I am a member of the Stiletto Media Blogger Network. This is a sponsored post written for #TeenDrive365 and the Toyota Teen Driver Safety Clinic. However, all thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own. For more information on the Toyota Teen Driver Safety Clinic, please visit http://bit.ly/1nfUJ0e
My oldest son is only 12 but already talking about looking forward to driving. If I can be perfectly honest, the idea makes me nervous. I know it’s a step in growing up and my son gaining his independence but so many things can happen in a car, right?! I have one cousin that just recently started driving last year and another one that will be driving within the next year or two. There are several things different from when I started driving. I mean, texting and driving was pretty much unheard of when I started driving. Heck, I’m not even sure if I knew what a text was when I was 16. (I know that dates me but..)
Toyota dealerships are offering FREE Teen Driver Safety Clinics. They are 2.5 hour sessions of non-driving but interactive sessions. These clinics will go beyond the basics and educate you and your teen on Defensive Driving “universal truths” and best practices, car operations safety features and basic maintenance fundamentals, Dangerous Driving Distractions and How to Avoid Them, and more. There’s also info for parents on effective driving communication and coaching.
When I think back on learning to drive….you know what…scratch that…when I think about the last almost 20 years I’ve been driving it wasn’t until last year that someone told me that there is a helpful little sticker on the inside of my drivers door to tell me how many psi’s to inflate my tires too. I seriously did not know that. I would go through the drivers manual of my car and get frustrated every time I had to try to find it. I’d even ask people and they’d say “oh it should be in your drivers manual”. You know when I found out? Last year I was driving to work on a weekend. I got about half way to work and lost control of my car. When I finally got my car to where I could pull over somewhere safely I got out to try to figure out what the heck happened. I realized my back drivers tire was completely flat. I was about to pump it up at a gas station and a nice truck driver, obviously seeing the perplexed look on my face as I’m looking through my manual, comes over to me and locates the sticker on my door for me. Seriously! Why didn’t someone show me that 19 years ago!? Please show this to your kids. They’ll need to know for safety and in emergencies like mine.
Check out this short video too of the Toyota Teen Driver Safety Clinics:
If you are interested in attending this FREE and valuable session with your teen and are in the New York or New Jersey area you can register at a local Toyota dealership here: http://bit.ly/1nfUJ0e
Please feel free to share this post with someone you know who could benefit from this.
Tell me one thing you wish you knew before you started driving
I wish I had known how important it is to be a defensive driver. You can know all of the safety rules and be an excellent driver, but if you can’t also watch for others making mistakes, you’re still at higher risk for crashes. As an adult, I am more careful to look at cross traffic when the light turns green, just to be sure someone isn’t running the red, and I wait to be sure someone is actually turning before I pull out in front of them.
This is so cool! I wonder if they do it in California as well!
I wish I would have been older than 16! Why are teenagers allowed to drive cars. I mean seriously! lol 😉
I wish I would have known I was going to have to do it all the time. Now I hate it, but then I thought it was the greatest thing ever!