Tips for Teaching Teens Safe Driving
We know, the idea of your teenager driving for the first time can be scary. Especially if you are looking to have your teenager share in the responsibilities of driving the family RV on your next vacation. These are big vehicles and just one wrong move can lead to big problems.
But as much as we might want to delay driver’s education, teens have to grow up, and learning how to drive is part of it. The best thing you can do is help your teenager prepare by encouraging safe driving skills and techniques. Get started with the following safe driving education tips:
Tips for Teaching Teens Safe Driving
Start in a comfortable, low-risk environment. Avoid putting your teen into any complicated situations at first, such as navigating the RV in a crowded parking lot or during rush hour traffic. It’s also a good idea to avoid driving in the rain or at night until they have the fundamentals down. Start with low traffic neighborhoods and back country roads and slowly add in more complicated lessons as they feel more confident.
Implement commentary driving. Remember when you were teaching your child to read? They would read out loud, sounding words out until the letters and words became understood and they could read alone. Commentary driving is like this, as the driver makes audible comments about what they are doing as they are driving with the goal of making the verbal become second nature. For example, as you’re driving down the road, you might see/do and thus say, “There’s a car turning right ahead of me, I’m going to slow down, check my mirrors, and get in the left lane.”
This helps underscore safe driving, as it makes the driver really think about what they are doing. Just like with learning to read, the more a person verbalizes what they’re going to do, the more they’ll instinctively understand what to do in various scenarios. As your teenager is learning to drive, you should model commentary safe driving and then insist they do the same — especially in complicated driving situations.
First Accident? Contact Premier Coach Works
If you didn’t get to these safe driving tips in time and your teenager has been involved in their first accident, never fear, our team is here! Contact us today to schedule an appointment to get the family vehicle or RV back in tip-top shape!
