If you are the parent of a teenage driver and want
- A better understanding of the dangers and risks
- The knowledge to make better decisions about when to entrust your teen with car keys
- The courage to say "no" to your teen when necessary
This blog is for you
Recognized by the U.S. Department of Transportation/National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration Public Service Award, April 2010, for "extraordinary efforts to assist parents in making informed decisions about safe teen driving"
(This recognition does not imply DOT/NHTSA endorsement of the contents of this blog.)
For First-Time Visitors
For those visiting for the first time: Welcome! I hope you
find the blog informative and user-friendly.
I have been posting articles since September 2009, and I started with what might be considered the most
basic and important topics. So, if you want to start your reading with those initial posts, just click through the
Archives for September - October 2009, and work forward from there.
Proceeds from advertising on this blog are paid to my son's memorial fund, which supports day care tuition for infants and toddlers in the City of Hartford.
On December 2, 2006, my seventeen-year-old son, Reid, the driver, died in a one-car accident. On a three-lane Interstate highway
that he probably never had driven before, on a dark night just after rain had stopped, and apparently traveling above the speed limit, he went too
far into a curve before turning, then overcorrected, and went into a spin. While the physics of the moment could have resulted in any number of
trajectories, his car hit the point of a guardrail precisely at the middle of the driver's-side door, which crushed the left-side of his chest.
My basic list of cautions for parents of teen drivers
- Safer teen driving starts with informed, conservative decisions about whether teens get behind the wheel of a car in the first place. Teaching teens to operate a vehicle safely is Step 2.
- Driving is the leading cause of death for people under age 20 in the United States.
- Safer teen driving is everyone's concern. In 2008, more than 2,700 teen drivers died in crashes, but their crashes killed more than 3,400 passengers, other drivers, and pedestrians.
Father of Reid S. Hollister, age 17, a driver, who died in the early morning of December 2, 2006, the result of a one-car accident
on the evening of December 1, at Exit 34 on Interstate 84 East in Plainville, Connecticut.
Readers and friends: Happy New Year to all of you. Let me begin by explaining that it has been about a month since I posted on the blog, for two reasons: I have been hard at work on a handbook, based on the posts on this blog, for parents of teen drivers; and I have been working on a substantial revision of the national model teen driving agreement that I posted on this blog almost two years ago. So, sorry for the silence, but it has been productive! I am just about finished with the man...
