If you have a lead foot but are unwilling to quit playing "Speed Racer" on the highway, driving one of these least ticketed cars could help:
This list was complied from a study conducted by ISO (Insurance Services Office) Quality Planning.
16 Step Home Study Teen Driving Course Offered at No Cost to Parents
Washington, PA — Car accidents are the leading cause of severe injuries and death among teenagers all across the U.S. and inexperience is the leading factor in these accidents. “New drivers just don’t know how to react to dangerous situations that, many times, they get themselves into.” says Ret. Master Police Officer James Poer who has investigated car accidents for 30 years. “Education and most importantly, experience, is critical to helping kids learn how to avoid dangerous situations and how to react when they encounter dangerous situations.”
Driving school experts recommend 100 hours of behind the wheel experience before a teen drives unsupervised. Unfortunately, driving schools can’t provide this amount of experience. Depending on the state, schools are only required to give 4 to 6 hours of driving practice and with so many students in a class, schools simply cannot provide adequate experience. This places the responsibility on the parents.
One way to make the most of this time is to use a home study driving course. By following a structured lesson plan, parents can teach their teens the most important skills to driving safely and make the needed driving time most effective. The Society of Family Insurance Specialists (SFIS) has released a 16 step home study course, The Safe Teen Driver Guide, that provides parents a lesson plan and practice exercises to help them accomplish this important goal. Local insurance agent and family insurance specialist, Billy Proudfit of Proudfit Insurance in Washington helped co-author this guide along with Officer Poer and a certified driving school instructor.
Since learning that auto accidents are the number one cause of death among teens, Proudfit has been on a mission to help parents keep their teen drivers safe. His agency offers many tools including GPS teen driver monitoring systems, free reports with information that parents need to know about, Parent/ Teen Driver Contract, 101 Safety Tips for Teen Drivers and much more. “The Safe Teen Driver Guide is one tool that I have had a great response from.” says Proudfit. “Almost every parent that has received it is grateful for having such a great tool to help them teach their teen to drive.”
Check out the website at www.TeenDriverInsurance.com/AllAmerican, or contact us at 256.765.2200 or 888.765.2201 for more details.
Driver education programs play a role in preparing teens to drive, but should not be viewed as the end of the learning-to-drive process. In order to develop safe driving skills, inexperienced drivers need opportunities to improve through gradual exposure to increasingly-challenging driving tasks. Teens become safer drivers with more driving experience.
In some states, the completion of driver education qualifies a teen for full driving privileges. The National Safety Council believes this is not a wise approach. Research shows that significant hours of behind-the-wheel experience are necessary to reduce crash-involvement risk. Parental involvement and state-imposed Graduated Driver Licensing play important roles in developing skills.
A recent IA&B newsletter reports that 2008 statistics show a 30% fraud increase in Pennsylvania. The Top 5 motor vehicle insurance fraud schemes include:
Steve Augello is the kind of dad who insisted his daughter call him whenever she left a place and again when she arrived. He’s the kind of dad who had the text messages “Where are you?” and “Call me when you get this message” saved as templates in his cell phone.So on Monday night, Allie, 17, called to say she was leaving play practice at Bishop McLaughlin Catholic High School to head home. Steve knew the trip should have taken 15 to 18 minutes.She never arrived...
This is another case of two of Tampa Teen Drivers that have been killed in a car accident. We don't know what really happned yet. Where one of the drivers driving to fast? Where they distracted, talking on there phone, texting one of their friends? Are you concerned about your own children?
We at Bill Gough's All American Agency have a lot of tools to help you protect your children please, please, please go read our free reports, and ask for our information that we provide you to help protect your kids.
Here is a link to the rest of the article written by Molly Moorhead.ftp://mostftp.gotdns.com/Head-ONCollision.pdf
People don't want to be inaccessible for even 15 minutes driving up the street," said Harrison, 19, a sophomore at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. "They're so used to being accessible all the time.
"Targeting inexperienced motorists, several states have passed laws during the past five years restricting cell phone use by teenage drivers.
But a recently released insurance industry study looked at whether teens are ignoring such restrictions contends enforcement and parental influence are just as important as new laws. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety studied specific state laws which fine motorists under age 18 who are caught using a cell phone.
Researchers who watched as high school students left school found that teenage drivers used their cell phones at about the same rate both before and after the laws took effect.
"Cell phone bans for teen drivers are difficult to enforce," said Anne McCartt, the institute's senior vice president for research and an author of the study. "Drivers with phones to their ears aren't hard to spot, but it's nearly impossible for police officers to see hands free devices or correctly guess how old drivers are."
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers, according to the government's auto safety agency, and teenagers are involved in three times as many fatal crashes as all other drivers.
The institute says 17 states and the District of Columbia have cell phone restrictions in licensing requirements for teen drivers. The National Transportation Safety Board in 2003 recommended that states limit or bar young drivers from using cell phones, leading many states to act.
Harrison, who serves with Students Against Destructive Decisions, an advocacy group focused on highway safety issues, said few of her friends know about laws banning cell phone use by novice drivers.
Bill Bronrott, a Maryland state delegate who sponsored a successful bill in 2005 prohibiting rookie drivers under 18 from using cell phones, except to make 911 emergency calls, said a "combination of education and enforcement" was critical. So, too, parental involvement. Added Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association: "What these kinds of laws do is send the message to the parent more than anything else."
In the North Carolina study, researchers found that 11 percent of teenage drivers observed departing 25 high schools during the two months before the ban took effect were using cell phones. About five months after the ban took effect, during the spring of 2007, nearly 12 percent were observed using phones.
In the North Carolina phone survey, 95 percent of parents and 74 percent of teenagers supported the restriction. But 71 percent of teens and 60 percent of parents felt that enforcement was rare or nonexistent.
In North Carolina, 37 citations were issued in 2007 by the state highway patrol to teens using a cell phone while operating a vehicle. Twenty-eight citations have been issued in 2008.
Selena Childs, executive director of the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force, said in an e-mail that with many child safety laws in the state, "knowing that it's against the law is enough for many people to choose to comply with a law."
Childs said the state's driver's license system for young drivers has been effective "not so much because of law enforcement/citations, but because parents and teens self-enforce the law, resulting in reduced crashes."
Matt Sundeen, a transportation analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, said many state laws on cell phones are new, making it difficult to assess their impact. He said more states are considering similar restrictions.
The institute conducted two separate telephone surveys: the first, before the cell phone restriction took effect, was in November 2006 and involved 400 pairs of parents and teenagers; the second, after the law had taken effect, was in April 2007 and involved a different sample of 401 pairs of parents and teenagers. Each survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
