Weekend not only dangerous time for teens to drive

Most parents are concerned about their teenagers driving around Friday and Saturday night, and well they should be.

Between 2002 and 2005, 1,237 16- and 17-year-old drivers were involved in fatal crashes over the weekend periods, between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., according to AAA Nebraska.

But don't rest easy just because you enforce a strict weekend curfew with your teen driver.

Over the same years, 1,100 new teen drivers were involved in fatal crashes between 3 and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Of those, 11 were Nebraskans involved in fatal crashes on weekday afternoons, compared to 10 on Friday and Saturday nights.

The statistics might not be as simple as they seem. There are probably a lot more young teen drivers out after school, on their way home or to work, than there are at midnight on Saturday, so the weekend figures may be proportionally higher than the busy after-school driving period.

But many teens do dangerous things behind the wheel in the unstructured time between school and the time their parents get home from work.

The after-school hours are dangerous, too, because rush-hour traffic leaves little room for error by newly-minted drivers.

Lawmakers have done what they can, with Nebraska and 43 other states using graduated drivers' licensing systems that limit night driving for new teen drivers.

Nebraska doesn't limit the number of teen passengers, but 35 other states do.

That's where parents can come in, suggests AAA Nebraska.

The organization makes the following suggestions:

* Set very clear driving rules with your teens. Following the rules leads to a teen gradually increasing the driving he may do. Breaking the rules leads to fewer liberties. Parents can find a parent-teen driver agreement at http://www.aaa.com/publicaffairs.

* Prohibit your new teen driver from carrying any passengers during at least the first three months of driving, and no more than one passenger for the rest of the first year of independent driving. Crash rates increase drastically for young drivers as soon as passengers are added.

* Do not permit your teen to ride with a new teen driver. While carpooling may seem sensible, it can promote risky behavior.

* Ban the cell phone -- handheld and hands-free. Text messaging is especially dangerous for teens.

* Require your teen to wear a seat belt every time he or she rides in a car. Teens have the lowest belt use rate of any age group, which is tragic, because they also have the highest crash rates.

* Let other adults in your teen's life know about your rules. A parent-to-parent agreement with the parents of your teen driver's friends or teammates can make rules easier to enforce.