Teaching your teenager to drive?

04 June 2008

0Comments | Comment on this Article

Stay sane, Stay home and phone a friend

As the cost of tuition rockets home lessons become a necessary evil. Here’s Young Marmalade’s 10 point guide to teaching your teenager to drive – or not.

For thousands of Britain’s teenagers it is the moment they have dreamed about and the moment they dread. For their parents it is a nightmare waiting to happen – driving lessons.

Young Marmalade – the UK’s leading supplier of affordable, quality cars and insurance to young drivers - is calling on teenagers and their parents to think twice before they get in a car together.

“Some parents make excellent drivers but terrible instructors when it comes to their offspring,” says Crispin Moger of Young Marmalade. “Our research shows that the whole parent teacher dynamic can lead to disaster.”

Young Marmalade asked its customers – parents and teenagers - for feedback on their early learner driver experiences. It has also been working with driving instructors the length and breadth of the country recording details about a young learner’s experience.

“Our research showed clearly there is a natural and unavoidable friction between Mum, Dad and their teenage children. Anyone who has lived with a teenager or remembers their teenage years will understand this,” says Moger.

The organisation says young drivers should look outside their immediate family for any non-professional instruction. “The vast majority of the teenagers we questioned said after spending time in the car with their parents they’d prefer lessons from a more distant family member; an uncle or aunt; a grandparent or even family friend.

Young Marmalade staff heard stories of screaming matches around roundabouts, dashboard thumping at junctions and tears at traffic lights. “We had one case where a whole family refused to speak to each for days after one particularly stressful ‘lesson’,” says Moger.

Young Marmalade was set up to provide the parents of young drivers with an opportunity to buy safe new or nearly new cars and affordable comprehensive insurance.

The company also runs an insurance scheme which allows young drivers to be insured in their own cars while they hold a provisional licence. “This policy means that more young drivers have the ability to go out in their own car with their parents.

The top tip from Young Marmalade is to work with a qualified instructor. But the rising cost of lessons and tests is forcing parents to spend more time taking their children on to the roads and they are paying the price with family rows and a poor learning environment.

The organisation blames ‘muddle-headed thinking’ by Transport Minister, Ruth Kelly and her new consultation document for putting more pressure on parents to take responsibility for teaching their children to drive.

“If these plans become law the cost of learning to drive and passing a test will rocket,” says Moger. “This is the opposite to what Ms Kelly intended.”

If parents don’t have any option but to teach their own teenagers to drive Moger says families need to set some rules to make the experience worthwhile.

Young Marmalade has come up with a 10-point guide to Parent driving tuition:

To supervise a learner driver you must be at least 21 years old and have held a full licence for at least three years – it is essential to remain under the legal alcohol limit and not talk on a hand held mobile phone while supervising.

1. Allow professional instructors to guide the tuition. Tutors help young drivers take adequate control over the vehicle, know the road rules and correct procedures for managing a vehicle in traffic while making safe decisions.

0Comments | Be the first to comment!