If you are the parent of a young teenager, or someone just learning to drive.

Do you think there is any good that might or could possibly come from he/she being exposed to very graphic photographs of serious vehicular accidents?

I can't decide whether I think publication of crime scene/vehicle accident photos are justified or not, but the one thing that could swing me is if parents of children felt it was a good idea.

For years I have felt these photos were an invasion of privacy, but over the past few weeks this issue has been raised again, with some interesting opinions and results, and all of these opinions deserve respect and consideration, IMO.

Could you live with your young child seeing very graphic photos of drivers who, under the influence or otherwise, had destroyed their lives and the lives of others?

Or is this too intense for children below a particular age?

Or is this an invasion of privacy for the individual whose crash photos are presented online forever?

Interesting issues.

I don't know what I think about many of these issues, but I am very willing to listen to the opinions of others.

Thanks.

if a parent wants to show pics then fine, but i think most kids of driving age have the ability to go online and find some pretty gruesome pics anyway so i dont know if it makes any difference anyway.

As you look at the different crushed and twisted vehicles, ask them to imagine themselves in the car, as the driver or as a passenger.

It's 3-D, it might be more moving.

If you do pictures, please resist ones with blood and headless bodies, like we got in drivers education classes.

:P

With drunk driver signs. Very effective! Long weekends, spring break, etc., you can expect to see crumpled vehicles on medians and such.

The gross pictures, on the other hand, are really horrid. My sons would have been ok with them, but my daughter would have been traumatized, no question! I don't think they are good for general distribution. I have seen a few of people in a hospital bed, with bandages, traction, etc. Those are fairly graphic, but without the blood. I think that might be ok.

Yeah, that would be good, I think.

.

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Cute pic of their former self on the bedside table... talking of the fun party or whatever... then the pain, confusion, worry... I think it has zazz!

The year after high school I was in a wreck with my best friend Tom, he was driving his 66 Mustang way too fast.

He didn't make it. I woke up in the hospital with amnesia, but I knew he was gone.

Had a little flashback there.

I'm OK now. It was in 75.

:hug:

It's a tender age to be forced to deal with that!

How's your driving?

head-sized holes in the windshields.

As a parent of a 17 and 16 yr. old teens who are learning to drive, the pictures don't make any difference. We also have a dvd which is rather gory and IMO that didn't seem to make much of an impact as well.

Unfortunately, what does seem to make the most significant impact is either knowing someone who was in a wreck and died (or nearly died) or the new driver actually being in a wreck. Kids are so desensitized to violence and gore these days that not much phases them.

My kids have lost 4 friends in the past year and a half... they know firsthand how dangerous, and what a responsibility, driving is. My kids are 15 & 16, but I taught them how to drive years ago. They were riding a little dirt bike before they could pedal a bicycle and they've both been driving around the property since they were 9 & 10 years old...

Disturbing, yes. Traumatic? We're talking about teenagers, right? They watch the fake stuff just about any time it's offered--zombie movies, slasher flicks, etc... So, no, I don't think it's traumatic. It may put a sense of realism into what they're watching for fun. Not that it had that much of an affect on the people I knew back then.

Now privacy is another issue entirely.

If it really did any good showing them graphic images of crash victims, I would support it. I just don't know if it does any good at that age.

They are invincible at 16 and those accidents are never going to happen to them. We all were that way, I remember thinking nothing is going to happen to me. I was lucky and nothing did. There were a few close calls but I and all my friends made it amazingly enough.

All you can do is train them very well, something I don't think is done enough of these days. 50 hours of driving and a driving course at $250 for 10 hours of class and driving just doesn't cut it.

New drivers should have 2 years of driving with a parent or guardian before ever being turned loose on their own. There is too much to learn in 50 hours to make them good, safe drivers.

Or so many of them think, unfortunately.

and never forgot the films they showed of accidents. I still drag raced with my friends, but it helped me be a more responsible driver. I think it is a good thing for kids to see what can happen when two pieces of metal weighing over a ton collide. It is educational to see how fragile flesh and bone is when subjected to high speeds and weight. Then again, when I was growing up, you could pick up 'Time' and see the mangled bodies of soldiers in Viet Nam inside its pages. It's part of life. And death. And how easily it can be taken away. And it's a good thing to remind people of now and then.

Teens see so much gore on television and the movies that they don't really grasp the difference between a dead body and a made-up mannequin. I mean, intellectually they know the difference, but not usually at a deeper level that would damage them. Of course, your mileage may vary, and not all teens are alike. My teen mentioned wandering onto a website with graphic photos (I think they were accident photos) and thinking "Yuck!" and leaving quickly. She's not traumatized--there's just not enough context. She gets more scared watching movies because they put a context behind the gore.

As for whether it makes a teen driver more careful, no. Not in any way. Teens don't even take the pictures seriously. I say this as a former teen and friend of many teens who all looked at these photos, and as a parent currently teaching a teenager to drive. What scares them is fear for their own safety, and seeing a depersonalized gore photo of someone they don't know won't scare them. Most teens can't even identify with the picture.

What scares them, if anything does, is learning of a friend's death, or seeing an accident on the highway in real time (not the assanine waste-of-time mock accidents they stage outside high schools). They have to see an unscripted, personal result, or they will just feel like adults are attempting to manipulate them, as usual.

Showing dead bodies or fake accident scenes are about as useful as telling a kid how poor they will be if they don't study or showing them "Reefer Madness" or "It's just a little pot!" commercials to get them to stay off drugs. They just tune it out at best, and at worse lose respect for the responsible adults and their message.

My opinion, anyway, as a former teen and a parent of a teen.

At that age they honestly think they are invincible. They need to be reminded that they are not. If they can't handle a stern dose of reality then they don't belong behind the wheel.

15yo son that just completed the classroom portion of Driver's Ed, I am fully in support of showing the kids graphic photos of what happens when you mix drugs, alcohol, speed, lack of seatbelts, lack of sleep and motor vehicles. As a Soldier approaching this past Memorial Day Weekend my unit conducted a mandatory Safety Stand Down where they brought in an Accident/Safety Investigator who was an incredibly dynamic speaker who spent a solid hour presenting graphic photos of stupidity. Most were of Soldiers involved in vehicle accidents and the loss of life. Some were of victims, mostly caused by irresponsible Soldiers....It was an extremely graphic session, got my attention that's for sure. I know there are times when I've been too tired to drive safely, but went out anyway. How many of us have driven too fast for the road conditions? Do you drive too fast, I know I do sometimes....Point is that the Safety Presentation got my attention and the attention of a bunch of other Soldiers, hopefully saving lives over the weekends. If I could get my hands on Mr. Safety's presentiation, my 15yo would be watching it before he gets behind the wheel of one our family cars!

which should be required by all states, in high school.

ps, I still do the things my teacher taught us, 50+ years ago.

something. i believe it was fires? maybe car accidents. i know they were graphic. i don't think it's necessary unless you have a teenager who is driving recklessly and acting stupid about driving. they do demonstrations at schools all over showing cars crashing and such. I think a more powerful thing is when family members who have lost a loved one or victims who have been hit by a drunk driver or otherwise reckless driver went to a school and talked to the kids. I just don't know if kids would internalize and get out of seeing graphic images what one would hope they would. unless they have had it happen to them or experienced it personally i think they would not really pay much attention.

according to the individual child. Some at that age still don't see the accident photo and put themselves in it - they're still immortal, and sometimes still lacking the ability to place themselves in someone else's shoes. Other kids are so sensitive that it might frighten them to the point that they're not really safe yet behind the wheel.

And then, as you say, there's the issue of privacy - someone else's tragedy being used as an education device. I suppose it's best in that case to have the permission of the victim/victim's family to do so. Without that, yes, it does feel a bit creepy to seek that out.

Driving, like much else we entrust our growing kids with, is a process. Sometimes a step backward. I don't know that I think one viewing of a horrible accident would carry as much weight as the constant discussion of safety that ought to start happening early - as soon as the child is aware of the act of driving, maybe. (This isn't an endorsement of the technique of my neighbor, who insisted he was taking extra safety steps by allowing his underage child to drive - on the town streets, on the highway, sometimes unaccompanied... I'm so glad that child is still unscathed, but such stupidity is stunning to me).

My son took a while before he could calm down enough and feel confident enough to drive safely. And he is safe - unlike his mother, he doesn't speed, for instance! Early in his solo driving, he slid on a wet 90 degree turn (doing all of 15 mph) and totalled the car. (I liked that car!). It was pretty traumatic for all of us - though thankfully, the car's totalling meant he was perfectly fine. He was a wreck about driving for a good long while - no confidence. And me? Wreck doesn't begin to describe me every time he took the car out!

As I said, a process...

just take them to see that

Creepy music with creepy lyrics:

I remember, we were flying along,
And hit something in the air...

Laying here, looking at the ceiling,
Someone lays a sheet across my chest.
Something warm is flowing down my fingers
Pain is flowing all through my back.

I try to move my arm and there's no feeling
And when I look, I see there's nothing there.
The face beside me stopped bleeding
The girl I knew has such a distant stare.

I remember, we were flying along,
And hit something in the air.

Then I look straight at the attendant,
His face is pale as it can be.
He bends and whispers something softly,
He says there's no chance for me.

I remember, we were flying along,
And hit something in the air.

Life is flowing out my body,
Pain is flowing out with my blood.
The sheets are red and moist where I'm lying.
God in Heaven, teach me how to die.

I remember, we were flying along,
And hit something in the air.


BTW, I saw the blood and guts movies in drivers education in the mid 1970's. It certainly made me conscientious of the power of my vehicle. Let's face it, most teens need to be reminded of their mortality.

Of two four lane roads.

Bad crashes were an at least weekly occurrence and I saw one decapitation.

It got to the point that we would hear the crash and dial the cops before going outside to try and help.

That did have an effect on me, I'm now nearly sixty and have never had a really serious crash despite driving considerably more than the average American for a good portion of my life.

Just like getting a speeding ticket, you drive slower for a while.

It also depends on the kid. If you kid is cautious to begin with, it is probably excessive. If you kid is a little on the wild side, it may do some good for a while, which may be critical especially if he or she is more careful during their first 6 months behind the wheel.

That's the sad truth of it.

I was a sensitive child and all you had to do was feed me ugly propaganda about the dangers of doing drugs and smoking and you could be guaranteed I would stay away from drugs and tobacco for life. I would also be haunted for life by the nightmarish propaganda to which I had been subjected. (Thank goodness I somehow missed being of an age where they still showed gory driver's ed films in class. The old stop-motion traffic-safety movies they used to show us in grade school were bad enough...you know, where some puppet-kid would fail to look both ways and end up in traction.)

Other kids, however, would no doubt hoot and laugh at the same stuff that gave me nightmares. That would be their way of creating the emotional distance from it necessary for dealing with it. They would overcompensate to the point of forming the "can't happen to me" denial pose with which most teenagers are equipped. They cannot learn that it CAN happen to them or someone they know any way other than by personal experience.

I wish I knew the solution to this one.