How To Discuss With Your Teen About Cutting Down On Distractions While Driving
Teens have to go through a transitional time. Despite still being children, they feel irresistible and are driven to have more freedom and decision-making power. This can make it harder for a parent to be “heard.”
Your child’s safety is so essential that you should talk about safe driving in a way that shows your seriousness about it. To know more about road safety and its laws, click here.
How do you talk to your kid regarding road safety and cutting down on screen time while driving?
Drivers under the age of 20 contribute to the highest number of fatal crashes caused by distracted driving. Distracted driving occurs when a driver stares away from the road, takes their hands off the steering wheel, or focuses too much on anything else. And despite the warnings about the risks, distracted driving is every day.
Who has not taken their hands off the wheel, their eyes from the road, or their focus off driving? Think about this: Sending or reading a text requires you to take your eyes off the highway for around five seconds at 55 mph, which is long enough to cross a football field. That gives a lot of space for accidents to occur or be created.
How can you make them stay focused?
Although texting attracts a lot of attention when it comes to distracted driving, your teenager or you may be distracted by other driving activities. The following seven steps will help contribute to the solution, not the problem, of distracted driving:
- Plan the journey before you go; if you get lost, pull over to the other side of the road and update the map.
- To break the Bluetooth connection while driving, put your phone on mute or turn it off. On the other hand, when you get in the car, put the phone out of reach.
- Assign a “designated texter” to take care of texts if other people are in the car.
- Have breakfast, shave, and apply beauty products at home rather than in the car.
- Keep pets from roaming in the car while you are driving.
- Download an app that forbids texting while driving a car. (Many free apps utilize various techniques to prevent texting and driving.)
- Have a discussion with close ones about committing to stop driving while distracted. When you see one another getting diverted, speak up.
Distracted driving can be fatal, and it should be addressed.
Distraction-affected crashes accounted for 10% of fatal crashes, 15% of injury crashes, and 14% of all police-reported automobile crashes in 2015. Before you dismiss “only ten or 15 per cent,” keep in mind that 3,477 individuals were killed in those numbers. That exceeds the 2,996 deaths from the horrific terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001, an incident for which we mourn each year. Moreover, distracted driving may result in harm or death to pedestrians.
When to discuss?
Get your kid to agree on a time when you will not be disturbed, and tell them you want to schedule a particular time for conversations about safe driving. You may hold the meeting at your home, but not over dinner, in front of the TV, or during anything else. This will effectively prioritize the conversation and increase your probability of being “heard.” List the topics you want to discuss before sitting down together.
Conclusion
Remember that creating good—or better—habits for teen driving involves parental participation, patience, consistency, and effort. Positive changes in behaviour cannot prevent distracted driving overnight. When it comes to driving safety, please say it a second time. It displays love to set expectations and guidelines for your child. You should worry less, raise drivers’ awareness, and increase road safety by adopting some of these changes.
