My family has been living teen driver safety over the past 2 months. We enrolled our youngest (just turned 16) in driver training over the summer. The training included classes for her as well as one for the parents. A lot of time was spent in class talking about drinking and driving, texting and driving, and distracted driving (other teens in car). Ironically, two weeks ago my husband and son were hit by a distracted teenage driver. It was after school and the teen had a friend in the car and they ran a red light and hit my family and then ran into two other cars. Thankfully there were no life threatening injuries but my son's car was totaled. The teen was sad and apologetic but it was a painful and expensive way to learn a lesson. So, here's the obvious lesson, talk to your teen repeatedly about these issues. Car accidents are the leading cause of death and disability in teens.
Onto the not so obvious lesson. Last night our son dropped his sister off at dance. As she was getting out of the car he started to pull away before she was completely out of the car. Thankfully she was fine. In thinking back I see about 1-2 injuries a year in a teen when getting in or out of a car. It is always a teen driver (most often an older brother!) It never occurred to me to discuss passenger safety with my kids but clearly this is a unaddressed topic.
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