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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Is There A Solution To The Teenage Driving Problem?

By Nathan Lewit

Teenage driving is a serious issue of parents worldwide due to regular occurrences of teen crashes and mishaps on the road. The important thing is to understand the reasons for such occurrences and reduce the risk taking habit of the teen drivers. The other areas to improve are to reduce the exposure to any sort of risk and teach the required driving skills to these teenagers.

The change in law to increase the driving age from 16 to 18 years is not the solution to this problem. This will only impact the Automobile industry and its related service sectors. It will be a big blow to manufacturers, driving instructors, gas companies, and insurance agents. There will be a sharp drop in revenues for the manufacturers as well as the insurance agents due to the change of law.

Main reasons for the teen crashes are immaturity, risk taking behavior, lack of skills and non-adherence to safety rules. It is important to educate the teenagers about these driving and safety rules and ensure that they follow them in a disciplined manner. The parents should not hand over the car keys to their children till the time they avoid such manners and gain the necessary driving skills.

Most of the teen fatalities that have occurred in the road are due to factors like not wearing of seat belts, drunken driving, distractions on the road, crashes happening on Friday nights, and weekends mainly between 6 PM to 6 AM.

There are several safety rules laid down by the authorities for the safety of these teenagers but they don't follow these in a proper manner. Teenagers are supposed to wear seat belts, avoid using gadgets like phones, and avoid driving at midnight except for some practical reasons and drive with a parent or instructor for the first three months after receiving their driving license. The lack of discipline amongst teens to follow these rules is a major concern.

In order to reduce exposure to risk the parents should join their children and be a part of their classes. They should see to it that their children are picking up the necessary knowledge from the class. The parents should teach defensive driving techniques to their children. It is important to let the child be aware of the driving experiences of their parents as that would prepare them to handle any difficult situation.

The risk taking behavior of the teenager also requires modification. It is an important job for the parents to understand the reasons that could make their child take certain risks which could prove fatal. Then a plan should be prepared to analyze the behavior of the child and make them aware of the ramification for these actions. It should be noted that a teenager's body develops many changes during these growing years and the hormonal activities of the body can influence certain unwanted decisions. So it is important to make the teenager aware of the problems that they might face if they take such risks and try to modify their behavior.

The teenagers should be made to join authorized and certified driver education programs that will ensure that they gain the necessary driving skills. The quality of the program content and approach of the instructor also plays a vital role in the knowledge grasping ability of the teen. The parent should monitor the progress of their child and make them aware of the fact that the driver program is just a start to the knowledge gaining activity towards becoming an expert driver.

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