DMV Announces Two Teen Driving Initiatives

With Connecticut’s Teen Safe Driving Week approaching December 4-10, DMV Commissioner Melody A. Currey announced Tuesday two initiatives to further improve safety and training for teen drivers.

DMV for the first time will include safety warnings for parents in its laws and training brochure for 16- and 17-year-old drivers. It also plans to strengthen requirements for people at driving schools who train other driving instructors.

“Both of these are strong initiatives aimed at the core issue of safety behind the wheel. We want parents to know issues to watch for and we want to ensure driving instructors are trained by experienced individuals,” Commissioner Currey said.

Connecticut has annually marked its own Safe Teen Driving Awareness week in December for the last several years. It is championed by !MPACT, officially known as Mourning Parents Act, Inc., a organization of families and friends of teens who died in car crashes.

The revised laws and training brochure, which had only included laws, training requirements and penalty information, is now expanded into include parent safety tips. Members of the newly formed Commissioner’s Advisory Committee on Teen Safe Driving recommended that direct messages to parents were needed to enhance safety precautions that parents might not have considered.

Tips covered include: Crashes Kill Teens, Brain Development, Passenger Restrictions, Restrict Night Driving, It’s the Law - Require Your Teen to Buckle Up, No Drinking and Driving, Teach Your Teen About Distracted Driving, Vehicle Selection Matters, Financial Liability, Get Involved: Be a role model.

The Commissioner also said that her office has been working for several months on changes to state regulations pertaining to commercial driving schools, including requirements for licensing those who teach driving instructors or so-called “master instructors” licensed by DMV.

“We need a more focused approach on specific qualifications for a master driving instructor and knowledge about instruction,” she said, adding, “We also need to establish these criteria in state regulations because in the past it has been interpreted too widely and were never established by state law.”

Driving instructors are trained under the supervision of their driving schools by a master instructor. This person has obtained a special license from DMV. The Commissioner, who came to DMV earlier this year,  found that DMV did not have official standards in regulations for this master instructor.

The Commissioner’s proposal is to strengthen the criteria and establish it through state regulation.

Under her proposal to be submitted to the state legislature, someone seeking to be a master driving instructor must:

• Have been licensed by a commercial or secondary school for at least five years and continuously has remained in good standing with DMV.
• Provide a recommendation for a commercial driving school that he or she is a proficient driver, has good oral and written communication skills and will teach potential driving instructors at that school.
• Take and pass a master examination that demonstrates proficiency in instructing driving teachers.

“We take seriously issues that put students at jeopardy in their own training and leave parents unaware that the quality of driver’s education for which they are paying has been compromised,” the Commissioner said.

For instance, in 2011 DMV brought significant fines to two driving schools for failing to follow state law, including the use of unlicensed instructors.

On November 8, 2011 the agency fined Southbury Driving Academy $20,000 based on a 10-count complaint resulting from various violations,  which occurred in 2009 and 2010, and including the use of an unlicensed instructor.

On March 7, 2011, DMV accepted a consent agreement from Chase “2” Driving School in West Haven that included a $15,000 fine for multiple counts of using unlicensed instructors. Four years earlier Chase "2" was cited in June, 2007, for employing unlicensed instructors. An investigation found it had 4 unlicensed instructors and a written warning was issued.

Based on the stipulated agreement for the 2011 charges, DMV also suspended Chase "2" operations for three full weeks from June 5 to June 25, 2011 and put the school on probation until March 2013.

Information from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.