The Post story is well researched and reported. It summarizes a recent spate of fatal traffic accidents among teenagers and documents the tragedies with data, pictures, a table and human interest insights. The story, however, is not really “new news” because subregional and community print and electronic media serve up a regular diet of mangled cars, ruined lives and roadside memorials composed of school banners, teddy bears, flowers and emotional notes to young athletes, scholars and friends.

What is really happening to cause these accidents and deaths? The locations and conditions documented in the Post story and the endless parade of similar stories suggest that a belief in two myths is a root cause. From the data, a prototypical scenario can be constructed. Not every family that has moved to or been formed in the National Capital Subregion in the past 40 years has followed this path, but the vast majority have. More importantly, while some families did not make decisions based on these two myths, all citizens were impacted by the actions of the majority who did. Here is a sketch of the prototypical scenario:

A number of years ago the parents of the victims decided that the family needed a house with a big yard to properly raise their children. This is the Big Yard Myth which was explored in (“A Yard Where Johnny (and Janie) Can Run and Play,” December 1, 2003. The only place with a “big yard” that they thought they could afford was “way out there.” While this was a concern to the parents, in the end, they decided it is all right because they also believed in a second myth –- the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth.

The Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth is cited often in this column. It is one of the myths addressed in “The Myths That Blind Us,” October 20, 2003. Most recently, we explored this myth in “Clueless,” January 19, 2004, and in “Self Delusion and Fraud,” June 7, 2004.

For those who just came in, here is a refresher on the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth:

The Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth helps parents convince themselves that the house with the “big yard” may be a long way from where the jobs, services, recreation and amenities are now, but that will change. Politicians reinforce the myth by continuing to promise that “soon” they will improve the roads and the big yard owners will be able to get to wherever quickly.

There is a companion illusion that all the things the family needs for a quality life will somehow be much closer when those roads are built. It is never mentioned that the current mobility problems are the result of the scatteration (aka, random distribution) of urban land uses. It is also not acknowledged that more roads will not improve mobility and access unless there is a Fundamental Change in settlement patterns that result in the creation of Balanced Communities.

The cumulative spacial impact the big yards for numerous families making the same decision based on these two myths results in everything required to assemble a quality life being an automobile trip away. Further, it is a physical impossibility to provide mobility and access to a settlement pattern that is, in effect, a random distribution of trip origins and destinations. That is not theory, politics or policy; it is physics. (See The Physics of Gridlock, SYNERGY/Resources 2003.)

The impact of these myths is hard to overstate. Over the past four decades the number of households in the National Capital Subregion has grown about 110 percent, or by about one million new households. A majority of the households which moved to or were formed in the Subregion included children, but the newcomers included households with no children who were advised that the big yard units would have a higher resale value. It has turned out that the units close to jobs, services, recreation and amenities -- not big yards -- have gained the most in value.

As the Subregion expands, the problem of transport dysfunction and, thus, teen death is exacerbated by the realities of geometry: Area equals Pi times the square of the radius. As scatteration of urban land uses becomes more extensive, the distance between origins and destinations of all trips grows geometrically. In addition, all the "conservation" tactics that were profiled in "Chasing Out the Mouse," October 4, 2004, compound the problem -- unless new urban homes in the Countryside are focused in enclaves that support the evolution of Balanced Communities.

It does not have to be this way. Some parents understand that when the child outgrows the stroller and the play pen and can kick a soccer ball into the flower beds, the family does not need a big individual yard. They need a house in a place where there are dooryards, clusters and neighborhoods designed with common play areas and with elementary schools, play fields and parks that can be walked to safely.

If these clusters and neighborhoods are intelligently designed and planned as part of villages and those villages make up Balanced Communities, then middle schools and high schools can be within walking distance too. So can after-school jobs, dance classes, the library and the “mall.” This is not a fantasy place. Places like this exist, and much of the existing urban fabric could be rebuilt to achieve these parameters.

If governments took intelligent action to create functional patterns and densities of land use, it would solve or at least ameliorate many problems including teen traffic accidents. This is because the existence of functional settlement patterns opens the door to market and administrative changes that address traffic deaths. These might include no student vehicles at schools and parking fees for teachers, administrators and staff, higher driving-age minimums, etc. These changes cannot be made under current conditions without great inconvenience and thus major political pain.

It is not just zoning and other land-use controls that are at fault. Governments build roads, water and sewer lines and schools in the wrong places. These bad location decisions incentivize the evolution of dysfunctional patterns. For the most part, agencies build big schools on big, remote sites where the only mode of access is by automobile. The problem is put in sharp focus by a March 2004 cover story in Governing magazine. The title says it all: Edge-ucation: The Compulsion to Build Schools in the Middle of Nowhere.” Given the school and after-school job locations, how would anyone expect teen drivers not to claim they have to drive?

The most serious blunder that the public sector makes in the core of a region is to build a transit system like METRO and then surround the station platforms with parking lots and parking garages that have nothing on top of them. In the lower-density areas, the most serious problem is building large schools on large sites and surrounding them with big parking lots. A close second are the “community centers.” libraries, government centers and other facilities that are isolated and surrounded by huge parking lots.

Unfortunately, the places that begin to approach the characteristics of a Balanced Community are priced out of the range of many families. But before you shout “SEE, ...” consider this:

In a market economy, when a settlement pattern is too expensive, the way to make it more affordable is to create more of it, not to create patterns of human activity that are dysfunctional. One of the measures of dysfunction is teen traffic deaths.

For perverse, but clearly documented reasons (See “Wild Abandonment,” September 8, 2003), the strategy of building more places that could evolve into Balanced Communities is ignored because of the short-term economic interests of decision makers. 

Back to the family whose child was just in an accident... With college expenses looming and the costs of that big-yard house (or a newer one to which the family recently moved “up”), there is frequently no choice but to have both parents working. This leaves no one to haul the kids around. If the family is very well-to-do and one parent can be home, that parent soon tires of being a chauffeur.

So it comes to the universal least-common-denominator “solution:” Invest in another car and let the children haul themselves around as soon as it is legal.

Most of the “solutions” to teen traffic fatalities raised in The Post article are relevant to a serious discussion of the topic. Many of them – e.g. raising the driving age – will help. However, unless there are feasible alternatives to the automobile for mobility, none of the solutions will “solve” the problem of teen traffic accidents. Further, without Fundamental Change, most of the proposed “solutions” will not even get serious consideration. Try to get elected to public office by telling parents of a 16- or 17-year-old that they will have to quit work and play chauffeur.

Some of the proposed solutions are counterproductive. Making the winding road “safe” for speeding teenagers is almost always without merit. As we will see below, no road is “safe” for teen drivers. Besides, there is no money for new roads even if more or wider roads was the answer.

The closest The Washington Post story came to putting its finger on the root cause of teen traffic accidents and deaths was to note that “others fault America’s love affair with suburbia (sic) and lack of mass transit.” This is an oversimplification of the impact of human settlement patterns.

The market documents that almost no one “loves suburbia” as much as they do quality urban places. (The sole exceptions are the pundits who are paid by the “Autonomists” (aka, automobile mobility apologists). The problem is not “suburbia;” it is dysfunctional human settlement patterns. These patterns are the least common-denominator result of many well-intended decisions. The decisions are reinforced by billions in advertising that perpetuates the Big Yard and Private-Vehicle Mobility Myths. It is very clear that “mass transit” (aka, shared-vehicle systems) is not a “solution” to any problem without a Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns.

Concern for the deaths of teenagers in auto accidents is nearly universal. Even the spokesperson for AAA which has a core mission of making it easier for more people to drive more miles, says they are “concerned.” When one digs into the data, it turns out that it may not be possible for young drivers to be safe drivers.

A licenced driving instructor who works in public schools recently told us that over 80 percent of the drivers between 16 and 18 are in an accident before they turn 19. This gentleman bought his newly licenced 16-year old daughter an “old tank” of a car because in spite of his best efforts, she was likely to get in a wreck. She wrecked the tank last month. Now the family will have to repair the tank, get a different car or have her ride the bus. The daughter is an outstanding student athlete. Having to ride the bus while others with lesser grades or stature get to have their own cars is “not fair.” 

What is “not fair” is that billions of dollars are spent each year by banks, Fannie and Freddie, developers and builders and roadway advocates to reinforce the Big Yard Myth and the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth."

As we document in The Shape of the Future, (SYNERGY/Resources, 2000), the problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not that they cook their books, spend millions on lobbying/image ads/charities, or pay their executives exorbitant salaries but that they are prime movers in the process of putting houses in the wrong place.

In “Death and Taxes” (21 June 2004), we profiled the impact of automobility and belief in the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth. About 40,000 citizens die in auto accidents each year. That does not include the people killed by automobiles who are not on the public roadway at the time of the accident. At the current kill rate, that is over 40 years of the war in Iraq every year.

Professor William Lucy at UVA has been writing for years about the dangers of urban citizens living in scattered low-density locations. The theme of his work is “Death at the Hands of Strangers.” Much of the death at the hand of strangers comes via auto accidents. Many of those are young hands.

Almost all the parents of teen traffic fatalities, injuries and wrecks thought they were doing the right thing when they bought into the Big Yard Myth. They may tell you they made the best choice available to them. Well, not quite. If they did not believed the Big Yard Myth and the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth, they might have looked harder and found a better location. They might have challenged their supervisor, delegate, congressperson or senator when these “electeds” took the easy way out and claimed that what was needed to improve mobility was more money for more roads.

Traffic deaths, including teenage fatalities, and many other contemporary dysfunctions can be addressed only by evolving functional human settlement patterns composed of Balanced Communities. A way to start this process is laid out in “The Shape of Richmond’s Future,” February 16, 2004.

A first step is to defang the Big Yard Myth and the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth. Soon we will outline a process to accomplish this task.