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What to Do

  • Provide better driver training.

    • Help your young person get the Learner’s Permit, or the equivalent in your area and provide LOTS of experience during that year.   For more about the learner's permit, click here.

    • Require a full year with a Learner’s Permit before you allow your child to take the driver's test.  

    • Provide practice driving under range of conditions.  Don't just practice driving on sunny afternoons.  Go out at night, when it's raining--in a variety of conditions.  Otherwise, the first time your new driver encounters these conditions, it will be when you aren't with them.

    • Consider private instruction.  Most teenagers are taught to drive by amateurs: Us.  Most of us are not professional drivers and most of us are not professional teachers.  So, there may be value in hunting down a professional driving instructor for your young person.

  • Be willing to set firm rules and stick with them.  Start strict and relax rules as time passes and your teenager does well.  Tighten them up if she/he does poorly.

  • Emphasize seat belt use.

  • Make sure your teenager gets enough sleep before driving.  There's good reason to think that large numbers of crashes are related to drivers who haven't slept enough.

  • Restrict the number of passengers, especially early on.  This is particularly important because the risk of an accident goes up sharply with young drivers with passengers.  

  • Do not allow your child to ride with a new driver.  This website is about your teenage driver.  But, obviously, the passengers of a teenage driver are at least the same risk as the teenage driver.  More here.
     

  • Be smart about the vehicle issue.

    If you buy a vehicle for a teenager to drive: Sensible, relatively safe, and un-fun vehicle.  Check crash test data. 

Here's a really handy website for checking on safety ratings

  • Don’t let your teenager “own” a car.  Allow your teenager to “drive a family vehicle”—Use this kind of language even if you buy an additional car.  Research suggests that teenagers drive more safely with a car they don't consider to be their own.

  • Develop, require, negotiate, and enforce a written contract.

  • No contract=No independent driving.  Period.




What to do: The Cheat Sheet

TRAINING:  Provide better training and lots of it.
SEAT BELTS:  Emphasize their use.
PASSENGERS:  Restrict.
SUBSTANCE ABUSE + DRIVING:  Don't tolerate.
RESTRICT USE OF IN-CAR ELECTRONICS.
CONTRACT!






Abuse of Authority?

Some teenagers will interpret sensible parenting around driving as an abuse of authority.   Some will see parents as unfairly interfering with the "right" to drive.  Some parents, in fact, like to think of this as keeping kids under parental control.

I don't think of it that way.   What we're heading for on this website is a contract between parents and teenagers regarding driving.  Instead of thinking of this as exclusively the exercise of parental authority, or "reining" in teenagers, here's another way to think of it.

This person, my child, is going to be driving a car that has my name on the title.  This person is not an adult and I still have legal responsibility for them.  I am likely to be seen as sharing any liability--and blame--for anything my child does with the car.  (Keep in mind, teenagers do not "own" cars.  Don't "give" your teenager a car or he or she WILL think he or she owns it.  He or she doesn't own it.  You own it.)

So, I say to this person, my child, if you're going to drive a car with my name on the title, with my insurance, while  you're still my legal responsibility, we're going to have a contract.  That's partly to protect you, but it's also to protect me!