Why Graduated Driver Licensing?

Behind-the-wheel experience is key to developing the real-life skills your child needs for a lifetime of safe and responsible driving. Graduated Driver Licensing requires 50+ hours of parent supervised on-road driving experience before a full-privilege license is granted.  By keeping teens in the learning phase longer, a new generation of drivers can begin the reversal of chilling statistics such as these:   

Did you know? In 2002.  .  .

• 6,724 teen drivers were killed in motor vehicle crashes
• Another 8,000 occupants of other vehicles were killed by young drivers
• Another 324,000 teen drivers were injured in non-fatal accidents
• Teen insurance reached an all-time high
• The national estimated annual cost of automobile crashes involving young drivers each year is $32 billion. 

If a soccer team trains for 445 hours in a typical season, is 50 hours too much to ask for a lifetime of safe driving?  The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) advises college coaches to follow a regimen of practice and training of 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for a total of 20 hours of training per week.  This equates to as much as 445 hours of practice over the course of a typical sports season.  Yet, we devote only a fraction of that time (50 hours or less!) toward training teens how to handle the most important responsibility they will ever have faced—driving an automobile.

50 Hours behind the wheel. Experts agree that parents offer a tremendous resource in making sure our children get the driving experience necessary for safe driving all through life. Parental-taught driver education is truly the cornerstone of safe teen driving. A common ingredient of most GDL programs is fifty (50) or more hours of supervised instruction in dozens of real driving situations over a six-month period.

Parents must be equipped to safely train. Behind-the-wheel training can be dangerous. The stress of driving instruction itself is enough for many parents to limit training hours and avoid real-life training situations in favor of parking lots and out-of-the-way locations.

New TEENSAFE™ Passenger Brake gives parents the ability to control or stop the car; and the confidence to safely provide a full range of driving experiences.

Click here for some helpful links on the importance of GDL.

Saving Teenage Lives: The Case for Graduated Driver Licensing:
www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/newdriver/SaveTeens

Deadly teen auto crashes show a pattern
By Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY
www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-02-28-teen-drive-cover-usat_x.htm

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
www.hwysafety.org/

National Safety Council:
www.nsc.org/issues/driving/JSR_GDL05.pdf (PDF)