Teens Driving While Distracted – Yikes!
If your teen has a cell phone that she uses to text her friends and if she also drives, there’s a good chance she does both of them at the same time. Teenagers think they are “bullet proof.” I remember being bullet proof — nothing could happen to ME, even when things happened to my friends. As an adult, I came to understand that teens (like younger children) don’t appreciate the consequences of their behavior.
As of July 2009, it is a traffic offense to drive while texting in Virginia. There also are driving laws that apply to teens in particular that carry penalties of restricting (or removing) their right to drive.
I posted a parent-teen driving contract at my firm’s website. It’s designed to give parents an opportunity to talk straight to their teen, to let her now exactly what is expected of her, to get a commitment from her, and to set out the close-to-home consequences of breaking the contract. It’s not the only answer, but it’s one arrow in a parent’s quiver for keeping their teen safe.
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