Do let your teens ride in cars with another teen driving?

[Connonym]

I'm a bit uneasy about the idea but I wonder if I'm unreasonable for telling my daughter she has to ride with adult drivers.

[Inchworm]

1. I did

was a couple years ago.

I hoped I instilled the sense in my daughter to decide if a kid was nuttzor.

:hi:

[fizzgig]

2. i couldn't really before i got my license

but after that, my parents didn't care

[pokerfan]

3. That was my parents' policy

[Withywindle]

4. My parents did that.

Which led to me dating older men...which, for that reason, they were totally fine with.

(Yeah, I had a weird upbringing - but I think I basically turned out alright.)

[LeftyMom]

5. My parents were gratified anytime they didn't have to take me anywhere.

:shrug:

As far as my kid, I might put my foot down about riding with a friend who was a very bad driver or who had a really unreliable/unsafe car, but I wouldn't make a blanket rule. Some teenagers are very good drivers (I know I let my sister drive then infant leftykid places when she was a teenager, because she drove better than a lot of adults in the family) and some are very bad, so I'd rather make an individual judgment call, and encourage my kid to do the same, than institute a blanket rule.

[fed_up_mother]

6. My teens may ride with another teen. One driver. One passenger.

More than that, and it gets too "silly" and dangerous.

And when my kids drive, I have the same rule for quite a while. Only one passenger.

Also, it depends on how old your teen is. My teens really couldn't go out without an adult until they were fifteen. Oh, sure, we could drop them off at the mall or some other teen hangout, but they weren't allowed to roam around in cars. KWIM?

Cell phones have saved my sanity. I tend to worry, so my kids have to check in. They know it's a small price to pay for freedom. :)

[Connonym]

11. My daughter is 15

what's got me worried is that there was frost on my car the other day when I went to take her boyfriend home and he told about how he rides to school with one of his friends and in the winter they don't scrape the ice before driving. He thought it was pretty amusing that they couldn't see where they were going. The BF is a nice kid and I trust him as much as I would any kid his age but I wonder if they have a real sense of the dangers. You know how kids think that nothing will happen to them. I've talked with DD about not driving with anyone who has been drinking and she knows that she can call me and I'll come get her no matter what. I guess I just need to review with her some safety guidelines about riding with other teens.

[tigereye]

7. kid isn't old enough yet - it's interesting how much more paranoid folks are

now in general about this - than when I was a teen.


I can't tell you how many people we used to cram into my parent's crappy station wagons - and we were always fine. I was a very conscientious driver, and there were no cell phones and fewer distractions back then, I guess.

[fed_up_mother]

8. Well, I grew up driving in a small town, but my own kids are driving in a major city

UGH

They're pretty limited where they can go the first couple of years, but the traffic is still horrible, regardless.

[tigereye]

9. yeah, it's scary in the city, in a way

although kids in the country, where I'm from, tended to drive too fast on those back roads :scared:


a lot of my friends teens here just outside the city didn't drive until they were almost 18 or in college...

[LeftyMom]

10. I know we broke all the new rules, some of which are codified in law.

We'd go out late (we'd pile a bunch of kids into a shitty economy car and go do the midnight showing of Rocky Horror, usually) we'd have a full car-load.

Nothing EVER happened.

The only rule my parents ever had about riding in other teenagers cars was that my boyfriend had better get new tires on his POS before he picked me up again. That thing was a deathtrap, they weren't being uptight.