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Drive It Home is an initiative of the National Safety Council. The initiative focuses on new teen drivers and some possible dangers which parents and teens are probably not aware of, but could save a life. Speaking of which, did you know that vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for US teenagers?
The way the Drive It Home show presented the data was not only through hard facts but also through humor from the funny folks at Second City. They put on a faux Dr. Phil show which revolved around parents being more involved, responsible, and active parents. But also teen drivers should be aware of the road and their surrounds while also bringing in mind they are not masters of the road so they should be active learners.
The second main portion of the presentation involved a woman who lost her daughter. Her daughter was a passenger in a vehicle during a crash. The number of teens in the car at the time of the accident was three. The next valuable piece of information given out was the more teens in the car the chance of getting into a crash increases- With each additional passenger in a new teen driver’s car, the chance of a crash goes up 50%. For adults it is the opposite, each adult acting as another pair of eyes on the road around them, possibly catching details others might miss.
Some details about driving in the Garden State- More than 32% of New Jersey parents are not covering how to manage the deadly risks – such as nighttime driving and driving
with young passengers – with their teens. Oddly enough, parents and teens agree that they should
have spent more time practicing in dangerous conditions, according to The Allstate Foundation survey.
If they had it to do over again, seven out of 10 parents in New Jersey said they would expose their teens to higher-risk driving situations when teaching their teens to drive.
59% of New Jersey teens wish their parents had spent more time teaching them to drive in demanding situations. That’s higher than the national percentage (55%). (But NJ is a rough state to drive in, soooo…..)
Most parents are not setting rules around the most dangerous behaviors on the road, including passengers and nighttime driving. More than half of New Jersey teens said their parents have set rules on night restrictions, while only 44% say they have restrictions on the number of passengers.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there were 164 fatalities in crashes involving at
least one 15- to 19-year-old motor vehicle driver in New Jersey from 2009-11. A total of 49 teen drivers
(15-19), 26 teen passengers (15-19) and 10 other age passengers in the teen’s vehicle and 79 others were killed in those crashes.
There aren’t any minimum practice hours that a New Jersey teen must log before they can obtain a driver’s license.
For more information on how to help keep teen drivers safer, please visit www.driveithome.org http://www.allstatefoundation.org/teen-driving or the New Jersey Teen Safe Driving Coalition at http://www.nsc.org/njteens-gdl4u.
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
Wow! Great post. I think teens should be aware of always watching other drivers as they are not the only ones on the road. I think they should be exposed to night time driving because it definitely is different than day time driving. I can’t believe all the accidents that I hear about teen driving. Thanks so much for sharing!
When I was a teenager, my parents, as well as those of my fiends were pretty strict about us not having any friends in the car. My parents didn’t even let me take my car to college the first year!