Driving Rules for Teens

With teens demanding their independence, and driving being on of their top lists; parents, this is the time that you need to wear your “Parent Hat” to protect them from… well, themselves!  That’s why actuaries give car rental companies great advice: Don’t rent any vehicles to anyone UNDER 25 years of age! 

Research shows that youth maturity – the kind that keeps teens and 20-somethings alive – doesn’t actualize until they become 25 years old.

When states have laws that require that new drivers to wait 6 months before driving with friends (non-family members), there’s a good reason for it.  Teen drivers get wrapped up in conversations with their friends, share text messages, answer phone calls, and do just about everything except drive carefully when they’re behind the wheel with friends.  That’s why teens are involved in over 350,000 accidents per year and almost 3,000 result in teen death.  According to Nichole Morris, of HumanFIRST Lab at the University of Minnesota, “The most dangerous two years of your life are between 16 and 17, and the reason for that is driving.”

As the parent, you can set up your own driving rules – and you should!  I didn’t allow my daughters to drive friends in their cars until they were in college.  We set volume controls so they could hear sirens.  And when my youngest went off to college at Claremont McKenna College, her car stayed here safely at home until the last semester of her senior year. I just wasn’t willing to risk losing her to the 7-lane freeways in LA and the temptation to drink and drive with her friends.  Trust me, it wasn’t easy to implement… but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

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