How to Hand Over the Wheel

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Riley Hurlburt

Junior Ethan Hurlburt in his car.

Riley Hurlburt, Columnist

When teenagers turn sixteen, they have the opportunity to get a license in Arizona, which may result in an opportunity to have their own car. Most parents can be extremely anxious during this time, as driving is a dangerous, though important, benchmark in teen development. It is crucial to make wise decisions on the road because it could result in serious consequences if not taken seriously. To relieve some of these fears, parents tend to turn to tracking their children, as teenagers may practice bad habits while driving alone and without reminders.

When a teenager is still young, their parents will most likely have a tracking device to know where their children are. Most people use phone trackers like Life360, an app that tells you the exact satellite location of your child and also allows the child to know where the parent is. It also includes features like the other person’s battery percentage, how often they use their phone on the road, rapid acceleration, hard braking, their highest speed, and the route they take. This is useful, because if the teenager is driving over the speed limit, they have a way to gather evidence since it saves all information. This is a easy app to use to track a young driver. This helps to train teenagers out of their bad habits because their parents can monitor their decisions.

Parents are not only worried about their teenagers being reckless while driving, but also about the behavior of other drivers. There are many different drivers in the world, and every driver has a different level of skill and understanding of the rules of the road. Family Circle states that the parents should try their best to be in the car until the teenager is fully in control of the car and understands the dangers of other drivers. While learning, teenagers should practice defensive driving so that they can be fully conscious of potential actions from others.

Family Circle states that within a year of a teenager getting their license, approximately 40 percent of teen drivers get in an accident; nearly two-thirds of those killed in accidents involving teen drivers are pedestrians or occupants of other vehicles. Most teenagers have bad habits when driving, like going on their phone and putting on makeup in the car. This is because teens don’t fully realize the dangers of using a large hulking machine sailing down streets at 40 mph. This behavior leads to the creation of bad habits when they feel like they are used to the car but these patterns can cause teenagers to injure other people and themselves.

The dangers involved in driving make tracking a teenager a smart idea. After all, with the freedom that driving provides can allow teenagers to travel anywhere they want, and therefore get a crash anywhere they want, too. But with tracking, parents can keep their children safe and encourage safe habits in these young adults.