Tag Archives: drivers ed

Facts for parents: teen driving hurts.

Posted on by kelly1963

 What You Don’t Know… Can Hurt Your Teen!

Ask any parent about their teen starting to drive and you’ll get some very entertaining reactions: grimaces, cringing and worried sighs. Everyone knows that learning to drive is a huge milestone that should be taken seriously. But a lot of parents don’t know some very important facts about this phase of their family’s life.
1. Motor vehicle crashes are actually the leading cause of death for 15 – 20 year olds in the United States. But being a teenage PASSENGER is almost more deadly, because about two thirds of those killed are riding in a car driven by another teen. Parents should not only be concerned when their own teen is driving. Tell your teens to consider themselves co-pilots instead of passengers, ESPECIALLY when another teen is driving.
2. The phase while a teenager has their learner’s permit is actually a very SAFE time, with a crash rate of only about 1%. That’s much lower than the 8% crash rate of most adults. However, when a teen gets their driver’s license their crash rate skyrockets to about 50% in the first six months. That’s not a typo! About HALF of every new teen drivers will have a collision in their first six months of driving. Parents need to understand that the truly risky time is when their child is driving without any adult supervision. Parents need to give their teens lots of practice time while they have a learner’s permit, so they can develop mature driving skills BEFORE they get their license.
3. Most states now have “graduated licensing laws.” These are rules about cell phone use, curfew times and numbers of passengers in the car for younger drivers. These are guidelines that can cost you! If your teen has a crash while violating those rules, then the law treats them as if they were driving without any insurance, which is a very expensive proposition both short and long-term.
4. Those GDL laws are not “best practice.” The guidelines are meant to increase the safety of younger drivers, but they are not what research shows might be the safest options. Parents have the power to make their own family’s driving rules even more strict. They even have the power to temporarily un-license their own child.
Getting a driver’s license is a rite-of-passage, and part of the transition to adulthood for our children. As a parent, please educate yourself about the ways you can contribute to the process while your teenager learns to drive.
You CAN make a difference for your kids and that’s in the best interests of everyone, since we all share the roads.
   -Kelly Cusick

Big mistakes, dangerous consequences for teen drivers.

Posted on by kelly1963

The Biggest Mistake Parents Can Make When Picking a Driving School

There are lots of ways to evaluate and choose a drivers ed. program, but there’s one huge mistake that is very easy for parents to make. That mistake is this simple: thinking that once you’ve signed up your kid & written the check, you’re done.

The truth is that parental involvement can make the difference between life and death for a teenage driver. Mike Pehl, the expert in “Roadworthy: A PARENT’S Guide to Teaching Teens to Drive” is passionate about the importance of parents knowing how to help coach from the passenger seat while their teen has a learner’s permit. Mike’s credentials and his commitment are pretty convincing. As an insurance agent, he did his own field-research to try to figure out why teen driving statistics are so disturbing. As an accident investigator, he gained an even deeper understanding of how crashes happen … and how they can be prevented, or made less deadly. As an instructor, he’s taught over 25,000 young drivers, and conducted Parent Meetings for their families.
Mike knows that 6 hours with an expert is not enough for anyone to become a competent driver. Experience is the key, whether you’re a teenager or not. Driving is a complex skill that requires physical coordination, calm focus, and constant analytical processing about the changing obstacles, vehicles and conditions around the car. None of that develops quickly. All of it requires practice. Practice time for most teens happens with their parents. State laws vary, but 30 or 40 required hours of driving with Mom & Dad is a whole lot more than just 6 hours with an instructor. So it seems obvious that parents are an important part of this process.
The problem, of course, is that parents knowing how to drive, is quite different from parents knowing how to teach someone to drive. That’s why Mike has believed for a long time that someone should create a good resource to help parents make the most of their time in the passenger seat. Thanks to a little serendipity and a lot of hard work together, our “Roadworthy” DVD is exactly that, and we are genuinely proud to have created something that can truly help teen drivers be safer on the roads.
As a parent, you have a choice. You can treat learning to drive like piano lessons: Sign ‘em up and drop ‘em off. You can feel nervous when your teen announces they passed their road test, reluctant when they ask you for the car keys, and anxious while waiting for them to return home safely. Or you can take the time to educate yourself about how important you are for your young driver. You can learn the best possible ways to help your teenager practice driving.
You can avoid some of the absurd scenarios that commonly happen for young drivers. You can use Mike’s techniques to make sure your teenager gets lots of practice time, in the safest, most stress-free way possible. You can teach them how to analyze the situation around them while driving, so that they can save their own life with a smart defensive driving choice if necessary. You can actually help them so much while they have a learner’s permit that when they do get a real license, you will know they are already an experienced driver who can be trusted on the roads.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to discover just how shocking the risks are during this phase of a teenager’s life. But it doesn’t take all that much effort to improve their odds drastically. There are resources to help parents. Take advantage of them, and take your role seriously. Teen driving accidents happen every day; do what you can to help your son or daughter avoid being one of those statistics.
-Kelly Cusick