Teach Your Teenager To Drive Responsibly

Getting the keys to your own car is a rite of passage on the road of life that every adult remembers with a twinkle in his eye.

First kiss, first fistfight, first car -- images of my life passing before me before I die.

But when grownups see a young whippersnapper get behind the wheel of his new car, they don't get warm feelings of nostalgia, but pangs of dread.

We see visions of that young punk crashing his new Mustang into a tree or running a slow moving grandmother off the road.

And it's not just paranoia, statistics show that every year more teenagers die in auto accidents, in fact, more kids die from auto accidents than from any other cause.

It's hard to make cars any safer, new models have gazillions of air bags, anti-lock brakes, and dozens of other safety features.

Auto manufactures have made cars safer, now it's time to make young drivers smarter.

How do you make young drivers smarter, it's experience that makes adults smarter drivers. The best way to save lives is by increasing the training time behind the wheels.

Giving your son or daughter a new vehicle isn't like giving them a new bike. An automobile can be a one ton killing machine, teens need a lot of time of driving instruction before they can venture the open road by themselves.

My first car was a 1966 Mustang, a flying work of art that ended up a pile of mangled steel. I was lucky, I survived that mishap and went through many other cars.

But we can't count on luck to keep our children safe, we should take time from our busy lives, and spend hours and hours teaching them how to drive responsibly.