DUICan Teens Be Scared Into Driving Safely?
By Tony Bizjak -- Bee Staff Writer
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On a recent afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles' Broadway office, eager teens headed out one by one on their driving test with high hopes of earning their California license.
Next door at the Sacramento Country Coroner's Office, a tragic result of that new freedom was being dramatized. A grim-faced actor gestured to a row of bodies on gurneys in the cold storage room, their toes tagged for identification.
"They never thought they'd end up here," he said.
It was the filming of "Red Asphalt V," the latest sequel in California's legendary series of driver education horror films.
For 40 years, "Red Asphalt" movies have used graphic images of real highway crashes to warn teens they are but one mistake from being "Spam in a can," says Steve Kohler, who oversaw the California Highway Patrol-produced film.
The new movie, scheduled for release this month to driving educators in California and beyond, is expected to be viewed by tens of thousands of teenagers.
But one important question remains: Will those future drivers get the message?
California's "Red Asphalt" films are part of what sociologists call the popular "fear appeal" method of getting teens to behave. The genre includes the legendary "Reefer Madness," a 1930s movie in which addiction to marijuana lands a student in an insane asylum. Lately, the appeals have turned sophisticated, with public service commercials such as the recent anti-smoking spot in which a woman suffering from cancer of the larynx pauses to puff on a cigarette through a hole in her throat.
Fear appeal also is a key element in the state's "Every 15 Minutes" - a high school program whose title reflects the frequency of fatal car crashes. "Every 15 Minutes" begins with a "fatal" accident staged at the campus. The following day, schools hold a memorial service where parents read aloud letters to their "deceased" children.
Despite fear appeal's popularity, many academics say it doesn't work on most teens and could even cause some to be even less careful.
If there is too much gore, says Bruce Simons-Morton, who heads up prevention research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the horror may drown out the message. Even those initially frightened, he added, may forget the message after a few weeks of uneventful driving.
Chayla Furlong, 19, of Auburn - who has both a car crash and speeding tickets in her driving history - says she paid no attention to the "Red Asphalt" film she saw in driver education class a few years ago.
"I remember it being more gory than it needed to be," said the college sophomore. "That was a little too much for me to handle. It made me tune out."
Kansas State University psychology professor Renee Slick, who is studying teen driver safety messages, complains that safety programs are flying blind. She recently tested teenagers, using sensor pads attached to the skin to gauge physical response - including heart rate, muscle tension and perspiration - and found that many boys have a strong physiological reaction when viewing videos of crumpled cars.
But that may mean they are physically excited rather than frightened, Slick warned. "We don't know, and that's scary. If sensation-seekers get a high off of this, then we are just fueling this fire."
From the beginning, the "Red Asphalt" movies were based more on philosophy than scientific research. CHP officials acknowledge they haven't tested what effect the movies have had on teen driving habits, though they say they hear from adults who remember the movie years later.
"To measure the effects, that is tough," said Kent Milton, who produced past versions of the films for the CHP. Milton cautioned that the movie should be just a part of a broader discussion of safe driving.
The new film, produced last spring by the CHP in conjunction with a film crew and a marketing research consultant, is funded by a $200,000 federal grant. The CHP hopes to recoup the extra cost of making copies of the film by charging $15 per copy.
CHP officials update the movie every few years to keep up with trends, including making sure the cars are up-to-date. Teens will ignore the movie if it looks old-fashioned, they say. This time they also opted to amp up the intensity after focus groups, teens and driver education teachers agreed that the 1998 version was too wimpy, especially for teens used to realistic special effects violence on television and in movies.
David Morton, who teaches driver education at Laguna Creek High School, stopped showing it to his classes because it didn't seem to capture teens' attention.
"I'm not a 'gore' guy, but I want them to see reality," Morton said.
The new movie has plenty of reality. It shows footage of twisted bodies thrown from cars and crushed inside smashed vehicles. There is a quick camera pan to a brain lying in gravel, and another shot of a severed forearm on the road.
Some researchers say there are recent indications that the fear appeal approach does work - at least on certain teens - if presented in the right context.
A limited study at California State University, Chico, suggests that the "Every 15 Minutes" program has a lingering effect six months later on the handful of students chosen to be "killed" in the simulated car crash.
Michigan State University researcher Kim Witte, who has studied the fear approach to health education, says teens reject the message if they feel manipulated. That has happened, she said, in preaching about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, smoking and unprotected sex.
But Witte believes the approach works if the gore isn't too off-putting and if the audience isn't left feeling powerless. The trick is to provide concrete and believable steps students can take to avoid ending up a road crash victim.
"You can scare the bejeebers out of them as long as they understand they can do something that effectively protects them," Witte said.
Of course, with teens there is a broader question of whether any cautionary education will change behavior. A federal brain wave study recently found that the brain's ability to recognize and put the brakes on risky behavior doesn't fully develop until a person is in his or her mid-20s.
In addition, the research on programs such as the anti-drug DARE program has shown that the scared-straight approach can quickly wear off. Researchers say they suspect the same is true of driver safety programs that seek to shock.
Many beginning teen drivers interviewed by The Bee said they could not picture themselves getting into a bad crash.
Eric Thomson, 16, a junior at Rocklin High School, saw a video of car crashes shown by the CHP at a new parent-teen night program called "start smart." When he and his father got to the parking lot afterward, Eric refused to take the truck keys. "You can drive," he told his dad, half-joking. "I don't ever want to drive again."
A week or so later, Eric - who considers himself a cautious driver - said he had stopped thinking about the video because "I don't think it could possibly happen to me."
The complicating factor for researchers is that teenagers' reactions to fear appeals vary widely.
David Schumann of the University of Tennessee conducted a study in 1992 that found that fear might work with safety-conscious teens who are not by nature what psychologists call "high sensation-seekers." But it could have the opposite effect on the teens who need it most: those with risk-taking personalities.
Schumann theorizes that sensation seekers see themselves as invulnerable or invincible, making them essentially immune to fear.
Then, there is the boomerang effect.
When speeding, drinking alcohol or smoking are presented as dangerous by adults, "that makes it all the more appealing to some young people who want to show they are brave or who want to flout authority," said David Hanson, a social psychologist at the State University of New York, Potsdam.
CHP officials agree they need to do more than scare. That is reflected in the new "Red Asphalt" movie, too. The film repeatedly cuts away from the highway carnage to living rooms and bedrooms where family members describe their grief over the loss of a teen. One father, standing in his son's room, said he had never cried before. Then, after his son's death, he found himself curled up crying on the bathroom floor.
Eric Thomson saw a similar mix of scaring and caring during "start smart."
A few months later, he dismissed the crash videos - not as graphic as those in the new "Red Asphalt" film. He said they "sort of just looked like a movie to me."
But the testimonials from bereaved parents remained fresh in Eric's mind. He could imagine his parents' reaction if he were in a bad crash, which has made him more safety conscious. "I think I'd feel worse for them than for me," he said. "I don't know what they would do."
Eliciting those emotions is part of the state's "Every 15 Minutes" program. Through it, Jesuit High School last semester staged a simulated drunken-driving crash on the football field, with student volunteers posing as the killed and injured. One student lay "dead" on a car hood. Firefighters, police, coroner's officials and hospital employees participated.
Jesuit had suffered a real tragedy in August 2004, when three students were killed and another injured in a high-speed crash at Arden Way and Fulton Avenue. At the "Every 15 Minutes" crash scene, while some students joked about the "blood" makeup, others said the staged event served as a serious reminder about the real accident.
The next day, at a "memorial service" in the school gym, the staged nature of the event seemed to melt away as parents read last messages to their teens.
"My dearest Scott, I love you so much," a crying Theresa Arciniega read. "My heart aches to hold you in my arms. There was so much more I wanted to discover about you. I only know I wish it were me that (God) took."
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About the writer: The Bee's Tony Bizjak can be reached at (916) 321-1059 or tbizjak@sacbee.com.
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