10 Things For Teen Driver Safety

(SPM Wire)  Getting the keys to the family car - or better still, a car of their own - can be one of the biggest things in the lives of most teenagers. For their parents, however, it can be a source of worry.

There are many things parents of teen drivers can do to improve their teens' safety behind the wheel.  Here are a few tips from the AAA:

* Know and understand your teen - 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. 

* Be a positive and responsible role model - Teenagers learn from their parents' behavior. Research has found that, when using collisions and traffic tickets as criteria, parents of teens involved in crashes were more likely to have poor driving records than parents of collision-free teens. 

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

* Keep teen drivers free of teen passengers and off the road at night - Research indicates that a teen driver's chances of crashing increase with each additional teen passenger. Know who is driving with your teen at all times. Teen crash rates spike at night, with most crashes happening between 9 p.m. and midnight. 

* Encourage teens to get enough sleep - Teens need about nine hours of sleep nightly, but many fall short. Lack of sleep can negatively affect vision, hand-eye coordination, reaction time, and judgment. 

* Eliminate distractions - Cell phones and text messaging can be hazardous. With surveys reporting widespread use of distracting technology by teen drivers, more than one-third of states ban cell phone use by new teen drivers. Parents should make it a strict rule in their households.

* Create a parent-teen driving agreement - Written rules, conditions, restrictions, and consequences of teens' driving establish driving as a privilege, and not to be taken lightly. If the teen breaks a family driving rule, consequences should be enforced.  Proper driving should be encouraged and rewarded with additional liberties. AAA offers parent-teen driving agreements at www.aaa.com/publicaffairs. 

* 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. 

* 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). 

Keeping teens safe on the road is one way to help teen drivers turn into adult ones.