How to Help Your Teen Be a Safer Driver

It’s officially back-to-school season, which means more teens are on the road and it’s more important than ever that they know how to stay safe. Thankfully, there are some key ways that you can help ensure that your teen stays safe while behind the wheel. Here are four of the best ideas.

1. Make Sure Your Teen Gets Enough Sleep

We all know that teenagers love nothing more than staying up late browsing Twitter and Instagram on their phones. However, experts recommend that school-aged children between first and fifth grade get at least 9.5 hours of sleep, although 10 or 11 is preferred. Teens ages 13 to 18 are recommended to get at least 8 to 10 hours, with 10 being the best.

While this may seem like a lot, it’s actually essential to help children and teens be able to function correctly. Without enough sleep, responses can be delayed and poorer choices are likely to be made. This can be deadly on the road where quick responses and a clear head are essential.

Consider working with your teens to help them understand the importance of sleep, and if necessary, consider having them leave their phones outside of their rooms at night to ensure that they don’t have any distractions.

2. Teach Your Teen to Check Their Blind Spots

Remembering to check your blind spots is something that many new drivers forget, and it could have deadly consequences, especially for motorcycles. Millions of people ride motorcycles in the United States and over 50% of all motorcycles registered in 2018 were 11 years old or older. Because motorcycles are so popular, it is important to watch for them while behind the wheel.

If you have a motorcycle in your blind spot, it can be difficult to see since they are much smaller than a car or truck. This makes checking — and double-checking — an important habit to form so that your teen doesn’t accidentally hit any riders.

When taking your teen out on the road, make sure to remind them to practice checking their blind spots so that the habit can become second nature.

3. Buy a Dashboard Phone Mount

When driving, GPS can be a useful tool and it’s fortunate that it’s available right on many phones. However, holding your phone and checking the maps is a dangerous thing to do. To help keep the phone out of your teen’s hand, consider buying a phone mount where they can place their phone while driving. This can allow them to easily use a GPS system without needing to hold it up themselves.

There are around 28 million small businesses in the United States, and a great many of them specialize in retail services. Many of these stores may offer great dashboard mounts that are easy to use and unobtrusive. Consider taking your teen out to one of these small shops in Denver so that they can both practice driving and get something to help make their driving safer.

4. Set Rules

Finally, another thing that you can do to help keep your teen safe is set rules to help limit dangerous activities. For instance, limiting the number of passengers they can drive with, the amount of night driving they can do alone, or how far away from home they can drive, can help keep them out of dangerous situations.

You can even install monitoring devices in the car that help track where they are and how fast they are going, which can help prevent speeding, as they’ll know you’ll find out.

While this may seem strict, it can help keep them safe until you are certain that they can handle themselves behind the wheel.

Driving With Confidence

These four tips can help you help your teen become a safer and more confident driver, and these are some of the most important steps you can take while your teen is learning to drive on their own. Keep in mind that they will make mistakes, and when they do, always use those events as an opportunity for them to learn. Don’t be overly harsh or critical and, instead, point out what they can do better constructively. By doing this, you can set your teen up for success on the roads.