[s-cars] Teen car

[Brian Armstead]

Agreed Taka.  My 16 y.o. (2005 Passat) has to follow strict rules:  NO 
additional passengers and NO cell phone use.  I monitor her speed and 
movements with an Entourage GPS from Escort (yes, she knows - now!).  I 
have compared her cell phone records with her time behind the wheel.  So 
far, only one break in the rules when she took a classmate to a local 
Target for headache medicine (she did not realize at the time "Eagle 
Eye" was watching).  Car was taken from her for two weeks.

I've been involved with writing about automotive safety for many years 
now.  I often see teens with manual tranny cars who still multi-task, 
including holding the wheel with their knees while they text and drive...

It's a mess out there.  Whatever you think it best for your own kids, do 
follow Taka's advice and make SURE they follow the basic rules you as 
parent must lay down.

Brian

Taka Mizutani wrote:
> Brian-
> I'm not talking about making a mistake- yes, we all do that. What I'm 
> saying is, IMO it is safer to drive a manual transmission car- you 
> have to concentrate a lot more on the act of driving- this is better 
> than the relative ease of driving an automatic- the lack of shifting 
> leaves you more free to do a lot of stupid things, like talk on the 
> phone, send/read text messages, etc.
>
> The best thing for a teen driver is to not have passengers and not use 
> a phone at all while driving, handsfree or not. I didn't have cell 
> phones when I learned how to drive and it was enough distraction 
> having friends in the car, etc.
>
> Taka
>