ing his seat belt that he might have survived. Ryan was a friend of mine; we would have graduated from high school together.What can parents do? As a parent, one of the most important things you can do for your teenage driver is to spend as much time as possible helping them to mature behind the wheel. Parents should discourage the teen from allowing friends to ride along in the car with them or limit the number aloud to ride until they have had enough supervised practice. Insist that they are to wear seat belts at all times. Limit your teen’s driving during high-risk times of the day and limit the area a teen can drive. Set curfews for your teen and encourage your teen to use good judgement. Parents can also use 4MYTEEN, a teen driver's monitoring service. Designed by Officer Tom H. Deats of the Arlington Police Department, this tactic uses a bumper sticker which reads “HOW’S MY DRIVING—CALL 1 800-4MY-TEEN”, and is placed on the car that the teenager uses. This encourages other motorist and pedestrians to call the number and report how the teen is driving, good and bad. “Teens who complete an entire year with 3 or less complaints are eligible to compete for a scholarship, which can be applied toward the teen’s college education(4MYTEEN ).”Another program that has recently been introduced to the United States is “Graduated Licensing”. This program is doing extremely well and has had a positive effect on teen driving. Graduated Licensing is a conditional or intermediate license given to teens between a learner’s permit and a regular license. “This system was designed to introduce beginning drivers to progressively more extreme driving conditions (nhtsa).” Graduated licensing has firm restrictions and laws that must be followed by the new driver. Including six months of crash free and conviction free driving, a zero tolerance for blood alcohol concentrati...
