From HealthDay News -- Your parenting style can make a huge difference in your teen's safety once he or she gets behind the wheel of a car.
Parents who set firm rules, but do so in a helpful, supportive way, can reduce the likelihood of their teen getting into an auto accident by half and decrease rates of drinking and driving, two new studies find. Positive rule-setting can also increase the odds a teen will wear a seatbelt and lessen the likelihood of talking or texting on a cell phone while driving.
Teens who had authoritative or authoritarian parents wore seatbelts twice as often as teens with uninvolved parents. Teens with parents in these groups were also half as likely to speed as those with uninvolved parents. Teens with authoritative parents -- high support and rules -- were half as likely to get into a car accident, 71 percent less likely to drink and drive, and 29 percent less likely to talk or text on their cell phones while driving compared to teens with uninvolved parents.
Read the full article: Firm Parents Keep Teen Drivers Safe.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Great post! As a mother of a teen who will be driving next year I couldn't agree more. You can be sure I will have rules and expectations in place. He may not like me for it but anything I can do to keep him safe on the road is worth it.
Nice post. Parents need to set rules. One of the ways to do that is to establish a driving contract with the teen driver. I talk a little bit about in my post How to Make Teenage Drivers More Responsible
Post a Comment