Comments on: Turn left NOW! No, your OTHER left!! The joys of teaching your teenager to drive.

By: Jim Hopkins

Jim Hopkins — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:10:40 +0000

I set the rule that they must get a job first to pay for the car, gasoline, license and insurance. That sent my oldest over the edge at the thought of her having to pay, so I didn’t teach her. The fact she didn’t like to follow any rule (mine or the DMV) was not my idea of fun sitting in the death seat anyway. She left at 18 to live with friends, they taught her and at 21 still refuses to work.

My youngest got a job, her permit at 17, license at 18 and waited until she was 19 until her first accident. She had saved the money for repairs not covered by the insurance, and is doubling down on her insurance budget for the forseable hike in premiums. Teaching her to drive was easy, as I think she was more scared than I was at “hurting her car.”

By: Drew Fisher

Drew Fisher — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:51:49 +0000

Amazingly, without ever having to worry about them getting their licenses, I have two sons, aged 20 and 32, who are already highly-accomplished drivers. Here’s the secret: They are STEPsons, and I married their mother last year.
My father delayed my getting my license as long as possible by insisting that I be able to pay for the more expensive car insurance my driving would require. Then he sent me to a college in New York City, where having a car is particularly burdensome. Eventually, I got my license because no other newspaper reporter covering the town meeting in Colonie, NY, needed to be driven to the meeting by his daddy.
After I had been driving for four years without killing anyone, my brother got his license at the age of 16 by asking at least 500 times a day for permission to get it. I’m not sure, but I think our even younger brother was able to get his license when he was 12.

By: Uncle Bubba

Uncle Bubba — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:47:28 +0000

Yeah, going through all this; tried to offer my daughter a thousand bucks every year she would wait. I wanted to hand her a nice tidy check for $17 grand at the birth of her second daughter.

Didn’t work. She didn’t want to wait.

She got the license, and the first time she drove herself home from work, she hit the house.

So what did I do? Bought her her own car, so she can stop wreaking mine.

She’s had the car for five days. And I drive about 80% less now. It’s liberating.

By: Rootchopper

Rootchopper — Fri, 04 May 2012 01:38:38 +0000

I remember my remarkably calm father teaching me how to drive. Since I was the fourth son in a row he had done this with, nothing could phase him. Of course, that stiff drink of whiskey before each driving lesson probably helped.

Contrast my father with my mother. She would sit in the shotgun seat as I drove expecting certain death at any moment. If she saw a hazard ahead, her arm would shoot out like a piston and her hand would smack the dashboard in front of her. She looked a bit like the Heisman trophy sans football. It was always fun to pretend that I didn’t see that old lady walking across the street just in front of me, just so I could get mom’s arm to flash out and hear her gasp. Why was she so worried? I only hit a couple of kids and a dog during my permit year.

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:17:13 +0000

Reasonable is <8%, trust me. And safe driving is, what, like driving with a helmet on, right?