Two Important Points:
I am an OTR Trucker Owner Operator. I got at least a million miles safe driving. I have seen alot of unsavory stuff go on out their on the big road. SO! Who Cares!! Bow have I got stories to tell in regards.
My son does not even care about his drivers license. Heck he thinks he has a free Taxi service. Dang, he does the dishes, cleans his room , and scribbles together his homework, its time for us to give him a twenty and take him to the movies to meet his girlfreind. He doesn’t take driving seriously.
How in the heck do I make this boy take his driving license as a privelage, interesting, and not a right. At lest to get one so he can go see his floozies on his own.
Oh yeah. I kept typing Cah Tahlk. Calm to get you guys on this internet gizmo, I finally had to Google you. I am a truck driver, not a rocket scientist ya know.
Trucker John
Plant City, FL
My wife & I taught 2 teenagers. Rule #1 was from my father: no radio. Here are our additions:
If you are driving straight then look ahead; going in reverse look backwards.
Have a “swivel-head,” always looking around you.
It isn’t about who’s fault it was. Accidents are bad in any case.
The parent/teacher has to establish agreement about who is in charge. It is not the teenager. When the parent says STOP! then the teenager must stop right away, not after the accident.
The most important thing in teaching your teen to drive is to keep open communication between parents and teen drivers about the responsibilities that expectations that come along with driving. A parent-teen contract is a great way to have these expectations clearly laid out for both the parent and new driver.
A great example of one can be found here:http://allstateteendriver.com/
Jill
advocate of Allstate
so far, i’m really appreciative of your teen driving area here, but for the life of me, i have not been able to get your pop-ups on the teen driving contract to open up. any suggestions for my settings? I’m using IE 6.0 and can’t really upgrade right now. thanks!
Your strategy sounds like a great one. However, it doesn’t address the fact that many teens drive recklessly when their parents aren’t around. They do this for several reasons; They, and their friends, might think it’s cool to drive fast, they don’t fully understand the responsibility, they underestimate the dangers, they know that their parents aren’t watching them and won’t find out (unless they get a ticket), and so on. I believe that if they know there will be consequences for unsafe driving behaviors, even if their parents or a police officer don’t catch them in the act, our roads and our teenagers would be much safer. That is why a friend and I started a teen driver monitoring service. We provide parents with tamper-proof stickers to be placed on their teen’s car with a toll-free number, unique identification number and a web address. Other drivers can then call or visit the website to report any unsafe driving behaviors. The teenager knows that his or her risky maneuvers on the road might get back to their parents, so they drive in a safer manner. You can read more about the Alert My Parents Program at http://www.alertmyparents.com
I bought a device made by Davis instruments that plugs into the output ports of the onboard computer. this instrument records the trips that the car makes and also gives a beeping sound if the car is accelerated or braked hard. It also keeps record of when it is removed. You can download the history of each trip. It has had a positive effect on my driving. I would have liked to have had it when my kids were teenagers. I read an account where one teenage driver was cited for driving 90mph and the this instrument showed that he was in the speed limit and he was exonerated.
The biggest problem with our 16, almost 17 year old son is that we had to persuade him, almost BEG him to get behind the wheel!! He’s nervous and can be indecisive, and absolutely DID NOT want to learn to drive. He finally gave in when Dad announced his impending deployment, but he still uses every excuse not to get behind the wheel. Should I just insist that he does?
All the comments I’ve read are very useful, and i’ll be enrolling him in the Teen Driver school in Commerce City in October.
When I learned to drive in England, we had “L” plates, 10"x10" squares with a red “L”,which we tied to the bumper every time the student driver was behind the wheel. It let the bozos on the road know that tailgating, or trying to intimidate the driver of THIS car for driving the speed limit, or slower, would most likely end badly, so please give him a break…or a brake! Anyone know where I can get something like that over here in the US?
And then tell him/her that when using the throttle, if the car starts to buck while starting out, just keep the throttle-foot still and press the clutch back down a teeny bit, and then let the clutch out again, a bit slower this time.
Tom & Ray,
One thing I did with my three kids that I haven’t seen elsewhere and which works great – once they get to the point where they are driving on the highway and you are in the passenger seat – driving is over if two or more cars pass you without them telling the color of the car that will be passing and which side before it passes. This gets them used to knowing what is around them - checking the mirrors and always knowing what car is going to pass. It shrinks their blind spot and means that they will always know which direction has no cars should something happen in front of them and they need to go right or left. It works great and I highly recommend this rule when teaching teenagers to drive on the freeway.
Here in South Dakota, kids can get thier license at the age of 14. There are obviously restrictions on it, but they can drive on thier own at that age.
One thing scarier than launching a teen into a 2-ton vehicle is launching them out on a motorcycle. And recently, Tom and Ray had a discussion about the brotherhood of teenagers and their lust for 60’s and 70’s muscle cars and how frightening that is.
My German buddy says that in his home country, motorcycles are restricted thus: when a person first gets a motorcycle license it is limited to 125 cc engine! Then after something like 2 or 3 years it is allowed to rise to 250 cc’s. And a person, no matter how old, must have years of riding experience before they get to unlimited engine size on a motorcycle.
Mind you, in Germany, driver’s ed is way, way more complex, rigorous, and difficult to pass than here AND they have these highways without speed limits where, in the left lane, vehicles can come up on you very, very fast. And your job as a driver is the get the hell out of the way. Insurance is more expensive, too. And gasoline? More than $6 a gallon and even $8 in some Euro countries.
But anyway, power to weight ratio limits or limited engine displacements or any kind of similar regulation of inexperienced drivers in the US would be okay by me. And, in places further north from Germany they have the drink, don’t drive, drive, don’t drink rules without any of this blood alcohol content (BAC) crap that the US has. Drink, drive and get caught? Lose your license for life! Ouch. Of course this is in countries that actually have public transportation networks…
Like I said I took my drivers test in a snow storm because it was the first day I could. I got a 94 but had to stop a couple times to clean the rear window off. I was driving in the driveway when I had to use both a Sears and a Wards catalog to sit on. Then I had a go cart, and so on. So driving a car was nothing new at 16. Kids should have the opportunity as early as possible to start driving lawn mowers, tractors, go carts, and so on so that by the time they hit the road at 16, 15, even 14 in some states, they are already experienced. There is a reason farm kids are good drivers.
This reminds me of the truck driving instructor who explained why he bought a motorcycle for his teenage daughter when she asked for a motorcycle instead of a car. He said she will never be distracted by passengers, or an iPod, or by trying to eat and drive, or trying to put on makeup on her way to school. He said he thinks his daughter is safer on a motorcycle than in a car.
Your post reminded me of when I was much younger. We started out on mini-bikes and gradually moved up the power chain as we got older. That and the fact I had to pass my older brother’s stringent tests in order to leave the confines of our yard helped to make us ready for the eventual shift to (legal) road riding much later in life. The course my brother laid out in our yard was extremely difficult. It took years of practice to accomplish it without a single mistake. Then he started riding on the back and leaning the wrong way etc to make it even more difficult. By the time I passed that test, I felt one with the machine.
The state had two distinctions for M/C licensing; below 350cc and above (unrestricted). I got my license below 350 and rode smaller bikes on the street for a few years before buying my first larger bike, an 850. When I went to get tested by the state, I first had to watch the restricted class testing. Good grief! Some of these people did not belong on a bike! Falling over, missing turns etc. When my time came, the tester said, this is a big bike, I want you to slalom through every third cone out and back. I took one look and knew that was far too easy. Stood up on the pegs and went through every single one there and back. He said, that’s good enough, you pass. Skipped the entire remainder of the testing. I told him that was nothing, if he sat on the back and leaned the opposite way it might be more challenging and explained my youth experience. He laughed and we had a lengthy talk about his fears for the people going through licensing completely unprepared for the real world but his hands were tied as far as criteria for passing.
Bing is right. Start them young. When I took drivers ed you tell the kids who had been the wheel before and the ones who had not. Take them to a go track. They can learn alot. I drove tractors at 6, big rigs at 12. Racing motorcycles on ice at 13. I raced a 250cc bike. I cant tell how many go karts and mini-bikes I had all bought by me. I had 2 cars before I had license. It did me good I knew what I could do and not do with a car.
This post sure has been around a longtime,but still relevant,always on my Daughter about various things ,one thing in particular,I try to caution about is last minute full speed stops at intersections and what have you-Kevin
Several people on this old thread said not to teach your kids yourself, to get a professional. Again, different strokes for different folks.
Both of my kids had to drive at least 1000 miles before Driver’s Ed in school. They had to drive day; night; ice; snow; fog; city; country; Interstate; dirt road; anything I could think of.
They both viewed driver’s ed with a “certified driving instructor” as a sick joke after learning from me. So, universal rules are not always appropriate. I will say don’t let personal ego make the decision. Be honest with yourself. I was, and I knew I could teach them better than anyone, so I did.
Oh, someone said to explain to your kids why you can drive over the speed limit and they can’t. Bad! Bad! There is a parent who should not be teaching anyone to drive. Drive exactly like you want your kids to drive, always.
I find people drive like their parents whether their parents teach them how to drive or not. “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work, even if you get someone else to teach them how to drive.
I remember back in the day complaining to my best friend about how he drove. He said, “but my father taught me how to drive, and he’s a good driver.”
I replied, “Yeah, but you’ve spent a lot more time riding around with your mother driving, and you drive like she does.”
As much as I try to take after my father, I find I also drive more like my mother than my father, probably for the same reason.
The moral of the story is, whether you like it or not, your children can learn your bad habits, so when they’re in the car, you should drive like you want them to drive.