If your teenager is starting to drive these are some useful guidelines you may wish to implement. Young drivers need to get into good habits from the start and if they followed these guidelines they may avoid an accident or being hurt in a collision in the future.

2. Seat Belts
Make sure your young
driver always fastens his or
her seatbelt and checks to
make sure that passengers
do too. Teenagers are least
likely to wear seat belts.
Most teenagers killed in car
accidents are not wearing
safety belts.

3. Encourage your teenager to regularly look far down the road, then closer in
and then through mirrors. Teach your teenager to identify and avoid
potentially reckless drivers and hazards on the road
Scan the road ahead

4. Observe how your teenager manages speed and determine if he or she sees and
responds to speed limit signs. Point out how to adjust speed to the situation.
Weather, traffic, hazards and experience factor into a safe driving speed.

5. Passenger
Maintenance
Watch how your
teenager focuses on
driving with family in
the car.
Passengers, and the
distractions the
represent, can be
deadly.
The propensity to
crash increases with
even one teenage
passenger.
Consider allowing no
teenage passengers
for the first six months
of driving after passing
the driving test.

6. Hazard Detection and Response
Help your teenager
anticipate the
actions of other
drivers.
Drivers have three
seconds to respond
to a hazard; one to
recognise and two to
react.
Ask your teenager to
point out risky
situations and
discuss how to avoid
the dangers.

7. Mobile Phone Management
Be sure your teenager routinely turns off and puts
away any mobile phone before starting the car.
If your teenager needs to make a call, he or she should
pull over and stop for the duration of the call.

8. NightDriving
Watch how your teenager adjusts to night
driving.
Fatal crashes are more likely at night than
during the day.
Continue to practice with your teenager and
consider banning unsupervised night driving
for the first six months of licenses driving.

9. Keeping their Distance from the vehicle in front
Encourage your teenager to keep a minimum three-second distance
between his or her car and the car in front. Instruct them to watch
the rear bumper of the car in front pass an object. Then ask him to
count out loud for three to four seconds before his or her car passes
the same object.

10. Avoiding
Distractions
Encourage your teenager to fully concentrate on driving. Ask
him or her to avoid activities that take the focus off the road,
including eating, drinking, reaching for an object, reading
billboards or adjusting/programming electronics.

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