Ensuring Your Teen’s Safety on the Road
Once the test has been passed and the learner plates come off the car, your teen will no doubt be eager to take their first journey alone. Your next concern will be how confident and safe your teen will be on the road without an experienced driver sitting beside them. This step into independence is a rite of passage for many parents and a difficult situation to discuss with your teen – you want to protect your teen, but you are beginning to relinquish control and don’t want to come across as unsupportive.
So what can you do as a parent? Inexperience is a leading cause of teen crashes, so although the dreaded driving lessons are over, make sure that your teen still gets plenty of practice with you in the car. Night time driving is statistically the most common time teens have accidents, so ensure that your teen also gets some practice in after dark and limit night time exploits in the car.
The other major contributory factor to teen vehicle accidents is other teen passengers. This is an unfortunate reality that is hard to avoid, your teen is going to want to exert their newfound freedom and enjoy this experience with friends. Here you will need to strike a compromise. It is usually in group situations where distraction occurs, or where teens risk being coerced into bad behavior and showboating. Agree with your teen to have only one friend as a passenger for the time being, until the novelty of driving has worn off.
Set a good example. Long before you started giving your teen driving lessons, you were teaching them what is acceptable to do while driving. Parents should lead by example, by wearing seat belts, obeying speed limits, not drinking and driving, and not using a cell phone or texting while driving.
Avoid allowing your teen to drive to parties or an occasion where alcohol may be present. It can be very difficult for a teen to say ‘no’ to alcohol when all their friends are drinking, even with the best intentions, or to believe that a ‘couple won’t hurt’. Eliminate the situation altogether with a driving ban in these circumstances.
Accompanying your teen as much as possible in the beginning helps to explain what you do as a driver by pointing out hazards that they may come across. Also try to mix up routes so they become used to driving to different places.
Following all sensible advice, your teen will happily become a safe and careful driver; but, occasionally accidents can still occur – so it’s vital that you ensure that their vehicle has adequate insurance coverage. Teen insurance can be notoriously expensive, and on a vehicle with little financial value, it doesn’t make sense to be paying out a lot. Check out budget third party car insurance companies who will help to offer high quality, low cost insurance policies for new drivers.
Road safety is critical especially when your teen is new to driving, to find out more information please visit us.
