3 Bad Driving Habits You Teach Your Kids Every Day
Posted on: 25 August 2015
As a parent, it's understandable that you may feel overwhelmed with all you have to do. Although you may take some time to teach your kids to drive, you can also maximize on family driving time by being a good example. If you lead by example, you can start grooming your children to be smarter, more alert drivers. Here are some of the things that your children may see you do and try to imitate once they get out on the road by themselves that could cause accidents for a new driver.
Sight-Seeing
If there's something you would like a picture of or a longer look at, have someone else in the car with you take a photo or shoot some video with their phone. If your kids habitually see you taking your eyes off the road for seconds at a time, they may get the impression that this is a safe way to drive around. For a new driver, this can mean jumping a curb, read-ending another car, or running a red light or stop sign.
Texting
Texting while driving is one of the most distracting things that you can do, even as a veteran driver. If your children get comfortable with the idea of texting while they are operating something that weighs thousands of pounds, they could end up in an accident. Help your kids understand that there's no text message that they could receive that would be worth their lives. If you do have urgent news coming in (for instance, test results or knowledge about someone who is in critical condition in a hospital), show your children that you pull into a parking lot to be able to stop the car and safely read and respond to text messages.
Fishing
You could have sworn you put that bottle of water in the center console and now it may have gotten knocked under the passenger seat. Your natural reaction might be to bend to your right slightly and try to feeling around for it under the seat, shifting your entire line of sight as you periodically take your eyes off the road. Again, if you wouldn't want your child doing it on their first day as an independent driver, don't let them see you doing it. For your own safety, it might be best not to do it even if they're not around. Pull off of the road and stop the car safely in order to retrieve objects in different areas of the car.
From rolling through stops signs to exhibiting road rage, you can teach your children a lot by simply allowing them to see how you handle the responsibility of driving. Make sure that what they see you do every day reflects how you want them to drive when it's their turn.
If you or your children are ever in a traffic accident, seek the help of a law firm such as Walsh Fewkes Sterba.
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