How to teach your child to deal with bad drivers

Can you teach your children to deal with bad drivers? Many parents might not realize this, but expert Timothy Smith shares important information about the danger of adult drivers who do not know the correct rules of the road.
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How to teach your child to deal with bad drivers

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Developing a defensive driving mindset is key to helping reduce your teen's crash risk. This is a mindset that doesn't expect people to obey the law and make the right driving decisions. Now, our teens come out of driver's ed, and they expect most adults to know the rules of the road and to obey them. And sometimes it's a rude awakening when they find that they don't obey the laws. They either don't know them, don't obey them, and they put them at risk. So one of the things you can do is develop a what if mentality to talk about different situations they can be aware of. For instance, what if an animal runs out in front of your car? Now the proper response is to break hard but stay in your lane. The tendency is often to want to change lanes or go off the road to avoid the animal, but if you do that your risk increases exponentially. So part of the defensive driving mindset is to understand what's the proper response to situations you encounter on the road. Drivers will blow through yellow lights and stop lights. They wont' use their turn signals. They'll yack on the phone. They're going to endanger them in some ways very often. So if you instill a defensive driving mindset with your teen, one that every time they get behind the wheel, they expect other drivers to put them at risk, then when they do put them at risk, they're far less likely to get angry. they're going to make the right responses to those situations they encounter on the road.
TEEN, Responsibilities, Driving

Can you teach your children to deal with bad drivers? Many parents might not realize this, but expert Timothy Smith shares important information about the danger of adult drivers who do not know the correct rules of the road.

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Expert Bio

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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. 

Driving, Bonding with Teens
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