Teen safety a shared job

Never give up.

Winston Churchill’s famous message must be applied to efforts to turn teen drivers into safe drivers.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows a reduction from 9,940 deaths in 1978 to a 30-year low of 5,156 in 2006.

But in Virginia, five deaths in just one week — a week, moreover, designated as National Teen Driver Safety Week — shows that we can never relax, never give up the push to create safe teen drivers.

In Virginia, 77 teens have died in crashes so far this year, compared to 92 for all of 2007. At this pace, Virginia would see no drop in deaths this year.

Teaching safe driving is only part of a successful strategy. Many of the gains in safety made in recent decades have been obtained through legislation such as graduated driver’s licenses and through special driving restrictions imposed on teens.

Education, however, also remains important. Inculcating safe driving behavior — so that safe choices are made automatically — must be a continual effort, applied to each crop of new drivers and reinforced repeatedly for older teen drivers.

And, just as laws are ineffective without police enforcement, education is only so effective without followed up with parental re-enforcement.

Keeping teen drivers safe is big job. But it’s also a shared responsibility. We all play a part — including adult drivers who teach by example every time they either obey or flout safety rules.