How to Keep Teen Drivers Safe

A question that every parent asks themselves and never quite completely answers is “How to keep their children safe after they start to drive?” A bad accident is every parent’s worst nightmare. I have handled dozens of bad accidents involving teenage drivers, including several cases that involved death or catastrophic injuries. 

There are many opinions floating around and a quick Google search will dredge up countless opinions. Concerned parents nevertheless scour the web looking for every precaution they could take to keep their new drivers safe when they are behind the wheel. Warnings, driving classes, horror stories, new technology, advocating for teen driving laws, setting rules for their teens, purchasing the safest cars, and restricting who they are allowed to drive with. 

All of these precautions can be helpful. But what are other parents doing? What have others implemented and found to be the most effective and easiest precautions to maintain? As a personal injury lawyer with a lot of experience helping folks who have had accidents, I have a strong desire to help parents turn their teenagers into safe drivers. From the inquiry of parents as well as from my professional experience in dealing with tragic accidents, these are some of the most common and practical safety tips that I would like to share with folks to help keep their teen drivers safe on the roads. 

Experience and Practice 

By far the most common tip and suggestion from parents has been to give their young driver the most experience and practice behind the wheel as possible. Starting as soon as they get their learner’s permit. When driving with your teen, you are able to constantly give positive reinforcement about good driving habits. Although it may seem simple, the very presence of a parent riding with them in the car can help build a sense of efficacy and confidence behind the wheel. So never underestimate the impact that a silent car ride could potentially have on the development of your new driver. 

Parents can easily miss this opportunity for their young driver. Life can be busy and in that rushed busyness, parents need to remember to take the time to allow their teen driver to take the wheel. New drivers tend to be unsure about their abilities behind the wheel and overthink some things. A slower, more cautious driver taking the family from point A to point B when everyone is already behind schedule isn’t always convenient. Yet could prove to be invaluable for the driving development of your teen. 

Technology

The second most common suggestion from parents happens to also be one of their biggest concerns. The technology behind the wheel. Distracted driving, from my professional experience, is a statistic that is very underreported due to the difficulty of being able to record or verify their occurrences. Very few, if any, teen drivers are going to admit to their parents that the reason they crashed the family car is because they were playing with the radio, or using their cell phone. For the young drivers who would admit to that being the cause of their accident, parents as the policyholders and payers of insurance premiums, are likely to do what they can to prevent the teen driver from confessing such a detail on a police report. 

If you cannot defeat it, you might as well use it. Driving apps that allow parents to track the location and speed of their child when they are behind the wheel has become increasingly popular. More parents are adding this type of technology to the phone of their teen drivers to help monitor their driving habits. There are a variety of apps and devices that parents are utilizing nowadays. Some of the technology is in the form of software that the parents can download onto their child’s phone that will monitor them when driving. Other apps can lock the phone altogether when they are traveling over a certain speed. 

Other technological developments are in the form of hardware that is installed in the car or a device that is plugged in. These devices can monitor how fast the car is going, how quickly the car comes to a stop, and how rapidly the car accelerates after stopping. These data points can be recorded and help give an idea of how aggressively the vehicle is being driven. 

While this type of hardware will not prevent your teen driver from being able to use their phone while behind the wheel, one of the added benefits of these devices is the insurance savings that can come with them. Car insurance for a new driver can be very expensive. In Alabama, adding a teen driver to your insurance policy, which is your cheapest option, can still result in an insurance premium exceeding +$200 per month, depending on your coverage. When these devices are installed, and the car breaks too hard or accelerates too rapidly from a stopped position, the device will set off an alarm to remind the driver that they are driving too aggressively. While also helping folks to develop good driving habits, each month that this device is installed on the car can result in savings on your insurance policy. 

Setting and Enforcing Rules

Many parents admit to setting rules and restrictions for their teen drivers. However, with time, and inconvenience, many of those rules are not enforced. Some of the most common rules that parents set for their kids are:

• No driving after a certain time.
• Limiting the number of people allowed in the vehicle.
• Limiting where or how far they are allowed to drive from home.
• Not allowing the use of their cell phone in the car. 
• Not allowing them to use the radio when they are driving. 

These rules as well as others are very common and parents are often given positive feedback regarding their effectiveness.  Parents also admit that enforcing these rules can be challenging at times. When your teen wants to go to a friend’s house and you have to give them a ride because they are not allowed to drive after dark is a common example of when parents will allow an exception to one of the rules they have put in place. However, sticking to the rules that you set is the most effective way that parents get the full benefit of setting rules in the first place. 

Extra Driving Classes

Much like the first point in this list of tips, experience is key to having a good defensive teen driver. Too often folks tend to assume that the driving classes that are provided at their high school or by the state are going to be sufficient to make their teen a good and safe driver. However, relying on the state to protect and educate our kids will certainly only leave us wanting. 

Additional driving classes are becoming increasingly popular not only for parents but also for young drivers. Taking additional driving classes is a great way to train and equip your young driver to be ready for the road. Some of these types of private classes are taught by police officers. Other classes are taught by professionals who are passionate about driving and want to share that passion. In addition to teaching new drivers to be patient and defensive behind the wheel, many of these classes can also teach and train drivers on what to do when they start to lose control of their car. 

Sometimes young and inexperienced drivers encounter road conditions or situations that cause them to panic. A good driving school will be able to recreate some of these hazardous and unexpected situations in a controlled and safe way so that a driver is able to familiarize themselves and train to react appropriately. The natural reaction to driving on icy roads and having the vehicle start to slide is to apply the brakes. In rainy conditions, even when driving the speed limit, a car might start to hydroplane. In situations like these, the appropriate reaction of the driver is sometimes the very opposite of what our adrenaline tells us to apply. 

In addition to being safer on the road and having more confidence about what to do and how to react in an emergency situation behind the wheel, many insurance companies will also give discounts to your teen drivers for having gone through and passed additional driving training classes. 

Hopefully, some or all of these tips can be implemented. If even one of them helps folks avoid a traffic accident then this has been more than worthwhile for me. Nevertheless, should your teen driver find themselves in a car accident the attorneys at Garnett Patterson Injury Lawyers are standing by to give you and your young driver a free case evaluation and work to help make you and your family whole.