• Driving is the leading cause of death for children.
  
  
• There is no such thing as a safe teen driver. We can train teens to operate a vehicle, but we cannot overcome the facts that their brains do not yet fully appreciate risk and danger, and that driving continually requires judgment, which requires experience, which new drivers do not have.
  
  
• When teen drivers crash, they almost always injure or kill not only themselves, but also passengers, other drivers, and pedestrians.
  
  
• Teen driver laws have solid public safety evidence behind them.
  
  
• Enforcement of teen driving laws is primarily up to parents. The police can only help.
  
  
• Just because a nighttime curfew, passenger restrictions, seat belt laws, and cellphone/electronics bans are difficult for the police and parents to enforce doesn't mean that state laws should not set a safety standard.
  
  
• The farther a newly-licensed driver ventures from home, the more likely he or she is to be driving on an unfamiliar road.
  
  
• License suspensions, penalties, and fines for teen driving law violations are easily avoided: just comply with the rules.

• Don't compromise safety for convenience, or to save on gasoline.
  
  
• Make a list of your child's friends who are authorized to carry passengers AND are known to you to be safe drivers. Prohibit your child from getting a ride from any teen not on that list.
  
  
• If you can afford one or more of the technologies to track your teen's driving – for example, a global positioning system or a device that sends you an e-mail if your teen's car exceeds a particular speed – buy it.
  
  
• Use a teen driver contract.
  
  
• If your teen gets a ticket and faces a license suspension, penalty, or fine, don't resist or delay. Have them take their medicine as quickly as possible.
  
  
• If a driving instructor tells you that your teen is not or might not be ready to drive, don't argue. At the end of a learner's permit phase, some kids are not ready to drive. Don't force them onto the road.
  
  
• Use your best, conservative judgment about when to withhold car keys.

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.

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.

Every summer, most high schools in the U.S. send forms to parents and guardians that ask for permission for various activities at school.  The forms usually include something like this:   _____        _____        I give permission for my child to drive to   Yes            No           and from school.   _____        _____        I give permission for my child to ride to   Yes            No           sc...