hello and welcome to the big picture a new show on cable channel seven that discusses teen issues with a panel of experts to give us more information about the things that teens and their parents face our first topic is teen driving i'm having a sassy and i'm our young our first guest teachers and we do the six hours which are mandatory in order to qualify for the driver a program of behind the wheel and structure and i basically deal with the actual driving part of it and what we do is it's taking off for six hours and we do this during study halls if we can arrange it during your study halls we can take you off for nine periods and that will make up to six hours some students that are able to fit that into their schedules what we do is to do after school or sometimes during the holidays or you have a day off teacher and services when they have to work so you get a chance to take a nap and is there a special card make sure that we're doing exactly what we need to do and being exactly where we need to be so what are some of the skills that you teach the kids in your program well the basics think we want you to have is an awareness of when you dr an awareness in terms of where you're at you're right away there right away and we just want you to be also into a comfort zone a confident but not overconfident but safety of course i a lot of times we don't get everything covered but we do try to get everything as much as we can and obviously one of the big biggest students one of course is the parallel parking because that's the key part of this we're just going to ask you what's the best way to teach your kid to parallel park well prior to actually back in the car and getting it into the actual space getting real comfortable reversing the car knowing exactly where you need to for course one of the things you never do back up cars look straight ahead and that's one of the biggest things that is is hard to get some students to do because they want to go forward with a basket but reversing the car and knowing where the corners of your car that's know kevin and i both had our permit at one point in time and we you know i mean at least for me it was kind of difficult for my parents composure times you know because i was an experience how  to start out and a nice wide area like we parked a month or park and just take one step at a time so what are some some initial checks you should make before starting the dross before you turn your vehicle on what you need to do well first of all just walk around make sure there are no obstacles around the car you know such as maybe your neighbor has a small child and they leave their bike something around that shows walk around while you're walking around make a visual check also question for you and about this new six month have you noticed or do you feel that the six month old makes for a safer driver well i think any time that you can have experience to any driver it is well worth  e time so get the student right as they start sometimes i'll get it mid way through the six month period sometimes i'll get it with the near the end where they're getting ready to take their tests and obviously their focus is on terminal but  the extra hours i think are definitely helpful because it gives them more experience and it gets them to be more confident more comfortable behind the wheel that's very important and just the knowledge of the launch and  their situation on the road thank you very much before we introduce our next guest we've got a short video about drinking and driving  and we're back our next guest here is a teacher pierce entreprise school he's mr cathar and he teaches tenth grade driver's theory so mr and explain the drivers three program that we have here peters and what kind of things you focus on is the driver's ed program here it peters is a one semester course it had been and every other day one semester course until this year and we're pretty excited about that because we have extra days now and we can extend it to do some more things that we weren't able to do in the past it's very comprehensive it's as much as we can do without actually getting behind the wheel and driving we try to give the students every background aspect of driving that they possibly can get before they go behind police station and he's awesome solved with the dare program and he did a couple simulations with us so would you like to share officer dave comes in each semester and talks to the class he and kanchi frick stop in chief or it likes to be involved in  officer dave's talks also he shares with the students many of the things that the students need to know as they pertain to driving many of the many of our students in the officer dave through the dare program being young students coming up in elementary but when he gets here at the high school he talks about driver's ed he's very very serious serious he talks about what the way students should handle themselves if they are ever pulled over by a police officer he also spends a lot of time talking about the sobriety testing and he even shares with them the fatal vision goggles where it gives the students the feeling of being drunk and intoxicated and having to go through sobriety testing you know that was really  it was a good program so i know that a lot of teenagers are and are concerned about the insurance rates does drivers there help out with that you know we try to in and again with the extended program this year this is an area where we we would like to expand a little bit we just really brushed over the last couple years mainly just introducing the fact that insurance is for students who are sixteen through twenty five or people who are sixteen through twenty five  but we plan to get a little bit more in depth with having students research different insurance companies and finding the best price and i think that's going to be important for them i know you have a doctor that's about driving it right so what kind of what kind of things can parents do to help make sure their kids a safe driver first of all she's not allowed to drive you don't allow the drive but they want to get that freedom and the the main things that you want to focus on with your kids is it is like giving them plenty of opportunity to be behind the wheel experience driving in a structured environment that's where we're all of the new licensing procedures and of targeted our students for don't rush that's the thing the old licensing procedure was a rushing procedure and no more you can't do it anymore there's got to be plenty of time behind the wheel and in the classroom so you've graduated a lot of students from your program feel that the six months of raul has made her safer gather well i think it's too early to tell i'm sure that it will though many of the students as the students get used to the program they won't feel that they're being punished that's the thing right now with the students there saying well you know i know kids who are juniors and seniors and they didn't have to go through the program like we're going through and it's not fair but i think that that initial sense of getting through this and as time goes by students so students will appreciate it and i think parents should appreciate it mainly because again that's the safest thing at most that's accident statistics are proven that experience is the main cause so and  helps them to get more experience now i know you mention experience being one of the main causes what are some other causes of accidents and naturally the inexperience factor and alcohol and alcohol related accidents and the society the way it is and i think there's going to be new cell phone laws that are that are amended if they're already in the process of york state you know it's a fine if you're pulled over with a cell there it really has got to be the responsibility of whomever is driving the person is the person who is in charge of the vehicle and they're the ones that are going to have to know what they're doing and be responsible for all those people that are in their vehicles if you think that there should be a limit for new drivers on how many people they can have in the vehicle whether it's that is one of the new laws a a new driver cannot have more occupants in their car than the number of seatbelts and that is new but i think that's a good practice i would think it is you know the smaller amount of kids in a car the less chance there is something do you think that more accidents happen with forty year looking cars fast r you know it's funny chief chief and i were talking about them and you know my first gut reaction to that would be yeah that there probably would be but in our discussion you know he seemed to think and he made me kind of think a little bit more that probably not i think generally speaking most vehicles are you know very nice looking have a lot to offer and probably if you if you we would take the time and pull out some of the statistics i would find that that's probably not the case a sporty car sprogs drive in a course i'm sure with so what kind of things can a parent do to reinforce with their child learning and driver not having the number of students those are the types of things that that they need to reinforce if they're if they're a little bit slack on those things first of all their kids are going to get in trouble if they're caught and second of all that's teaching the wrong that's teaching the wrong idea of allowing them to get away with things that they should be away with also i feel that parents should know where their kids are going all the time and that's part of than being a parent part of being an accepting  responsibility as a as a teenager and accepting responsibility as a driver parents should be responsible where they're know where their kids are going without time for one last question do you think the teens are really the worst drivers on the road like a lot of people say well you know again i'm basing it on what i have a cumulative over the years of my knowledge they are the most inexperienced and and are they the worst drivers i would say no i would say you know there's the the young driving age is considered to be sixteen through twenty five i mean there's a lot of people on the road from twenty six to you know who knows how it w we'll be right back with more of the big picture after th radar for enforcement at this point we've been arguing that point for years it would be a very good thing for us but as of yet the legislature hasn't given us the authority to use it so let's say you do get caught speeding and you get pulled over what do you need to have ready when the officer comes to your car driver's license and owner's card you may end up asking you for an insurance card but the two most important things is your driver's license another card and if you forget your driver's license ho the same thing as if you were a driver the citations the same violations the same penn dot looks at that i don't know they may look at it differently but it's it's no different for us what kind of things  like saying movies cause violence i'm not sure whether it does or not i would have no way of knowing that i think movies or a matter of the person's perception and how they respond to it is going to affect some people in appropriately probably i don't know i don't think they do a comparison i would have to actually get my supplies they can call them and ask them there's no the national highway traffic safety administration may have that information but it's not something i correlate if you suspect a driver is driving a test called the horizontal gaze misdiagnose technique it's a test of the fluctuations in the eyeball as you move to your peripheral vision now the sooner the fluctuation starts the more intoxicated the person and there is no way that you can control or defeat that test ok if those tests all prove to be valid or give the officer what he needs to make a determination that the youth is under the youth or adult is under the influence requires us once we get to the station to sit with you for twenty minutes with a freemount no water no cigarettes no god nothing could be ingested during that twenty minute period the twenty minute period is to cleanse your mouth of any  residual alcohol or any other material you might have had in it then the test is performed so no i don't think even if it could have an effect it wouldn't affect it with that twenty minute wait ten or so for teens who are travelling other people whom i'd be under the influence ten they would be penalize well your questions a good one but it doesn't go far enough because when you have intoxicated people in your car you're responsible for their behavior they're hanging out the windows are they acting like goofs causing a potential harm to themselves or others those kind of activities yes the driver can still be held responsible or if they're act and reasonably well not clowning around we're probably not going to know about it so you're going to go on your way without any interference from us can you discuss a little bit open container law it's real simple you cannot have an open container of alcoholic beverages in a moving vehicle no matter what age no matter what age i have a question if you are driving your vehicle and you're speeding and a police officer turns his life on and you are right at the edge of another timeship ten you simply leave that township and the police will he be able to continue to chase you and continue to pursue you as long as he keeps you in vision so if you keep going he can keep going but more than likely he won't if he's obtained your registration plates you cannot run the radio and the electronics that we have i mean you may get away  but sooner or later somebody probably i mean knocking on your door want to talk to you and your folks now if you do get into an accident with another vehicle what steps should you take well if it's a minor accident at any action i think you should call the police to the accident scene because it's important that you get the other person's information we've had a lot of times where people have exchanged in from exchange change the information and then the information that the one has isn't complete enough or accurate enough and when they attempt to contact the person they're left kind of high and dry and so it's important that the proper information was exchanged between the two parties if it's a more serious accident you have to report that's required so you need to contact the police or have someone contact the police and have a report follow now what are some of the more trouble accent trouble spots and township well to be honest with you right nineteen is a trouble spot and i don't say that for any specific reason other than you talked earlier with these john what about what causes accidents and some of the things that result caused them and probably our biggest problem on one team is distraction accidents whether it be cell phones reaching down to pick something up reaching back to check on the child in the backseat picking up something to look at any number of distractions changing the radio changing your cd those are all distractions if you're traveling at sixty miles an hour and you go to tune your radio by the time your vision comes back to the road you travel one hundred seventy six feet blind tap a football over half a football field so it becomes very significant and with the number of traffic lights on nineteen and the number of curb cards or entrances and exits are built to businesses you have a lot of things facing you that you have to maintain your attention on to drive