Still teenagers after all these years

Lu Lewis and Edna Varner

When it comes to teenagers and driving, Erma Bombeck once wrote, “Never lend your car to anyone to whom you’ve given birth.”

 
Once teens are driving age, nervous parents are likely to remember every movie they have ever seen making light of teens’ risky behavior behind the wheel. In the movie Clueless, Cher’s dad warns her that she and her friend Dion do not have permission to take the car, because two learner’s permits do not equal a driver’s license. Ferris Bueller of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off manages to convince his friend Cameron to let them use his father’s restored 1961 Ferrari 250 GT to travel into the city when they skip school. By the end of the day, of course, the car is totaled. Parents old enough to remember the movie Rebel without a Cause still suspect every daughter’s date is a potential James Dean, destined to end the evening drag racing towards the edge of a cliff.

 
But it’s not just teenagers we need to worry about on the road. Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) spent three years immersed in research on what happens to humans in traffic. His book is mostly about adult behavior on the road—but read some of the section headings, below. Do you think Vanderbilt is trying to reach that part of us that doesn’t always respond like an adult?

• Why Does the Other Lane Always Seem Faster? How Traffic Messes with Our Heads
• Are You Looking at Me? Eye Contact, Stereotypes, and Social Interaction on the Road.
• Shut Up, I Can’t Hear You: Anonymity, Aggression, and the Problems of Communicating While Driving.

We don’t want to steal the book’s thunder, but in an online interview, Vanderbilt answers a few questions about what happens to us when we’re driving. Here is an example:

 
Question: “A soft-spoken friend of mine turns into a yelling maniac when someone cuts him off in traffic. You say in the book that drivers ‘struggle to stay human’ behind the wheel. What happens to my friend?”

 
Vanderbilt responds: “What happens to most of us, in most driving conditions, is that we’re losing some of the key attributes that facilitate human cooperation and, in a larger sense, society. Eye contact has been shown in any number of experiments to increase the chance of gaining cooperation—that’s why when drivers give you what was called on Seinfeld the ‘stare-ahead,’ your chances that they’ll let you merge in ahead of them are greatly reduced.”

 
We all appreciate the courteous person who lets us merge. Edna personally never fails to give the “thank you” wave, although she is disappointed that some people don’t. (No home training, Lu says.) According to Vanderbilt, anonymity in traffic is a primary reason some drivers are less courteous or cooperative; there is no one to spread rumors or gossip about bad behavior—and usually no consequences for acting like an idiot. “Unlike the bar in Cheers,” Vanderbilt says, “traffic is a place where no one knows your name. Anonymity in traffic acts as a powerful drug, with several curious side effects. On the one hand, because we feel that no one is watching, or that no one we know will see us, the inside of the car itself becomes a useful place for self-expression.… Drivers desire this solitary ‘me time’—to sing, to feel like a teenager again, to be temporarily free from the constricted roles of work and home.”

 
The flip side of anonymity, he says, is that it encourages aggression. We have seen that on the road, also. Most of us are not guilty of road rage, but we are far more likely to engage in what Vanderbilt calls “traffic tantrums.” When is the last time you had an angry driver pull up next to you because you cut him off or didn’t move fast enough as the light turned green? You’d think anyone over 40 would be too mature to make faces, swear and attempt an arm gesture he no longer has the agility to pull off—but it happens.

 
Other things that happen to us when we get behind the wheel make us living proof that the adolescent inside is alive and well. This is reason enough to think we would have a little more understanding for teenagers experiencing mood swings, aggression, depression, difficulty communicating or the need to escape.

 
Lu is always the perfect lady, but Edna can still pout when she doesn’t get her way, “check out” while she’s multi-tasking or under a lot of pressure, celebrate like a 16-year-old at socials and sporting events, and—yes—drive her car in ways that would qualify her for some kind of residential treatment. We don’t think she’s alone. Lots of us out here are still teenagers after all these years.