Health Tip: Encourage Teens to Drive Safely

Before teens begin driving, parents should discuss a few ground rules to help prevent accidents.

The U.S. National Safety Council suggests how parents can prepare their teens for safe driving:

• Take your teen out for lots of practice sessions, exposing him or her to various driving situations.
• Don't allow your teen to drive with any distractions. That means no cell phones or other teens in the car.
• Establish strict rules about seat belt use and drunk driving, and enforce your punishments.
• Talk to your teen often and openly.
• Be informed about where your teen is going, what he or she is doing and who may be riding along.

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/639323.html

Safety Driving: Parents should know where, how their kids are driving

Many parents fear handing their car keys over to their teenagers, but what if a parent could track the teen's every move while the youth was on the road?

Plug-N-Track, made by Tucson-based Gateway Communications Inc., is a small box that plugs into a car's diagnostic port. It allows you to track your vehicle's movement, speed, acceleration and deceleration patterns online and through text message, said Jon Rowley, president of Gateway Communications.

While GPS driving-habit trackers are the current trend in safe-driving promotion, with at least 10 different products available online, Rowley said he used his 25 years of experience designing fleet-tracking systems to help Plug-N-Track stand out in the market.

"What makes us unique is being able to quickly, with no professional installers, plug it in to the vehicle," Rowley said. "Simplicity is what makes it really, really nice."

Plug-N-Track retails for $299.99 and requires a monthly service fee of $19.99. Other simular products can run anywhere from $195 for the unit with a $40 monthly tracking fee to $470, also with a $40 monthly fee.

Once users plug the device into their cars, they can then track their vehicles through an online program, similar to Google Maps, or they can text-message the system and receive real-time updates listing the cars' cross streets, their direction and their speed.

Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said that while driver-tracker systems have been shown to decrease dangerous driving tendencies, there is some doubt about whether they will really catch on in the market.

A 2009 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study, meant to test the influence of these devices on driver tendencies, actually had a hard time recruiting participants because, Rader said, parents did not want to offend their teenagers by showing they did not trust them behind the wheel.

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