The National Safety Council urges all parents to familiarize themselves with the risks associated with young, inexperienced drivers.

Parents should not rely solely on driver education to provide teens the significant knowledge and experience that they need to become safe drivers. Completing driver education should be viewed as the beginning of the learning process, not the end.

More important to safe driving, research shows, is the opportunity to improve driving skills through gradual exposure to increasingly-challenging driving tasks.

Teens become safer drivers with more driving experience. Graduated Driver Licensing laws force teens to build familiarity behind the wheel to reduce the risk of traffic crashes.

Tips for parents

(excerpted from NSC’s John Ulczycki on CBS The Early Show)

• Experience, Experience, Experience: Parents need to give their teens plenty of experience behind the wheel in all situations and circumstances, with them supervising. Ulczycki says, if you want to spend time with your kids, spend it in the car.
• Eliminate the distractions: If your state doesn't have laws banning cell phones, then ban them yourself in your teen's car. And, regardless of state laws, prohibit your teen from taking other teen passengers along for the ride.
• Require and set firm penalties for alcohol use and lack of seatbelt use: Teens get into more crashes than other people, yet they wear seat belts less frequently than other people. So, as a parent - set strong rules.
• Communicate: Parents have to work with teens in an open dialogue. This is a lifelong learning process. Ulczycki suggests a parent/teen agreement. A big part of the problem is parents don't make the commitment in terms of time and communication to make teens competent drivers.
• General advice: Know who teens are riding with, and whether that teen is a competent driver, and whether they're following the state law on curfews and passengers. If your teen is driving alone, you should drive with them in advance. Make sure he or she has traveled the road before in the same conditions.

What else can I do?

National Safety Council offers an innovative, three-hour course to get parents more involved in their teen’s learning to drive process. Defensive Driving Course-Alive at 25® Parent Program helps parents reinforce their teen’s basic driving skills and good decision-making to help them become safe, responsible, and defensive drivers.