How to Talk to Your Teens about Distracted Driving

If your child is preparing to get their driver's license, we urge you to talk to them about the dangers of distracted driving.

Here are some helpful guiding points for that talk:

What is Distracted Driving?

Distracted driving is any activity that could divert a person's attention away from the primary task of driving. All distractions endanger driver, passenger and bystander safety.

These types of distractions can be:

• Eating and drinking
• Turning to talk to passengers
• Grooming
• Reading, including maps
• Using a navigation system
• Watching a video
• Adjusting a radio, CD player, or MP3 player

How does distracted driving affect your teenager?

Forty percent of teens say that they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger.

Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent.

And, if that isn't scary enough - the most frequent type of distracted driving is texting. Those who text and drive are 23 times more likely to crash.

According to Distraction.Gov, ten percent of all drivers 15-19 are involved in fatal distracted driving crashes.

Talk with your teen about putting their cell phones down, seat belts on and eyes on the road.

If you have been injured in a distracted driving car accident, fill out our free case evaluation.