Did your teenager receive a cellphone as a Christmas present? If so, then it’s up to you to stress to them how important it will be to use it in the safest manner possible while they’re driving. Distracted driving is a danger that is on par with intoxication, and teens new to driving simply cannot bring all their skills to bear at the wheel if they’re focusing their attention on their phones.
A new editorial from the Palm Springs-based Desert Sun relates some of the things that parents of teenagers will need to know. The first thing will be how the law actually works, which is set to change in just a couple days. Once January 1 rolls around, persons younger than 18 won’t even be able to use a hands-free communication device to send a text message. That’s in addition to prohibitions against manual texting and talking on a cellphone.
You must stress the necessity of adherence to these laws to your teens when they reach driving age, but more than that, it’s important not to exude a certain hypocrisy with how you yourself approach driving. Your warnings against cellphone usage will fall on deaf ears if your teen sees you repeatedly using your phone to talk or send texts, so make sure you’re putting the phone down too.
For more about the distracted driving trend, follow the link up above.