Preparing your teen for confident and safe driving

Teenage age is full of excitement and surprises. While nurturing your teen, you witness your kid setting up milestones, reveling in the little triumphs, and sometimes making major strides. Some of their quantum leaps might bring ease to your lives, while other could pose new challenges.

Teaching your teen to drive is a proud moment for many parents. Yet this pride turns into a nightmare at the realization that driving may be the last skill they would want to teach their kid. No matter how troublesome it seems to be, but making your teen start on the right foot when it comes to driving is every parent’s prime priority.

Discussed here are some of the most effective tips to follow when preparing your stripling to be a confident driver.

Choose the ride wisely:

If you own more than one car, choose the best fit for the kid. Don’t let the child talk you into providing him/her with your new Ford F150. Obviously, you won’t want any scratches or dents on your expansive new car. 1998 Buick LeSabre will be a better alternative instead. Moreover, your wannabe teen driver needs to learn on the car s/he will take the driving test in. therefore, you need to choose the car that is easy to maneuver, like Chevrolet Spark. They’ll need to parallel park and reverse around a corner. You can also look for a used car for sale in order to prevent your beloved cars from any major harm.

Put the Phone Away

The drivers-to-be are restricted to use phones while driving. Any sort of distraction, be it physical, cognitive, or visual can be a reason for crash. Before turning the ignition on, make your driver-in-training turn off his or her mobile phone and put it somewhere unreachable. For emergency cases, you can teach them to stop and park before using their phones.

Make seatbelts a practice

Insist that your teen always wears a safety belt, even for short trips to the shops. It may be hard to believe, but there are still many drivers who don’t wear a seatbelt. Teens, in particular, have a lower rate of seatbelt use than other age groups. Seat belts are important as they distribute the blow to the strongest parts of the human body, i-e., the chest, and pelvis. Therefore, wearing seatbelts can make a huge difference at the time of accidents.

Be an encouraging instructor

Agree! The experience can be chaotic, but you need to remind yourself time to time that this is going to be a huge learning curve for the child and that he may be nervous not just about driving well, but about making a good impression too. They’ll most certainly commit mistakes, but at that time you have to be calm and encouraging.

Forestall the weather

Poor weather can be quite daunting for the learning teen drivers, as they do not usually have much practice coping with such conditions, like heavy rain, snow, and fog. Make your teen learn to adjust to bad weather by either slowing up or taking required precautions.

Prevent unnecessary lane changes

Teens are full of energy and when they feel the freedom to get behind the wheel and taking charge of the car without any interruption, they are much prone to drive aggressive rather than defensive. This may lead them to irresponsible lane changes, which is a major reason for many accidents that involve teens. Parents need to consider the potential hazards of driving behaviors, including weaving between lanes to get ahead of all others, overtaking other drivers, and unsafe passing.