driving distracted

don't let their fingers do the talking when they're driving

Here's the Problem

You don't need a law to tell you that texting while driving is hazardous to your health. But some people need a little push, and knowing that Big Brother is watching, ready to hand out a ticket and a fine, may be the motivation they need to stow away the phone. Here's a scary statistic from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 63 percent of people under 30 years old acknowledge driving while using a handheld phone, and 30 percent of people under 30 text while driving. In 2012, 5,500 people were killed in texting-and-driving accidents.

Why It's a Problem

Unfortunately, since teens lead with their hearts and not their brains, their worry about missing some really, really, really important tidbit of news overrides any worry about Big Brother or, more important, deadly car accidents. In fact, there's even a label for this addiction: FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out.” To counter this, most parents lead with parental lecture #92: Texting and talking on your phone while driving is verboten and will be met with severe consequences.

For some reason, when I hear the chime on my phone signifying a text, I get a little excited. Who is it? What do they want? Even though 99.99999 percent of the time it's nothing, somewhere I must think that the information just relayed is somehow going to change my life and that I can't live without knowing it immediately! Come on, admit it, you get that little surge of excitement too. Well that's what your teen is feeling, times 1,000. As an adult, I get that it is ridiculous, so I've trained myself not to look at the text until I have parked the car. I do have some ability to delay gratification. Most teens don't. Their whole world is now designed to feed this beast. Want to watch a movie? Instant download. Want to talk to a friend? Instant text. Want to make someone laugh? Instant photo!

In the heat of the moment, when kids get into that car, lecture #92 is nowhere present in their immediate consciousness. It's gone in one ear and out the other, unless it's been paired with a concrete action plan. And this, parents, is the key. Your teen's cellphone is practically an extension of her body. She's so used to feeling the weight of it in the palm of her hand that it doesn't register in her brain as an encumbrance. Teens have learned to navigate their world almost single-handedly (while the other hand texts). Your job is not just to lecture about the dangers of driving and cellphone use, but also to help develop a game plan for how to eliminate cellphone temptation while driving.

Recently I asked my 60 text-crazy college students how many of them text while driving. A depressingly large majority raised their hands. Then I asked them to visualize where their phones were when they got into the driver's seat. Here was the astounding response: They didn't know! That's because they don't think of their phones as being a separate part of their body. To them it's like asking where's your hand when you walk to the car? When I asked, “How about in your hand?” they laughed at the joke but got the message. Then I asked them to visualize where the phone was while they were driving. The two most popular answers were in their right hand or in their lap. Then we began to work on a plan. Clearly, they all got that the phone needed to be inaccessible to them while driving. The girls figured that if they put them in their bags—making sure the phone was on silent—and put their bags in the backseat, that would solve the problem. Out of sight, out of mind. The boys thought putting them on silent and in the glove compartment would do the trick. The learning is not someone telling them the obvious, but in helping them to develop a plan to change the behavior.

Here's the Solution

Don't wait for your teens to get their driver's licenses to put a plan in place. Integrating new behavior takes time. You'll need to start this process of helping your teen to be comfortable in the car without access to a cellphone. Trust me, this will take some time! I suggest at least six months to a year before obtaining the coveted license. You may get some resistance, but most teens are highly motivated to drive. They will acquiesce when they understand that in order to drive they'll need to be deemed cellphone-safe.

When your teen is a passenger in the front seat, there's no phone use at all. Have her develop a plan for what she'll do with her phone when she gets in the car. This will be hard. Teens will forget. They'll need their parents to remind them, every single time. It's important to be consistent in reminding them and to have realistic expectations. Remember, changing behavior is really, really hard. In this practice you are helping your teen to associate sitting in the front seat with no phone use, which will hopefully translate to no use in the driver's seat. This is classical conditioning. To help enforce this—because of course you will get tremendous opposition—use this “I get it” moment: “I get how important staying in touch with your friends is, but soon you'll be driving and I need to know that you're able to put away your phone and sit it out without talking or texting while driving. Having you do that with us while we're driving is a way of practicing and developing the ability to give your full attention to the road. This is obviously your choice. I'm not going to make you put your phone away, though I'll be happy to remind you. But when it comes time for you to get your license, I will probably not let you drive my car unless I have complete confidence that you can be in the car without being on your phone. I'll only know that because you'll have shown me. I love you, and your safety is always going to be the most important thing in the world to me!”

Once again, most important is what you do in the car with your phone. The model you set is the most powerful, more powerful than the lecture and more powerful than the plan. Your teens are watching your every move. If you talk or text on your phone while you're driving with them, just know that it will come back to bite you. You're likely to hear, “You talk on the phone while you're driving; what's the difference?” And truly there really is no answer to that. There's no correlation between driving experience and accidents with cellphone use. In fact, recent research shows that adults actually text while driving more than teens do. Twenty years as a driver, 20 days as a driver, distraction is distraction, and your kids will see the hypocrisy if that's your argument. So when your kids, and this includes young kids or teens, are in the car while you're driving, make sure you say out loud, “Shut my phone off for me. I don't want to be talking and driving.” I want your kids to hear the words, so they get parked away up in those brains of theirs, so that when they get in that driver's seat, they have a tape playing in their heads from the most important people in their lives.

Practice makes perfect!