Teachiing teens to avoid and deal with road rage

Road rage can be dangerous for drivers, passengers, and surrounding drivers. Teen driving expert Timothy Smith helps parents and teenagers identify signs of road rage and offers tips to dealing with it.
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Teachiing teens to avoid and deal with road rage

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Driving a car can bring out the worst in us. We're all human, we all make driving errors and misjudgments and sometimes they annoy or endanger others. So teens need to understand that their attitude affects other drivers and other attitudes from drivers can affect them as well. So the first thing you want to make sure is that your teen doesn't do anything that is guaranteed to annoy other drivers. And studies have shown, and on top of that list is tailgating. Followed by cutting people off, talking on a cellphone and using their turn signals. So that's one good way to reduce road rage, don't annoy other drivers. If your teen encounters a driver who's exhibiting road rage - they're tailgating, they're waving, they're honking their horn, they're angry - the goal is to get them out of the way. Get them in front of you, you're not going to change their attitude or the behavior. And teens need to understand that they're sharing the road with a lot of adults carrying all kinds of different baggage - they've had a fight with their spouse or kids, they're late for an appointment - all kinds of things just waiting for something to trigger that. So first, don't be that trigger. The other thing to understand is you need emotional control. And so one of the life lessons to teach your kids about road rage is don't give that emotional control up to others, because that's what road rage is, it's letting other people dictate your emotional state. So don't let your teen drivers give that control to other drivers.

TEEN, Responsibilities, Driving

Road rage can be dangerous for drivers, passengers, and surrounding drivers. Teen driving expert Timothy Smith helps parents and teenagers identify signs of road rage and offers tips to dealing with it.

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Timothy Smith

Author & Teen Driving Expert

Timothy Smith is a healthcare executive living in the Chicago area with his wife and three children.   He got involved with teen driving several years ago when a number of teenagers were killed in multiple crashes near his home, virtually all due to driver error.   His search for information to help his teens avoid car crashes yielded little of value, so he became a certified driving instructor, got trained and licensed to race cars, took defensive driving courses and ended up writing Crashproof Your Kids: Make Your Teen A Safer, Smarter Driver.  He is also Chairman of Aegis Mobility, a software company which has developed technology to manage and reduce cell phone use while driving. 

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