Rules for new drivers and advice for patents??

[profmom]

Our oldest will be able to get her driver's license in a few weeks. What rules do you have or what rules do you recommend? As it is, she wants to spend more time with friends than we care to take her to, but we don't want her to have complete freedom to go wherever whenever, just because she can drive herself!

[regentrude]

DD is almost there. Rules I anticipate setting (aside from the no-brainers of seatbelt/ no texting/ no alcohol):

no teen passengers at all during the first six months (Our state has a graduated license that restricts teen passengers.) and a limit on passengers thereafter

I will most likely restrict her driving after dark in the first six months to necessary activities in town (to/from campus) and will definitely not permit her to drive after dark on unknown routes outside of town.

Her friend who got her license last year was not allowed to drive the country road to the barn where she rides after dark; she had to leave in time to make it to the main road in daylight. I can see us making a similar rule for the first few months.

[Halftime Hope]

1) Abide by all the laws of your state, being sure to know what is allowed when: curfews, graduated licenses, and such. 2) Our teens were not allowed to drive with anyone who hadn't had their license for two full years. Period. I only want them in a car with someone who is a very experienced, fully-automatic driver. Even then, I would screen and not allow them to drive with teens that I did not approve. Don't like it, too bad. You can drive yourself or drive with me, but I will not go to my grave regretting a driving choice. 3) For the first six months after getting their license, my new drivers only drove with me or my hubby, not with a sibling. I didn't want to lose two children. After that, they could drive with siblings only, no peers until they were very experienced drivers. 4) My husband chose the first peers my teens drove with, and we enlisted them to be critics: you could improve your driving in this way, and your driving was great in this area and this area. 5) if a teen is a passenger, their parent has to give approval. this may all sound pretty draconian, but it has worked well for us, and my teens have a very healthy respect for the power they wield behind the wheel. We do 90% of our driving as highway miles, so they have learned to have a healthy regard for what can happen at those speeds.

[rieshy]

No parking the car in the driveway on empty! In fact our drivers have to contribute one tank of gas a week to the shared kid-car.

For the first 6 months they were not allowed to play their ipods while driving because I didn't want them to get distracted by a music search. Our state has a graduated license that includes rules about driving after dark and extra passengers so we just followed those rules. Our kids have to pay their share of the car insurance premiums. -Or in one daughter's case whose job doesn't pay that well, I worked out a plan for some extra things she could do for me in exchange for me covering her insurance.

 

All of the kids know that driving is a privilege and if they do something stupid enough to jack up their insurance rates we will not cover the difference and it may mean they lose the ability to drive.