It’s been over three decades since I attended one of those high school parties where I was more concerned about what people were thinking of me and whether or not I would finally find a high school sweetheart than I was about how I would get home safely. It has been over three decades since I listened to announcements on the schools public address system about the death of a classmate in a drunken driving accident. My memories of such events are cloudy, but they still linger with me. Still, issues of teen driving remain with us today, and the solutions seem not to have changed substantially.

Last week, The Hartford Courant had an article about Gov. Rell appointing a task force on teen driving.

The governor, following the accident-related deaths of seven teens over the past four months, today announced formation of a task force that will look for more effective ways to convince teens to drive safer.

Named to co-chair the task force are: Robert M. Ward, commissioner of the state Department of Motor Vehicles, and Dr. J. Robert Galvin, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health.

The comments in forums and mailing lists were not particularly favorable. As I think back to my high school years, I can just imagine how much credibility such a task force would have had with my peers and how dubious I would have been of any of their suggestions. Why don’t they listen to the kids?

I have no beef with Mr. Ward or Dr. Galvin, yet somehow, it seems like they might as well have appointed Paula Schwartz, the infamous superintendent of the Region 10 schools who seems so threatened by teenagers expressing real feelings.

No, if you want to find solutions to problems with teen driving, maybe you should listen to teens. Maybe you need a person like Avery Doninger on the task force, inelegantly pointing out how out of touch too many of us adults are. Perhaps you need more teens pouring out their hearts online about how sad they are, and groups like the ‘RIP myles gosselin we miss you’ group of Facebook.

Perhaps if we adults spent a little more time listening to teenagers, they wouldn’t need to spend as much time doing stupid things like drinking and driving or driving to fast. I guess it seemed that way to me thirty years ago, and it still seems that way to me today.

Postscript: While it seems that some things never change, things do get better. When I was in high school it was only the hardcore nerds that ever touched a computer, which for me consisted of using a Teletype to connect to a computer at a community college a couple towns away. When I was in high school, some of us nerds hung out in the photography clubs dark room trying to make our artistic photographs. Now, with a few clicks of on the cellphone anyone can store their photographs online. I even ended up meeting my high school sweetheart. For me, it only took twenty five years.