AAA Offers Ten Things Parents Can Do to Keep Their Teen Drivers Safe

NEWS from AAA MountainWest, Oct. 16 – AAA urges parents of teenage drivers and would-be drivers to improve their teens’ safety by heeding tips from AAA’s new list of “Ten Things Parents Can Do To Keep Their Teen Driver Safe.” AAA is publicizing the list as part of the first annual national Teen Driver Safety Week, which runs Oct. 15-20. Automobile crashes are the leading cause of death for teens.  

“Parents can have a tremendous impact on their teens’ safety,” said Mark Madeja, spokesman for AAA MountainWest. “Teen Driver Safety Week provides an opportunity for parents to focus on keeping their teens safe all year long.

1)         Know and understand your teens – Not all teens are ready to drive at the same age. Teenagers mature, develop emotionally and become responsible at varying rates, which parents need to gauge as they determine when their teen is ready to drive.

2)         Be a positive and responsible role model – Teenagers learn from their parents’ behavior.  Parents’ actions behind the wheel influence the driving behavior of their teens.

Research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that, when using the number of collisions and traffic tickets as criteria, the parents of teens involved in crashes were more likely to have poor driving records than the parents of collision-free teens.

3.         Provide driver’s education – Driving is risky business for teens and warrants instruction. In South Dakota, high school driver’s ed. is hard to find and classes are small. Consider a commercial driving school or a state-certified parent-taught driver’s education course, such bas AAA MountainWest’s Take the Wheel program (www.aaatakethewheel.com).

4.         Practice might not make perfect, but it can make for better teen drivers – As an important supplement to driver education, supervised driving sessions with parents provide teens with opportunities to enhance learning, reinforce proper driving techniques and skills and receive constructive feedback from the people who care most about their safety.

5.         Keep teen drivers free of teen passengers and off the road at night– Extensive research indicates that a teen driver’s chances of crashing increase with each additional teen passenger. Parents need to make sure they know who is driving with their teen at all times. Teen crash rates spike at night and most nighttime crashes occur between 9 p.m. and midnight.

6.         Encourage teens to get enough sleep – Teens need about nine hours of sleep every night, but many teens fall short due to the combination of early-morning school start times and homework, sports, after-school jobs and other activities. A lack of sleep can negatively affect vision, hand-eye coordination, reaction time and judgment.

7.         Eliminate the distractions – Cell phones and text messaging have rightly gotten significant media and legislative attention as extremely hazardous distractions for teen drivers. Parents need to enforce strict anti-texting and anti-cell phone use measures. 

8.         Create a parent-teen driving agreement – Having rules, conditions, restrictions and consequences of teens’ driving written down in advance establishes driving as a privilege, and not something to be taken lightly or for granted. Parents should look to Oklahoma’s graduated driver licensing program as the minimum they should be enforcing.  (For specifics, go to www.state.sd.us/dps.) Parents should establish rules and consequences that they and their teens agree upon. If the teen breaks a family driving rule, consequences should be enforced and the situation should be used as an opportunity for learning and discussion. Conversely, proper driving behavior should be encouraged and rewarded with additional liberties. AAA offers a good, free parent-teen driving agreement, available at www.aaa.com/publicaffairs.

9.         Set a time each week for discussion and review – Parental involvement and communication is critical in the prevention of teen-related crashes, injuries and fatalities. Designate a time each week to address concerns (both parent and teen), review the teen’s driving performance and chart the progression towards established goals and benchmarks.

10.       Make smart vehicle choice decisions for teens– As the family member most likely to crash, a teen should drive the safest vehicle the family owns. Things to consider are vehicle type (sedans are generally safer than sports cars, SUVs and pickup trucks), size (larger vehicles fare better in crashes than smaller vehicles) and safety technology (front and side air bags, anti-lock brakes and stability control systems).
As North America’s largest motoring and leisure travel organization, AAA provides more than 50 million members (87,000 in South Dakota) with travel, insurance, financial and automotive-related services. Since its founding in 1902, the not-for-profit, fully tax-paying AAA has been a leader and advocate for the safety and security of all travelers. AAA MountainWest can be visited on the Internet at www.aaa.com.