How do I educate my teenager on the risks of distracted driving?

Video Transcript

Two important ways to educate teenagers on the risk of distracted driving. The first is to talk to them about distracted driving and to point out all the dangers, in both they could harm themselves, they could harm their passengers, and they could harm others on the road. I think it’s also important to talk to them about how distracted driving isn’t just texting and driving. Distracted driving includes eating while you’re driving, changing a song, talking to your friends, just looking away from the road for just a few seconds. That’s distracted driving, and I think it’s important to realize that one small choice could lead to a very big result in that you could harm yourself or others.

I think another way to educate teens on distracted driving is to be a good example for them. If you were riding in a car with a teen don’t text and drive yourself and show them that distracted driving is not a good thing to do and it’s very dangerous. So, if you are in the car with a teen, keep your phone down, don’t eat, pull over if you need to make a phone call, and set a good
example for them when driving.

I’ve seen a lot of cases with distracted driving. One that sits with me is there was a teenager who was driving and was looking at their phone, and not only did they look up and see that there were a bunch of cars stopped in front of them, so they hit not only those cars, but when they swerved into the other lane to try to correct and not hit the other cars, they ended up hitting cars in oncoming traffic as well. So, I think that you can see that this is incredibly dangerous to text and drive, but also to just drive distracted in any way, and it’s just better to wait until you’re stopped, pulled over, and not actively driving behind the wheel.