It’s Not Just the Lack of Experience: 5 Major Dangers Teen Drivers Face
Taking the wheel for the first time by yourself can be a daunting task for most teenagers. Not only are they inexperienced, but they also face many challenges that they must learn about to ensure they stay safe. Today we are going to look at 5 major dangers teenage drivers face when they start to drive.
Drinking And Driving
While the legal drinking age is 21, we all know that many teenagers start experimenting with alcohol in their teenage years. This can pose a very dangerous situation for those who experiment with drinking and try to drive their vehicle afterward. Ensuring that your teen knows the repercussions of drinking and driving is essential when you hand them the keys to their first vehicle. While this is an essential lesson to learn as a teenager, it will resonate into their adult years where they can still make the right choice of never drinking and driving.
Distractions
Another danger that many teens face is distractions. Distractions can come from many different angles including phones, radio controls, other vehicles, and more. Teaching your teenager to always drive defensively can help to keep your teen driver focused on the road to allow for safer driving. This will also help keep them alert of important road signs that will make them an overall safer driver. Teaching them to set all of their radio controls before leaving and turning their phone on silent can help build good habits.
Driving At Night
Driving classes are, for the most part, done during the day when visibility is at its best. When a teenager drives at night for the first time, they can struggle with a new environment that they are not accustomed to. Night driving provides its own danger no matter what age, but for new drivers, this can be overwhelming the first time they drive at night. Dangers can include reduced visibility, blinding lights from oncoming vehicles, other unsafe drivers, and more.
Driving Too Fast
Perhaps one of the most dangerous things on our list is teenage drivers driving too fast. Teenagers are always excited by the thrill and driving a car faster than the speed limit tends to be a fix for thrill sealing teens. It is vital to teach your teenagers the importance of obeying the speed limit to ensure not only their safety but the safety of their passengers and surrounding drivers. Noting the high cost of a speeding ticket should be another note to hit as most teens afford a costly ticket.
Teenage Passengers
The last danger on our list is teenage passengers. Teenagers are very influential and having teenage passengers that are their friends can make any of the other dangers on this list even more problematic. The peer pressure of driving fast, getting distracted, and drunk driving can magnify in a heat of the moment situation, turning any small trip into a dangerous situation. Teaching your teens to stay focused and to not let their friends influence them into wrong decisions can be a huge lesson to learn.
Conclusion
Each of these dangers can cause a drastic toll on one’s family and financials. In the event of an accident, you can use a firm such as Coye Law Firm.