5 Most Common Teen Driving Mistakes

Many parents live in dread of the day their teens get a driver‘s license and get behind the wheel alone. Their concerns are well-founded, since teen drivers have the highest death rates in car crashes of any age group. Motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of death among Americans aged 15-20.

As a group, teens tend to make the same driving mistakes repeatedly. Research indicates that the five most common teen driving mistakes are:

They don‘t wear safety belts.
They drink and drive.
They panic/overcorrect in emergency situations.
They drive too fast for conditions.
They ride with other teens.

Here are some tips on how to help your teen avoid these mistakes and stay safe behind the wheel.

Safety Belt Use

To encourage your teen driver to wear a seat belt, you‘ll need to set the right example by wearing your own safety belt. “Do as I stay, not as I do,” doesn't work with teens, particularly when they‘re out of your sight and you can‘t personally enforce the rule.

Make sure you never pull out of your driveway or a parking space until everyone in the vehicle is wearing a seat belt. Many high school students fail to use their safety belts even when riding with adults who are buckled up. An observational survey conducted at 12 high schools found that 46 percent of high school students were not wearing their safety belts when riding with adult drivers. About half of the unbelted students were riding with adults who were belted. If your teens are used to wearing safety belts as passengers, they'll be comfortable wearing them as drivers.

Next, educate your teen about the benefits of wearing safety belts. Here‘s some supportive information:

Research has found that lap/shoulder safety belts, when used, reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by 45 percent and the risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50 percent.
Ejection from the vehicle is one of the most injurious events that can happen to a person in a crash. In fatal crashes in 2005, 75% of passenger car occupants who were totally ejected from the vehicle were killed.
Safety belts should always be worn, even when riding in vehicles equipped with air bags. When not used with safety belts, air bags have a fatality-reducing effectiveness rate of only 12 percent.

Third, educate your teen about the safety belt laws in your state. Be sure to review the graduated licensing laws - safety belt enforcement may differ from that of fully licensed drivers.

Driving Under the Influence

Teens are at far greater risk of death in an alcohol-related crash than the overall population, despite the fact they cannot legally purchase or publicly possess alcohol in any state. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) Most of those killed in alcohol-related crashes involving teen drivers are the young drivers themselves and their passengers.

Violators of underage drinking laws often face a trip to jail, the loss of their driver‘s license, and dozens of other unanticipated expenses including attorney fees, court costs, and other fines. Plus, there is the added embarrassment, humiliation, and potential loss and consequence related to academic eligibility, college acceptance, scholarship awards, and more.

Make sure your teen understands:

Alcohol is not actually digested; it‘s processed. It's absorbed directly through the lining of the stomach into the bloodstream. This is why the body feels the effect so quickly.
Alcohol has its first and greatest effect on the parts of the brain that control judgment and reasoning, the most critical skills needed by drivers. Physical abilities become impaired soon after.
As more alcohol enters the bloodstream, the area of the brain that controls muscular movements and body control begins to slow down. Even after the driver recognizes danger, the brain takes longer than normal to process the information and react to the danger. Messages the brain sends to different parts of the body might become confused.
A driver affected by alcohol has a decreased ability to reason clearly and to make sound judgments. However, the driver may feel as though thinking and judging abilities are sharper and quicker than usual.
Alcohol quickly diminishes the ability to concentrate. A decrease in the ability to concentrate greatly increases a driver's level of risk. A person‘s driving ability can be reduced after only one drink.
The muscular reactions of a driver who has been drinking can become slow and clumsy. Steering and braking movements can become uncoordinated. The driver might over-steer, brake late or not brake at all. The driver might not be able to negotiate turns properly and safely. Such actions cause drinking drivers to be involved in serious crashes.

Make sure your teen knows that she or he can always call you for a ride, whether the teen is intoxicated or is faced with the prospect of riding with a driver who has been drinking. Make a pact in which you promise to pick up your teen without questions or lectures. You can have a discussion about the issue the following day, when you are calmer and your teen is safe at home.

Responding Properly to Emergency Situations

Teen drivers often panic in emergency situations because they have neither the training nor the experience to execute the correct maneuver quickly enough to avoid a crash. They may take no action at all, take too long to react, or overcorrect, which could even make the situation worse.

In a driving emergency, a driver can stop or accelerate, with or without an accompanying turn. Most drivers who act out of panic will simply stop. They may skid to a stop, stop without considering the type of brakes on the vehicle (standard or anti-lock), or slam on the brakes when a more controlled stop is possible. If they try to turn, it is likely to be an uncontrolled turn and is often an overcorrection given the situation. For example, when the right wheels are off the pavement, a panicked driver will quickly yank the steering wheel to the left without slowing down, which could cause a rollover in some vehicles.

Be sure to review the following information with your teen as part of your home driver training program.

Most new vehicles have ABS (Anti-lock Braking System), which allows drivers to stop without skidding. In general, if you need to stop quickly with ABS, press on the brake pedal as hard as you can and keep pressing on it. You might feel the brake pedal pushing back when the ABS is working. Do not let up on the brake pedal. The ABS system will only work with the brake pedal pushed down.

Without ABS, you can cause the vehicle to go into a skid if you brake too hard. Apply the brakes as hard as you can without locking them. If the brakes lock up, you will feel the vehicle start to skid. Quickly let up on the brake pedal. As soon as the vehicle stops skidding, push down on the brake pedal again. Keep doing this until the vehicle has stopped.

In most cases, you can turn the vehicle quicker than you can stop it. You should consider turning in order to avoid a collision. Make sure you have a good grip with both hands on the steering wheel. Once you have turned away or changed lanes, you must be ready to keep the vehicle under control. Some drivers steer away from one collision only to end up in another. Always steer in the direction you want the vehicle to go.

One aspect of having ABS is that you can turn your vehicle while braking without skidding. This is very helpful if you must turn or stop or slow down.

If you do not have ABS, you must use a different procedure to turn quickly. Step on the brake pedal, but then let up and turn the steering wheel. Braking will slow the vehicle some, and it puts more weight on the front tires and this allows for a quicker turn. Do not lock up the front wheels while braking or turn so sharply that the vehicle can only plow ahead.

Sometimes it is best or necessary to speed up to avoid a collision. This may happen when another vehicle is about to hit you from the side or from behind and there is room to the front of you to get out of danger. Be sure to slow down once the danger has passed.

Driving Too Fast for Conditions

Driving too fast for conditions is a frequent contributor to collisions for teen drivers. In addition to succumbing to the lure of speeding on a straight, dry road, teens often fail to lower their speeds on hazardous roads or in dangerous weather conditions. They may compensate for heavy traffic by weaving in and out of traffic and braking more frequently instead of simply reducing speed.

Higher speeds reduce maneuverability, increase stopping distances, and decrease reaction time. Problems caused by increased speed are often magnified in adverse conditions, such as poor visibility or on wet or snowy roads. Teach your teen to be prepared to adjust speed for varying conditions and situations. Different traffic, roadway, and weather conditions can change the amount of time and space needed for slowing down while maintaining control of the vehicle.

Be sure to let your teen practice driving with you in the passenger seat in a variety of road and weather conditions, even after your teen has a driver's license. Ask your teen to identify the roadway surfaces and conditions at the beginning of each lesson. If the weather changes while you are driving, be sure your teen responds appropriately. For example, if it is sunny when you start out but begins raining during your drive, make sure your teen reduces speed to accommodate the slippery road surface.

Make sure your teen maintains an appropriate following distance at all times. Check your driver handbook for the recommended following distance in your state. Teach your teen to add seconds to the minimum following distance for poor road conditions, bad weather, poor visibility such as in darkness or fog, or in any area where additional hazards are present.

Review the following points about speed with your teen:

Speeding reduces a driver's ability to steer safely around curves on the highway or avoid objects in the roadway.
Speeding extends the distance necessary to stop the vehicle, increases the distance a vehicle travels while a driver reacts, and reduces the effectiveness of the vehicle's safety features.
The faster the vehicle is traveling, the greater the impact if the vehicle does crash. Inversely, the effectiveness of restraint devices like airbags and safety belts and vehicular construction features such as crumple zones and side member beams decline as impact speed increases.
The probability of a disfiguring or debilitating injury or death increases with higher speed on impact.
The economic cost to society of speeding-related crashes is estimated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to be 40.4 billion dollars per year.

Riding with Other Teens

No matter how skilled a driver your teen is, s/he is still at risk when riding in a vehicle driven by another teen. And it‘s common for teens to pack a vehicle full of friends who are unlicensed or who don't have access to a vehicle or to save money on gas. Unfortunately, they also do this because it‘s fun to listen to music, laugh and talk - huge distractions for an inexperienced driver. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, crash risk for teenage drivers increases incrementally with one, two or three or more passengers. With three or more passengers, fatal crash risk is about three times higher than when a beginner is driving alone. About two-thirds of all crash deaths of teens that involve 16-year-old drivers occur when the beginners were driving with teen passengers.

Studies indicate that passenger restrictions can reduce this problem. Passenger restrictions for teen drivers already exist in many states as components of graduated licensing programs. For parents, knowing and enforcing these passenger restrictions means reducing their child‘s risk of injury or death in a traffic crash. While this sounds easy enough, many parents are unfamiliar with the graduated driver licensing laws in their state. And even those who are familiar may neglect to enforce the restriction. A 2000 survey by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that 84 percent of parents of young drivers favored restricting teenage passengers during the first six months of licensure. But some studies indicate that parents leave enforcement of most graduated licensing restrictions to law enforcement - a mistake, since law enforcement does not have the ability to monitor the behavior of an individual teen the way parents do.

To help ensure the safety of your teen, learn the graduated driver‘s licensing laws in your state, and make enforcement of them part of your house rules. Monitor your teen's driving behavior, and review the restrictions often.

If you have a question about any of our courses or the required steps to receive a learner‘s permit, we‘d be happy to help. Just call 1-800-864-2864!