My teen’s friends are passing their road test and starting to drive. We live in the suburbs in NY. I dont want her driving with new drivers since i fear for both their safety. Have you set rules such as one needs to be driving with a license for x months til you can betheir passenger?
In CT, a newly licensed driver can’t carry passengers for six months (except a passenger who had had their license for a long time). So…we didn’t have to set any rules.
^^^That is true in Vermont too.
Before Texas passed restrictions, our rule was that the driver had to have been licensed for at least 6months.
Many states have youth driver restrictions. If your state doesn’t, set your own family rules. I think you have a legitimate concern.
Our home state made it easy for us because new drivers can’t drive non family members. We would have absolutely had the rule that there was no driving with anyone who didn’t have their license for a year. Totally reasonable to set some ground rules.
When my kids were that age, in our state it was all OK to carry other kids if they were sibs, or sharing a ride to school. Any curfew hours were unenforced by any police etc. So the thing is to set out rules for your own kid. Don’t rely on any policing from outside. Just say no riding in anyone’s car period, until you change your mind. In reality you are going to crack, because that is how it goes. In general what will happen is that you won’t know if they break this rule if it goes on too long. Might be better to be informed.
@thumper1 – Unless CT liberalized the rules in the past two or three years, newly-licensed drivers cannot carry any under 18 passengers for first six months. Can transport siblings for months seven through twelve, and then transport friends after one year with a license.
We wouldn’t let our kids drive anyone else around nor ride with anyone newly licensed. And most parents did the same so it wasn’t hard to enforce. Doesn’t last forever so not that hard.
Our family rule was that a newly licensed person had to drive one year before driving anyone other than a parent. Not a sibling nor a friend. And they could not ride with anyone who had not had a license at least a year.
It was amazing that we never got pushback from either kid.
Unless required by state law, this seems overly protective and restrictive. If someone has a license and is able to drive without adult supervision, I see no issue with them driving with passengers.
@roethlisburger —it’s a matter of driving experience. Other people in the car especially teens are a distraction from the road. That’s a proven fact.
If my kid were to have an accident I certainly don’t want anyone else in the car with them.
There’s a reason why insurance companies charge so much to insure teen drivers.
The only restriction in my state (MN), is the number of passengers. If they are immediate family, there is no restriction, but they can’t transport more than one other unrelated teen the first 6 months, 2 teens the 2nd 6 months. My son is the youngest in his class, so most were driving long before him, but it really never came up for us and now he has had his license for 9 months and his own car and I don’t think he drives kids around much. I’m not so naive to believe I really know though.
We also had a house rule that if our kids were driving someone else, they had to just let us know who and where they were going. DS one time took a friend home…claimed it was some sort of proble the friend was having. We politely told him…the problem was HIS and took away the car keys for a week. Never happened again.
They didn’t have to ask permission…they just had to let one of the parents know. Seemed easy enough.
It’s a fact having teen passengers is correlated with higher accident rates. It’s a proven fact that having a passenger 35 or over decreases the risk of a fatal accident by 62% in 16-17 year old drivers. If you want to minimize the probability of them being involved in an accident, you wouldn’t let them drive unsupervised until they turned 18. Or you could accept some risk: new cars have advanced safety features and DUIs are declining.
https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TeenDriverRiskAgePassengersReport.pdf
The rules are great, but for boys they become very difficult to enforce as the licensed drives begin to roll out. It seems like there are 2 or 3 new ones each month for a year. Keeping track is tough. And once they are out of your site, they can load the cars how they want. As they all first started driving, we had convoys of 10-20 cars - 2 kids per car. I’m not sure that was any safer.
“but for boys they become very difficult to enforce”
Why are you singling out boys?
You will find that a lot of parents set their kids loose with the car keys and don’t even know about restrictions, let alone care. Two of my younger daughters’ friends were allowed to drive, unlicensed, to each other’s houses because they were “just down the block.”
I think it was about a year before I let my older daughter have anyone but her sister in the car, or get a ride from friends. Her younger sister has yet to drive anyone but family, or be driven by a teen driver. In both cases, I am/will be very picky about who gets rides and who drives them around. Even after all the friends got their license, I was still insisting my older daughter either drive herself or get a ride from us and will do the same for #2.
And I have one more hard and fast rule - any problems, call and I will come get you anywhere, anytime. I had to do that once with my older daughter who got ditched at a school function (thankfully it was only that). Even though I have the “text me when you get there/text me when you leave” rule, I know stuff can happen.
I agree - it’s worrisome! Both my children were among the first to get their licenses in their friend groups so I didn’t really have to deal with this.
My 16 year old son recently go this license. I was very surprised his girlfriend’s parents allowed her to ride with him (she is older and already had been driving). I recently learned that the first time they were heading out with my son driving, the girl’s dad told her to wait on the porch. He then proceeded to get in the passenger’s seat and told my son to drive. They went on a ride together and the father gave my son a little driving test. I thought, “what a great dad and what a lucky girl.” He was nice about it and kept the whole experience positive and upbeat.
Not only did the dad evaluate my son’s driving for himself but I think it reminded my son that he has precious cargo in the car when his girlfriend is with him and how serious driving is.