When teenagers earn a driving permit, their parents’ anxiety levels likely rise a few degrees simultaneously. However, you can substantially reduce your nervousness by embracing the right attitude and instilling some critical driving lessons in them before they take the wheel.
Driving safely and responsibly depends on the driver, no matter their age, and providing a teen with the necessary education and support will develop their understanding of what these concepts entail. Provide your teen with the following lessons before they take their test.
1. Enroll Them in a Prelicensing Education Program
Driving instructors have the savvy and training to prepare your teen properly and take some pressure off you. Of course, that takes nothing away from the experience you’ve gathered behind the wheel over the years.
However, consider how long it’s been since you took your driving test. A professional instructor teaches based on current safety and road rules, without passing on any bad driving habits you’ve developed over the years.
In many states, undergoing a recognized driver education program is compulsory before a young adult can test for a driver’s license. For example, New York teenagers must first complete a five-hour theoretical course unless they’ve taken the state’s 48-hour driver education program. Check your home state to determine what regulations apply to your teen. Either way, completing these lessons will benefit them and likely also drop your insurance premiums.
2. Point Out That Driving Is a Privilege
Whether your teenager undergoes a prelicensing education program or not, they must know they share the privilege of driving with many other teenagers on the roads and should act accordingly.
The reality is that legal driving for a teen is costly. You might find yourself paying $200 or more per month in premiums to list your teenager as a driver on a liability-only vehicle. Pointing this out can help them understand that this privilege is easy to remove if they drive irresponsibly after getting a driver’s license.
3. Provide Defensive Driving Lessons
Capable handling of a vehicle is a definite plus when negotiating traffic. Every teenager should know that this skill is only part of the art when on the road. Unfortunately, too many drivers believe driving like Chase Elliott does on the track is acceptable in public. For this reason, knowing how to drive defensively and anticipate the actions of other road users is as imperative as acceleration, braking and steering.
A primary defensive driving technique is to maintain a three-second gap from the car ahead, which allows your teen time to apply those good braking skills to avoid a collision if the other vehicle suddenly stops. Another technique is to scan ahead while driving and to check rear-view mirrors often to identify pedestrians and cars in direct or peripheral vision. Knowing where everybody else is on the road allows your teenager to identify a risk, determine an action and carry it out safely and effectively.
Every so often, a young driver will encounter an aggressive motorist. Defensive driving training enables them to respond to irritation or annoyance from other drivers calmly and safely to avoid any tailgating or recklessness from escalating further. Anticipating any danger caused by other motorists or road conditions early will protect the teenager and others from unnecessary accidents, injuries, financial implications or worse while behind the wheel.
4. Coach Your Teen While You’re Driving
When you take trips with your young passenger, run through the things you encounter while driving that come naturally to you. Highlight the defensive driving techniques, along with what to do when driving after dark, like applying high beam protocols and low-visibility driving methods.
Show them how you smoothly merge into highway traffic and how to check blind spots when changing lanes. Note how you react when encountering a pothole or approaching a construction zone. Identify the correct usage of turn signals and your horn.
All these observations and lessons will familiarize your teenager with how road driving should work.
5. Teach Them in a Safe Car
Part of your responsibility is ensuring your teenager’s driving transition is as safe and incident-free as possible. Ensure the car they’re operating has lots of safety features. It’ll be cheaper to insure and prevent potential breakdowns on the road.
Investing in an inexpensive, older secondhand model may be more affordable initially, but there’s a higher teen risk of crash-related fatality in a six- to 15-year-old car.
Instead, provide a reasonably priced, later model that provides safer travel. Be sure to equip them with safety essentials like jumper cables in case their battery dies and tire pressure gauges to ensure proper inflation. Your teen will learn better, safer driving and your stress levels will reduce.
Help Your Teen to Know Their Car and the Road
Teach your teenager humility behind the wheel. Although new experiences are exciting, emphasize the potential dangers they face from other drivers, obstacles and highway conditions. They will thank you later, and you will rest a bit easier when they’re out on the road.
