Is it time to overhaul driver's ed in Minnesota?

Joe Totten, 15, is carefully negotiating the one-way streets of downtown St. Paul with John Kunz, a longtime driver's education teacher at Highland Park High School.

Joe is one of more than 40 teenagers in the after-school class, checking off his 10 video-heavy classroom sessions and his three two-hour behind-the-wheel lessons before going for his license when he turns 16 in May.

As the light turns green and Joe hits the gas, Kunz asks if Joe looked before he accelerated.

Joe nods.

"I hope so," Kunz said. "Could be a late bird coming through."

The driver's ed car comes to a halt at a stop sign near the Farmer's Market. That's because Kunz has hit his instructor's brake when Joe missed the stop sign amid bustling downtown activity.

"Did you see that stop sign?"

Joe shrugged.

"There's a lot going on, but you've got to be aware," Kunz says, both gentle and firm.

The instructor is among those who advocate for more driving restrictions for teens. He would like to see license examiners actually check student driver logs, showing that they had completed the required 30 hours of practice with an adult, including 10 hours at night. Those logs are seldom checked, he said.

Others wonder whether the driver's ed system itself needs an overhaul. Instead of focusing on rules, parking and crash videos, more cutting-edge programs are starting to coach teenagers on topics such as head-on crashes and taking a hard right into a ditch instead of going left into oncoming traffic on two-lane roads.

"Maybe we need more in-your-face driver's ed," said Eric Minks, a police officer in Princeton, where seven teenagers have died in crashes the past two years.

Some studies have shown that providing driver's ed classes doesn't reduce the risk of accidents and can actually increase the dangers for teens by enabling them to obtain licenses at younger ages.

"If a county or state or school district offers driver's ed, it's more likely to have more registered drivers under 18 and if you have more exposure, you have more fatalities," said Leon Henderson, a retired motor vehicle researcher for Yale University and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Mike Pehl, a former insurance crash expert who started Teens, Inc. Driving School in Shoreview, says license tests are watered down, lasting only about 20 minutes and averaging only about 17 miles per hour. Test takers don't need to show their highway driving acumen and fixate on things such as parallel parking, which often becomes the make-or-break part of the test.

"I don't think they teach you enough safety in driver's ed," said Sami Wilson, 17, of Princeton. "They teach you: 'This is a one-way, don't go that way,' and don't put you in the circumstances when you're behind the wheel to really set you up for the serious things that could happen."

Some advocates for raising the age for licensing drivers point to the teenage brain itself. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health attribute the high rate of injuries and deaths involving teen drivers to immature brain development.

Studies show the so-called "executive branch" of the brain, which analyzes risks and controls impulses, doesn't fully develop until as late as 25.

Despite that research, teens do seem to be getting the message about the dangers of drinking and driving. Fatal crashes involving 16-year-olds are typically attributed to driving error, inexperience, speeding and having three occupants in the car at higher rates than they are among older drivers.

Less than 15 percent of fatal crashes involving 16-year-olds include drivers with blood-alcohol limits above the legal limit of .08. Those percentages double to roughly a quarter of fatal crashes involving drivers 17 to 19 and nearly double again to 44 percent of drivers between 20 and 49.

Back behind the wheel, Joe Totten eases the driver's ed car into the school parking lot and makes a mock show of relief with a "phew."

He has heard the statistics and seen the frightful DVDs,

"They all talk about a lack of experience, so I would let kids get their permits at 14 so they could have another year driving with their parents," he said. "And I think eight hours behind the wheel with a driver's ed teacher instead of the six we get now -- that might makes sense, too."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767