You always want to remain a safe driver. As your child reaches the driving age, you may have concerns about how safe he or she will stay on the road. While you cannot account for the actions of other drivers out there, you can take the time to teach your child certain safety measures and lead by example by adhering to those same safety rules.
In particular, you may want to lessen the likelihood of your teen driver becoming distracted while behind the wheel. Distracted driving contributes to a substantial number of serious and fatal car accidents, and you certainly do not want your child to cause such an incident or cause one yourself. Fortunately, you and your teen can reduce the distractions that often make their way into vehicles.
Common types of distractions
Distractions are everywhere. Even if individuals think they are completely focused on a task, they may realize later that their minds had actually drifted off to contemplate other topics and ideas before snapping back to focus on driving. Some of the most common types of driving distractions include:
- Cell phone use, including texting and making calls
- Eating while driving
- Other forms of multitasking, including searching for music
- Talking to passengers
- Drowsiness
Drowsiness may seem like a separate issue from distraction, but if someone feels sleepy, he or she cannot focus totally on driving.
Ways to reduce distractions
You have undoubtedly heard of accidents caused by each of the aforementioned distractions. Because you fear that your child could fall victim to these factors, you may want to adhere to the following safety steps to reduce these distractions:
- Keeping the cell phone out of sight and out of mind
- Eating before getting in the vehicle or pulling over to eat
- Completing non-driving tasks before getting into the car
- Minimizing the number of passengers inside the vehicle
- Pulling over when drowsiness occurs and ensuring that you are fully rested before getting behind the wheel
It often seems like a good idea to split focus between multiple tasks in hopes of completing them more quickly. Instead, it typically means that one or all tasks receive less than the attention they deserve, and when it comes to driving, inattention can be immensely dangerous.
By helping your teen driver avoid distractions and avoiding them yourself, you may help the roadways be a little bit safer. Of course, these actions do not mean that you or your teen is free from risk, and either of you could still wind up in an injury-causing accident due to someone else’s negligence. If so, you may have reason to seek compensation from liable parties for damages permitted under Florida state law.