Posted on: March 6, 2018 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

One great way to help your teen out on the road: Help then find advanced CA online drivers education. Attending defensive driving traffic school will get you a guaranteed ten percent off your base insurance rate, plus you can even get traffic tickets dismissed. You’ll still have to pay court costs in most cases, but if you can talk a judge into letting you attend defensive driving courses as an alternative, you can save yourself some dollars and points on your license. Beyond that, maybe the very best way to help your teen driver is to help them get as much road experience as possible.

Look, your kid probably learned to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto where stop lights are more like suggestions and the hospital just takes whatever cash you have on you and lets you out on the street again a few hours later. The surprising thing about GTA is that playing video games actually can give you an idea of how a car operates and what you can expect from public roads and highways. But it’s no replacement for actual on-the-road, behind-the-wheel experience. Nothing is. The more time your teen spends behind the wheel with you in the passenger seat, the safer they’ll be when it’s time to send them out on their own. Here are some tips for getting more road experience in:

Don’t Always Speak Up

If your teen is comfortable in the fact that you’ll always be there to tell them where they’re making a mistake, then they may learn to be less self-reliant. Now and then you should wait until after the trip is over to let them know when they forgot to use their turn signal or something. This will get them into the habit of developing their own road instincts.

Take Them on The Highway

Driving to the grocery store and back is a good way to learn basic city driving, but sooner or later your teen will need to know how to drive on highways, on back roads and so on. Make sure to take them on all sorts of terrain so that they can get a feel for it. You don’t want their first time driving on the freeway to be totally solo. You can ease into it, of course. They don’t have to make the full trip behind the wheel right away, maybe they can get you to a rest stop and you can take it from there. In any event, make sure they know how to drive on every kind of road they’re going to be driving on.

Have Them Help Out

Don’t just go out on the road for “teaching.” Have them make trips to pick up their siblings from school and so on. We make a dozen little trips every week, that’s the life of a driver. We don’t go out once a month to train, we go out every day or every other day to get things done. This can help your teen to learn that driving can be a freedom, but it’s also a responsibility.

The bottom line is: The more driving, the better. Chances are your teen may have a minor fender bender sometime while they’re learning. Your first instinct as a parent is to cut them from driving privileges. If you’re trying to create a safe driver, this is the worst thing you can do. They need to learn how to drive, and they need to learn from you.

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