We know you worry about your teen driver… To help them along with their safety training, we’ve compiled a list of tips. Please go over them with your teen to help make your teen a better driver and reduce their chance of accidents.
- Always wear your seat belt – and make sure all passengers buckle up, too.
- Adjust your car’s headrest to a height behind your head – not your neck – to minimize whiplash in case you’re in an accident.
- Never try to fit more people in your car than available seat belts.
- Obey the speed limits. Going too fast gives you less time to stop or react. Excess speed is one of the main causes of teenage accidents.
- Don’t run red lights.
- Use turn signals to indicate your intention to turn or to change lanes. Turn it on to give the cars behind you enough time to react before you take the action. Also, make sure the signals turns off after you’ve completed the action.
- When light turns green, make sure the intersection is clear before you go.
- Don’t drive like you own the road; drive like you own the car.
- Make sure your windshield is clean. At sunrise and sunset, light reflecting off your dirty windshield can momentarily blind you from seeing what’s going on.
- Don’t blast the radio. You might miss hearing a siren or a horn that could warn you of possible trouble, as well as noises from your engine that let you know something is wrong.
- Make sure your garage door is completely open before backing out of it.
- Drive into your garage straight, not on an angle.
- Make sure your car has gas in it. Don’t ride around with the gauge on empty – who knows where you might get stranded.
- Don’t drink and drive, and don’t ride with anyone who has been drinking. Call parents, friends, or a cab to take you home if you need a ride.
- Don’t take drugs or drive if you’ve taken any. Don’t ride with anyone who has been using drugs. Even some over-the-counter drugs can make you drowsy. Check label for warnings.
- Don’t drive with small children or even small teenage friends as passengers in a front seat that has a passenger-side air bag. They should be buckled up in the back seat. Recent transportation studies show that small children may be injured by the air bags even in low-impact collisions (It’s safer not to drive with friends and kids in the car when you’re learning to drive. They can be distracting.).
- Don’t drive while distracted, including talking on the car phone, putting on make-up, combing your hair, or eating while driving. People who talk on car phones while driving are four times more likely to have an accident. If you need to make a call, pull off the road to a safe spot and park.
- Don’t fiddle with the radio while you are driving. It’s better to wait until you can pull over and stop because even taking your focus off the road, even for a few seconds, can lead to an accident.
- Use good quality tires and make sure they are inflated to the right pressure (check your owner’s manual for what is right for your tires and car). Many recommend radial tires, and in some states, radials are ok to use in snow emergency conditions. Check your state to see what the requirements are for driving in snow.
- Maintain your car. Bald tires, a slipping transmission, or a hesitant engine could lead to accidents.
- Use headlights during daylight driving, especially on long stretches of desert highway and rural roads to make you more visible to oncoming drivers.
- Watch out for potholes, especially after bad weather.
- Be on the lookout for motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians.
- When driving to a new place, get complete directions before you go. Figure out what exits you need to take beforehand so there's no surprises.
Driving Around School
- Get to school five to ten minutes early and leave five minutes late to avoid the mad dash into and out of the parking lots. Many accidents happen when people are in a rush.
- If your school lot has perpendicular spaces (not angle parking), park in a space you can pull straight out of instead of having to back out. Backing out in crowed lots is tricky.
- Watch for people getting 