News tagged with 'Teen Drivers'

As the summer months approach and teens take to the road, a parent-child driver contract sets out the rules in a clear, concise way, complete with consequences.

A new law that went into effect to reduce the number of teen driving deaths, has sparked a public protest with promises to repeal Kyleigh's Law.

STAND UP Act would bring in tiered system for licensing teen drivers raising the learner's permit to age 16 and making teens wait until the age of 18 to get their driver's license.

Texting teens average more than 2,000 messages a month which may be having a negative impact on their maturity, anxiety levels, and sleep, according to experts.  How do you limit your teens texting? 

The National Safety Council is advocating a total ban on cell phone use while driving, saying it is dangerous and leads to fatalities. A study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimates cell phone use while driving accounts for 6 percent or 636,000 of all automobile crashes, 330,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths in the U.S. every year.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky surveying about 10,000 students from Kentucky on their sleep habits – found a reduction in auto crashes when the school hour started one hour later at 8:30 a.m. There may be a biological reason teens do better with a later start.

Emerging technology stops cell phone calls coming in while you drive. The software senses you are in motion and retains your calls and text messages for later. It has immediate application for parents, but also corporations that want to cut down on the thousands of highway deaths each year due to inattention.

Teen texting while driving is more distracting than cell phone use, and equal to driving while intoxicated DUI, but few laws exist to address the problem. In the absense of legislation, schools and parents need to stop driving while texting or DWT.

On July 1, Washington State becomes the sixth state to ban the use of hand-held cellular phones while driving. However in this case, a driver must first be cited for some other motor vehicle violation such as speeding, before an officer can pull him over to issue a $124 ticket.

A recent insurance industry study shows teens are not heeding laws banning the use of cell phones while driving. The study concludes that parents should take a more active role in helping to curb this unsettling trend, as auto accidents are the leading cause of death for teenagers.