When Teaching Your Teen To Drive... Look at Yourself

When most teenagers reach about 14 years of age, they begin to think about driving. Obviously some children dream about this more than others but what is important to you as a parent, is how they might imagine themselves as a driver. Where do they get their persona as a driver? Where do they learn habits?

The answer is they learn a lot from watching you drive. They will pick up your good and bad habits. That is why as a parent, you must really monitor your own driving while your young teens are in the car. You should begin to model good driving behavior and even talk about that behavior with your children.

While your young teens are in the car, don’t:

• Eat and drive. Make sure that they see you giving your full attention to your driving.
• Talk on your phone while driving. I know this one is hard to break but when your child tries this while driving it is the equivalent of having them drink a few stiff ones and then try driving.
• Run the yellow light. Teach your teens not to gamble with yellow lights. Their judgment is not as well developed as yours and this behavior can end in tragedy.
• Follow too closely. This is something you shouldn’t do at any time but when your child is in the car they will get a sense for what is the correct following distance. Show them by leaving enough space between you and the car in front of you.
• Drive aggressively. Again, they will model what you do. Teach them to be a courteous and respectful driver. It might make you late a few times but what is that to saving their life.
• Speed. Your children should respect the speed limit. This will save them money in tickets and attorney’s fees, but it will probably also save their life. 33% of teen driver fatalities are due to excessive speed.

Here are a few things you should do when your teens ride with you:

• Always use your seatbelt. And always insist that all passengers wear theirs as well.
• Use turn signals and practice “accurate” driving. Talk to your teens about this.
• Keep your car maintained and the windshield clean. The other day I had to drive my daughter’s car and I was appalled at the mess on her windshield. It was downright dangerous and I realized that I had never spoken with her about this subject. This goes for checking tire wear and tire pressure as well.
• Come to a complete stop at all stop signs.
• Slow down in bad weather. Tell you teens that you are driving a bit slower and leaving more distance from the car in front today because the bad weather makes the driving that much more dangerous.

These are just a few tips that you can use. I’m sure you can think of even more to help your child become a safer driver so that you can get through this time in your life without a tragedy.

For more help on teen driving safety, please visit my web site at www.TeenDriverInsurance.com/AllAmerican.

Put Your Child Through The Paces - While YOU Are In The Car!

The Driver Education In-Car Training provided by our public school systems is really only a starting point for teaching your teen to drive safely. I recommend no less than 100 hours driving time for your child with a parent in the passenger seat before you let them out on his or her own. One thing that you should do when teaching your child how to drive is teach them how to deal with stressful and dangerous situations while you are there to talk them through it. For example, I advise that you take them to an abandoned, low traffic road and with them observing in the passenger seat, you drive car off the road and talk them through the process of getting the car back on the road in a safe manner. Too often, young drivers faced with this situation will overcorrect and jerk the wheel too forcefully. This can lead to losing control of the vehicle. Let them gain experience with this type of emergency maneuver while you are teaching and talking them through it. When you feel that they are ready, have them drive off the road and bring the car safely back onto the road. Another great learning experience is 5:00 traffic. They are going to have to drive in it eventually; don’t you want to make sure that you have taught them how before they tackle it on their own? Make it a point, when you think they are ready, to have them drive in stressful traffic situations, including traffic to and from ball games and concerts. If they have done this with you in the passenger seat, then when they are doing with a distracting friend in the seat beside them, they stand a much better chance of handling this safely. Try to think of any other situations that might require your help and seek those out while you are still training them. We hope you strive to teach your child safe driving habits from vehicle maintenance to traffic lights, to highway safety and even map reading. If you want to know more about teen driver safety visit www.TeenDriverInsurance.com/AllAmerican.

How You Can Help Your Teen Avoid Making The 5 Most Common Deadly Mistakes

Mistake #1 - Speeding. The best way I know to deter a child from speeding is to install a GPS monitoring system that will alert you if your teen exceeds a pre-determined safe speed. The majority of fatal accidents occur at very high rates of speed. Knowing that their parents are monitoring their speed almost guarantees that your child won't make this mistake. Mistake #2 - Over-correcting. Spend time with your teen in a large open parking lot. Have them swerve the vehicle and try to regain control at various speeds. This will help them understand how the vehicle handles, and to learn the smaller adjustments needed to recover control. Mistake #3 - Distractions. There are laws now that are designed to reduce distractions, but kids frequently ignore these rules. As a parent you must help enforce them. The laws prohibiting cell phone use and limiting the number of passengers in the teen's car were made to save lives. Mistake #4 - Following too Close. The current "3 Second" rule can help avoid making this mistake. The rule states that your vehicle should pass an object no sooner than 3 seconds after the car in front of you passes an object. Anything less means that the proper following distance is not being maintained. This rule is good, but I personally prefer the old rule that says that for every 10 MPH of speed, there should be at least one car length between your vehicle and the vehicle you are following. Mistake #5 - Failure to Yield. Apparently, teens are not getting the message on when they should yield. Drivers' education courses are not covering this well, if at all. It is very likely your teen doesn't have this knowledge and it certainly needs to be addressed. Review the different situations and spend some time in the car with your teen practicing the rules on yielding. The bottom line is that teens are not getting the drivers' education they need from school. It is up to you as the parent to spend time with your teen reviewing the rules of the road and practicing behind the wheel.

5 Most Common Mistakes Teen Drivers Make

James Poer This is an article my friend, Master Police Officer James Poer wrote on teen driver safety. I thought you should read it. --Bill 5 Most Common Mistakes Teen Drivers Make The hardest part of my job is having to knock on a parent's door to deliver the worst news they could ever get. After 30 years of investigating accidents, this is the part of my job I wish I never had to do. That is why I am committed to helping you make your teen a safer driver. This month, I want to share with you the 5 most common mistakes that lead to teen driver accidents and fatalities. Mistake #1 - Speeding. There is a multiplier effect when it comes to speed. The faster you go, the amount of time required to stop is multiplied and at higher speeds, the time required to stop is greatly increased. Kids don't understand this, the physics side of driving that is. They assume they can stop when they want and unfortunately they don't get this knowledge from their driver's education class. Speed also leads to other common mistakes such as the second most common mistake. Mistake #2 - Over-Correcting. When a teen driver gets into a situation where they need to correct the direction of the vehicle, they often times, over-correct causing loss of control. When you add speed to this effect, the reaction is almost always an over correction that can't be brought back under control. Mistake #3 - Distractions. This is the subject of my latest blog and you can read more on this at www.parentalcourage.com. The problem these days is that kids have way too many things in their cars to distract them. Cell phones, mp-3 players, and text messaging, to name a few. But the biggest distraction is usually other kids in the car. Mistake #4 - Following too Close. Just as I described in Mistake #1, when a vehicle is following too close at a high rate of speed, the ability to avoid a collision is reduced to almost nothing if that vehicle's driver decides to suddenly stop. Mistake #5 - Failure to Yield. Many accidents occur when a teen driver fails to yield to another driver when the other driver legally has the right of way. Failing to check for other vehicles in the blind spot, or not accurately estimating the closing rate of another vehicle are also very common problems.

After School Hours Are Dangerous For Teen Drivers

Most parents only really get concerned about their teen driver when they head out on the road at night. And rightfully so. It is a very dangerous time. But a recent study shows that the time right after school is also a very high risk time for teen drivers.

This study by AAA indicates that weekday afternoon driving time is just as dangerous for teens as night driving. The researchers studied the number of fatal crashes involving teens between 2002 and 2005. They found that 16 and 17 years olds were involved in almost as many fatal crashes between 3 and 5 pm on weekdays as they were on Friday and Saturday nights between 9 pm and 2 am. There were 1,100 weekday fatal accidents and 1,237 weekend evening fatal accidents. So what can you as a parent do about this?

Well, here are several suggestions:

1. Establish some specific driving rules with your teen. Be consistent in enforcing both the rules and the consequences when the rules are broken.

2. Impose an absolute ban on cell phone use while your teen is driving. Don’t call them yourself when you know that they are driving.

3. Require your teen to use a seatbelt any and every time they are traveling in any vehicle whether as a driver or a passenger. You must do the same to reinforce the importance of this.

4. Don’t allow your teen driver to carry passengers during the first 3 months or more of driving. Let them get used to being out there on their own before they add the distractions of passengers.

5. Don’t permit your teen to ride with other teen drivers. I know this will be a hard sell in these times of high gas prices but until you know just how safe the other teen driver is, you really should not permit your child to ride with him or her.

6. Make your rules known to other adults in your teen’s life. This can help provide an extra set of eyes when you are not around.

7. Install a GPS monitoring system in your child’s car. When they know that you are watching all of the time, their driving habits will be safer.

To get more safety tips and to find out how you can get a GPS tracking system installed in your child’s car for free, visit my web site at www.TeenDriverInsurance.com/AllAmerican or call my office at 256-757-3109.