« Starting Young: Teaching Teens to Save Money | Home | Need help with diciplining your teen? »
Keeping our teens Safe behind the wheels
By Aurelia | July 22, 2007
Learning to drive is a major rite of passage for teens (and their parents). It’s a time of exciting possibilities and achievements. It’s also a time of worry for many parents.
Driving is fatal for almost 50,000 Americans every year. People between 15 and 24 years old (especially males) have the highest rate of auto-related deaths, even though people in this age group may be smart, skilled, and have great reflexes. A collision is the most likely tragedy to kill or injure a teenager.
Here are some helpful teen driving safety tips:
1- Limit Passengers: According to Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (MADD), teen driving crash rates increase by 50% with just one teen passenger in the car, and by 400% with three or more teen passengers. All the more reason to restrict the number of passengers allowed in the car while your teen is driving. While it may not seem fair to your new young driver, it could help keep them out of harms way.
2 - Ban the cell phone: The best advice you could give your teen is to turn their cell phone off while driving. If they need to take a call while in the car, advice them to safely pull off to the side of the road, put the car in park and then talk.
3 - Make sure your teen wears a seat belt every time he or she rides in a car. Teens have the lowest belt use rate of any age group, a tragic irony given that new teen drivers have the highest crash rates.
Take a moment to print out this handy parent teen driving agreement and review it with your teen:
Take Care,
Topics: General ChitChat |