May is Global Youth Traffic Safety Month. This month is sponsored by the National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It includes an annual awareness campaign that encourages youth organizations and youth to participate in traffic safety projects in their communities and promotes safe teen driving behavior. It raises awareness and aims to inspire individual actions that can change the statistics of road traffic accidents by teens.
Car crashes are the number one cause of preventable deaths for teens. Teens crash most often because they are inexperienced; they struggle with judging gaps in traffic, driving the right speed for conditions, and turning safely, among other things.
A few things you can do as a parent or role model of a teen are:
- Drive the way you want your teen to drive: when you are behind the wheel, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your teen to do. If they catch you doing something wrong – admit to your mistakes. It shows your teen driver that it is never too late to start driving safely and serves as a good learning moment
- Limit your teen to zero or one passenger for at least the first six months that they have a license
- Don’t allow activities that take your teen’s attention away from driving, such as talking on a cell phone, texting, eating, or playing with the radio
- Create a Parent-Teen Driving Agreement that puts your rules in writing to clearly set expectations and limits; here is one example to get you started: P-T Agreement
For more information and helpful resources on teen driving check out the teen section of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) website.
NHTSA reminds parents to set the rules before their teens hit the road with the “5 to Drive”:
- No cell phones while driving
- No extra passengers
- No speeding
- No alcohol
- No driving or riding without a seatbelt
