teen,” a book by Barbara Strauch, the case of Jamie, a student who got good grades at a competitive high school, was discussed. Jamie was concerned about her future, but like most teens every now and then she got an urge to do something crazy. The book read:
“One afternoon not that long ago, the urge struck while she was driving on a highway. A truck passed her and she suddenly thought, ‘Hey, why are you doing that?’ Jamie pushed the gas pedal of her car to the floor and quickly accelerated to over one hundred miles per hour. She passed the truck, but she also nearly killed herself. Did she think about what would happen if she had an accident at a hundred miles an hour just because she wanted to beat a stupid truck? Her answer — ‘No, not really.’”
The book went on to tell about Dr. Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), who now has hard proof that the brains of teenagers are still developing. For more than a decade, Giedd has been taking MRI scans of the brains of hundreds of children and teenagers. Geidd has found that there is continued growth in a number of key areas of any teenager’s cerebral cortex, including the parietal lobes, which are associated with logic and spatial reasoning and the temporal areas, which are linked to language. He also has discovered complex, ongoing growth in the frontal lobes.
This is the area that helps people plan ahead, resist impulses and act responsibly. By scanning the brains of hundreds of teenage volunteers several times, Giedd found that the frontal lobes are one of the last areas of the brain to reach a stable grown-up state. The frontal lobes often do not reach full development and refinement until well past the age of twenty. This is why combining a teenager and a fast moving vehicle can often lead to tragedy.
With all the evidence pointing to the wisdom of keeping a young male driver off the road, Yousef was told that when he turned 19, he could take driver’s training. The milestone passed and in September he paid SR435 to a driver’s school in Dammam where they promised to train him until he could pass the license exam. It was curious though. Yousef was never taken out on the road. On the training course he never drove faster than 20 kph. He hardly ever got out of first gear. I began to worry. Eventually, he did pass the driver’s license exam, so I thought all was well.
I was seriously mistaken. License and insurance in hand, Yousef went to pick up his new car. An hour later he reappeared at our home, slightly stunned. My driver, who had accompanied him on the trip, asked to see me urgently. “Don’t let him drive without an adult beside him. He’s dangerous,” the driver advised. It turned out that Yousef almost caused three massive accidents on the way back from the car dealership. My driver had been forced to take the wheel to get them home alive.
I got a taste of it myself later that afternoon as my son proudly drove me around the block. He is now forbidden to take out the vehicle without me in the passenger seat. As a woman, I am not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, but I do have a valid US driver’s license. So I will do my duty and teach this young man how to drive. Please, pray for me.
— Arab News Features 10 October 2003
