Tips on How to Teach Your Teenager to Drive

Are you struggling to teach essential driving tips to your teenaged kid? Here are some driving tips that will serve as a great driving lesson for any teenager.

Driving is an essential part of living a standard life in the 21st century. Be it, adults or teenagers, every person with a vehicle must know how to drive. From routine tasks to emergencies, driving comes in handy on multiple occasions throughout life. Teenagers, today, want to master all practical skills. Although it may be surprising for some parents, there is nothing wrong with teenagers showing a willingness to learn how to drive from a young age. On top of that, state laws and regulations require strict driving testing before issuing a driver’s license. Here are some essential driving tips that you should follow as a parent or instructor of a teenage driving learner.

Start With A Vehicle and Driving Rules Tour

The basic step of learning how to drive a vehicle is to understand how the vehicle works. Start your teen driving lesson by offering a basic to an advanced tour of all vehicle components to the driving learner. Sit on the passenger’s side and let the teenage learner take the driver’s seat. Explain the different components of the car, such as accelerator, brake pedals, clutch, gears, headlight controls, AC Controls, Safety controls, driving modes, etc. Tell the learner about the location and functionality of each component. While you are at the subject of explaining the components, transition to guiding the learner about the highway driving rules and regular driving rules.

Pick a Driving Practice Route and Checklist

Many instructors make the mistake of not choosing a practice route, which leads to confusion in the face of challenging situations. If you have a driving practice area in your locality, take the car and the teenage learner to that location. Hand the car over to the learner and stick to a spacious learning route, rather than a congested route. You can also keep an evaluation checklist of the learner based on turn expertise, braking action, smooth acceleration, determining the way, speed maintenance, safe distance, approaching intersections, lane driving rule, emergency action plan, and others.

Stick to The Driving Lesson Only

Before you start the teen driving learning session, make sure that there are no internal distractions. Try to switch off the phones. Do not try to make small conversations that may be irrelevant to the actual lesson. Deal with the challenges as a team and never raise your voice at the learner. Another good rule to follow is to adopt a suggestion approach rather than a critical approach.

Practice Driving In All Modes, On All Roads

Once you are confident that the teenager has got a grip of driving on the practice route, eventually switch to high-traffic and more challenging routes. You can also ask the learner to juggle between different driving modes as needed. This step helps in developing driving confidence in teenage drivers.

Teach At The Right Time

Never hurry a driving lesson for a teenager. Timing is an essential part of any learning process, make sure you pick the right teaching time, right duration and know when to stop the lessons and let the teenager drive on his own.