Dealing With A New Teen Driver? Read This
Whether you’re the parent of a new driver or a teen driver yourself, there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it — night driving is far less safe than day driving. In fact, 40% of fatal car accidents occur at night despite there being significantly less traffic on the roads during the small hours. Teen drivers face a 50% greater chance of dying behind the wheel if they drive at night, particularly between 9 and 12 pm. So, how do we combat this occupational hazard of night driving? Well many parents and municipalities for that matter simply forbid it, and restrict night driving until a teen is an adult.
If this isn’t feasible for you or your child however, then there are other things that you can do. To our minds, the number one preventative measure you can take is to make sure the headlights of the car the teen is driving are in good working order. Headlights are often the only way to see in front of us in the dark, and so the light must be clear, bright, and far-reaching. But remember, for a headlight to be considered clean and working, this doesnt just mean it has to turn on. Most cars that are more than a couple of years old have dimmer headlights than they once did, or have accumulated fog in the plastic. We can virtually gaurantee that your car can benefit from some sort of headlight restore initiative. For the safest, brightest headlights, we recommend investing in a good headlight cleaning kit.
Headlight renewal can be as simple as wiping the gunk out from the insight of the plastic casing, and a headlight cleaning kit will do this job nicely. You can also target your attention to headlight lens restoration if the problem seems to be with the bulb itself. DIY headlight restoration is simpler than ever nowadays. Many a headlight cleaning kit has been impulse purchased off of Google or Amazon and has done the job just fine. An added boon of a headlight cleaning kit is that it can reduce your teen’s chances of being stopped by the police. (We’ve seen headlights so dim they looked broken).
Of course, clean headlights will only get a teen driver so far. They’ll also have to reduce their speeds drastically on the roads, even if they get dubbed one of those annoying grandma drivers by their friends. You should also always encourage your teen to wear their seat belt and keep music, food, and other distractions to a minimum when behind the wheel.
Above all, NO ONE, should be texting and driving. This growing problem has been identified by some statistical groups to be just as harmful as driving while under the influence. It is an infraction that is handled severely by police and could instantly result in a driver’s death. Our most valuable asset when we are driving are our eyes, and texting takes our focus away from the road and to a screen. So get the headlight cleaning kit, and have a talk with your teen while spiffing up those front bulbs about safe driving. Don’t let them even come close to becoming another statistic.
