Teach Your Teens to Drive

A new AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released a new study that states that parents are not spending enough time teaching their new teenage drivers to drive.  Car crashes are the leading cause of death among teens.  This is an alarming trend.  In 2008, 1,368 U.S. drivers between the ages of 15 and 18 died in traffic crashes. Obviously most of these tragedies occur within the first two years of driving.  The study found that the main reason is that teen drivers do not spend enough time behind the wheel learning with their parents and experiencing diverse driving conditions.  AAA took an unprecedented look for four months at parents and teenagers as they hit the road during driving lessons. The study included 50 North Carolina families with teenagers driving with learners permits. Dashboard cameras were attached to the families' cars and parents were interviewed 10 times during the year-long learners period. The study found that the parents spent less than two hours a week supervising their teens' driving.  The majority of states in the US require that parents spend a minimum of 50 hours of driving practice during the time period that they have their learners permit.  The AAA foundation recommends 100 hours and that parents need to let their teens drive in all kinds of conditions including rain, traffic and especially at night. Twenty percent of teen driving fatalities occurred between 9pm and Midnight.
Teens need more experience than just driving to and from school and church which becomes benign and repetitive. By doing this, when the teen is out driving on their own, they will have experience in "real world" driving conditions.  Forty seven percent of the parents that participated in the study said there were certain conditions in which they still did not feel comfortable driving with their teens, even after a year long learners permit stage.  Thirty seven percent of those families still allowed their teen to get their license one month after becoming eligible.  The AAA foundation gives recommendations for parents when teaching their children how to drive like paying attention to how they drive, give them strategies for driving intelligently, teach them defensive driving, and most importantly that you spend enough time with them driving to ensure safety before they drive independently.

We at Pumpkin Cars, and especially Franck Freon know the importance of safe driving and stress it to every Pumpkin customer whether they are 18 or 80.  Franck knows from his extensive career as a professional driver that the smallest safety feature of the car cannot be overlooked because somebody's mother, father, sister or brother's life could depend on it.  That is why every Pumpkin Car goes through a strict safety check during our Pumpkin Certification Program.  As most parents with young or teenage drivers know most times they are not worried about their own drivers safety and ability, but they are worried about other drivers on the road.  Learning to drive defensively will help your teen better react to situations where other drivers are not safe.
Please take a short ride over to our unique indoor showroom located on Fire Rd. in Egg Harbor Township to check out our pristine inventory of Pumpkin Cars. We have some great cars right now that are perfect in which to teach your team how to drive!  You can contact Pumpkin Cars over the phone at 609-646-7676 or via email at [email protected] .  Please find and "Like" Pumpkin Cars and Franck Freon on Facebook, follow @PumpkinCars on Twitter, view videos about our cars and Pumpkin Cars on YouTube and if you enjoy what you have just read, pleas subscribe to our blog!