Is Your Teen Really Ready to Drive? 4 Considerations

 

When your youngster is a teenager and wants to drive, it's important that they understand an important concept.  While driving may be a teen's rite of passage, it shouldn't be considered a right, but rather a privilege, which must be earned.  As a parent, what you want to ask yourself is, at their current stage of development, is your teen ready to take on the responsibility involved with driving.

While age is a primary factor in determining who can drive, it's by no means the only factor.  It doesn't matter if your son or daughter is old enough to drive legally if they're not mature enough and responsible enough to handle what's required to drive a large motorized vehicle capable of causing death and destruction in the wrong hands.

Teen years can be a very challenging time in many ways, including:

• Learning to deal with emotional stress
• Academic stress
• Peer pressure
• Problems with parents

Some teens may be capable of handling the responsibility of driving at age 15, while others may be lacking in necessary judgement even at age 18 and beyond.  As the parent, this is on you to determine, keeping in mind that one of your prime duties is to keep your child safe from harm.

North Carolina Teen Drivers

The State of NC has one of the safest and most comprehensive licensing systems for teen drivers of any state.  It's a three-level graduated system that allows teens aged 15 to get a learner's permit after fulfilling several requirements.  See those requirements here.  Then the teen works his or her way up toward receiving a full provisional license.

Considerations to Help Determine Your Teen's Readiness To Drive

1. Does your teen consciously know what's going on around him and act/react accordingly?  Does he have good peripheral vision and the ability to predict the behavior of others?
2. Driving competency must include the ability to be alert and tuned into one's own surroundings; to be a defensive driver, immediately reacting to all situations involving other drivers' behaviors.
3. How well does your teen follow rules and regulations?  Do they respect authority and keep their word?  A teen who defies authority and can't follow rules might not be ready to take on the responsibility of driving.
4. Does your teen have good manners and a good general attitude?

Auto Insurance and Teen Driving Lessons

 

In North Carolina, teen drivers between the ages of 15-17 are required to go through a process called "graduated licensing" before being allowed to receive full driving privileges.  This process has strict requirements for teens as they gain the on-the-road experience needed to drive a vehicle with minimal restrictions and no supervision.

Eligibility requires that a teen driver: 

• Be at least 15 years old
• Has received a Driving Eligibility Certificate
• Has completed a state-approved driver education course

Driving Eligibility Certificate

Students completing their high school requirements will be issued a Driver Eligibility Certificate by their school.  They must be between the ages of 15 and 17 and currently enrolled in school and be making progress toward achieving either a high school diploma or GED.

Driver Education Courses

Teens 14-1/2 years old or older and progressing toward a high school diploma or GED may enroll in an approved driver education course.  These are provided through North Carolina high schools.  

Driver education courses consist of:

• 30 hours of classroom instruction
• An eye test
• Six hours of behind-the-wheel training on the road 

Upon completion, a Driver's Education Certificate is awarded, which is part of the requirement for obtaining a learner permit, step one in the graduated licensing process.  Click here to see descriptions of all three levels of the graduated licensing process.

Driving Lessons

Driving lessons extend throughout the North Carolina teen graduated licensing process.  They start while qualifying for step one, obtaining the Limited Learner Permit, while completing the driver education 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours of behind-the-wheel training.

Driving lessons continue during the 12-month learner permit period and an approved adult driver is required to be in the passenger seat during all drive times.  A minimum amount of 60 hours driving time, certified by a supervising driver, is required before moving onto step two of the process, Limited Provisional License.

Teens driving their parents' vehicle during the 12-month learner permit period are automatically covered under their parents' auto insurance.  Once the Limited Provisional License is obtained, the teen driver must be added to the parents' auto insurance or a separate policy taken out.  Offspring of insured drivers may stay on the parents' auto insurance policy as long as they reside in the same home or are away at school.  This is often a less expensive option than getting their own policy.  Parents should expect premiums to rise significantly.

Car Insurance: Teen Driver Discounts

 

As the parent of a teenage driver, you're not only becoming aware of how quickly your son or daughter is growing up to be an adult but also seeing the looming cost involved with teen driver insurance.  Fortunately, help is available.  Read on to learn about teen driver discounts and other ways to save money when insuring your teen driver.

Why Teens Are So Expensive to Insure

The reason teen drivers are more expensive to insure than drivers 25 years and older is because they represent a higher claims risk to insurers.  This may be due to:

• Their inexperience
• Their likelihood to speed, drive after drinking and not use seatbelts, causing them to have more accidents and submit more claims

Money-Saving Teen Driver Insurance Tips

Consider these teen driver insurance tips:

• As with the purchase of any insurance, experts agree that the number one rule before buying is to shop around.  Best advice is to obtain at least three price quotes from different providers.  The easiest way to do this is to utilize the services of a quality insurance broker with access to numerous different insurance companies.  They'll do the legwork and then present you with a number of options for the coverage best suited to your particular needs.  In this case, you'll want quotes from companies that specialize in teen driver's insurance
• While adding a teen driver to your existing car insurance coverage will add significantly to your current coverage costs, it's still less expensive than having your teen obtain their own, separate policy.  Having your teen complete a safe teen driving program or other defensive driving course can help lower the cost of your insurance policy
• Other valuable teen driver discounts offered by many vehicle insurance companies include a good student discount for students maintaining a "B" average (3.0 GPA) or higher at school.  This particular discount can often mean 10-15% off of coverage costs.  Add to this a distant student discount and a low mileage discount

The Advantage of Telematics

Some insurers offer installation of a small telematics device into your teen's car so you can monitor their driving behavior.  Positive results of driving habits may bring a driving insurance discount.  A telematics device can keep track of number of miles driven, speeds driven, times driven and number of hard brake applications.  Knowing they're being monitored in itself may prove to make your teen a safe driver.

How to Be a Better Driver: 11 Tips

 

There are dozens of ways that you can become a better driver - some more important than others - but all designed to help you and others on the road to stay safer.

While getting a driver's license can provide you with a great deal of freedom, it also brings with it a great deal of responsibility.  What starts with getting properly licensed and making sure the vehicle you're driving is properly insured according to the law, continues on to following the legal rules of the road (traffic laws) and observing common courtesy for your fellow drivers and pedestrians.

11 Tips

Here are a handful of tips for becoming a better driver.  They're not in particular order of importance, but each is a piece to the puzzle of becoming a better, safer driver:

1. Start by knowing your vehicle.  Read the owner's manual.  Learn how your car operates in the rain and snow (if you have snow where you drive).  Take your car to a safe place and practice various braking methods.
2. Don't get behind the wheel if you've been drinking or using drugs.  Call a cab or ride-sharing service.
3. Stay calm when driving, even if the guy behind you is honking his horn or yelling at you out his window.  Let him go by and forget about it.
4. Maintain a safe distance between your vehicle and the one in front of you, appropriate for your speed, the weather, time of day and driving conditions.
5. Watch ahead, not just the car in front of you but several cars ahead, so you can prepare for the unexpected.
6. Always obey traffic signs and signals and use your turn indicators when turning or changing lanes on the highway.
7. While it's recommended to drive at or below the posted speed limit, you want to go with the flow at highway speeds, even if it means going slightly faster than the posted limit.
8. Pay attention to the road.  Don't use cell phones or eat/drink while driving.
9. On long trips take a break every 90 minutes or so.  Don't drive when you're tired or sleepy.
10. Always yield to pedestrians.  They have the right of way.
11. Stay out of the blind spots of large trucks.  If you can't see the driver in his side mirror, he can't see you.

These are just some of the tips you can consider for being a better driver.  You can read more here.

Car Insurance Costs: How Much Does Age/Experience Matter?

Of the dozens of different factors used to determine your Greensboro car insurance costs, age/experience is primary. To an insurance company, the age of a driver represents general measures of both driving experience and accident risk.

Insurance company statistics show that, on average, the more years a driver has had behind the wheel, the less likely they are to have an accident and make a claim on their car insurance policy. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), teen drivers (ages 16-19) have crash rates of four times that of drivers 20 years and older. Since insurers believe that young drivers are more likely to have accidents and make claims, teens' insurance rates are going to be more expensive.

What Adds to Higher Teens' Risk

Teen drivers are considered higher risks by insurance companies for a number of reasons. Their immaturity can lead to risky behaviors, such as speeding, and being inexperienced at driving makes them less likely to respond well in hazardous situations. Alcohol also plays a role in many teen crashes. While they may be less likely than adults to drink and drive, their accident rate is higher when they do drink and drive because of their relative inexperience with both driving and drinking.

Age Matters, Both Young and Old

This risk assessment continues on for a certain number of years. Assuming one is licensed at 16 years old, by the age of 25, you'll see your Greensboro car insurance costs drop significantly, to where they're only about one-third of what they were when you were 16-17. They'll continue to drop until you're about age 55, at which point they'll typically be as low as they can go. Drivers in their mid-30's to late 50's represent the lowest driving risk to insurers due to their greater road maturity and driving skills.

Typically, once you enter into your 60's, your insurance rates will again begin to climb. Aging brings with it slower reflexes and reaction times, which pushes seniors into a higher risk category in the eyes of insurers.

Saving on Your Insurance as a Younger Driver

There's nothing you can do to add years of experience to save on insurance premiums but there are some things that can be done to lower your insurance costs. Being added to your parents' policy, if they're willing, may cost half as much as taking out a policy on your own. Also, apply for all discounts available.

How Much Will Adding a Teen Driver Increase My Auto Insurance Rate?

If you're not prepared in advance for the auto insurance rate amounts currently being charged by insurance companies for new teen drivers, you may well be shell-shocked when it comes time for your teen driver to insure his or her vehicle. Teens are some of the most expensive drivers to insure because of the large risk they typically pose to auto insurance companies. Statistically, teen drivers are most likely to be involved in accidents, to cause accidents and to drive in such a way as to get ticketed for moving violations.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, drivers between the ages of 15 and 19 are four times more likely to be involved in an automobile crash than older drivers. This makes vehicle crashes the number one cause of death among individuals within this age group.
The riskiest age for car crashes is 16. Their crash rate is double that of 18 and 19-year-old teens. With risk being a major determining factor in setting auto insurance rate amounts, it's no wonder teen drivers are faced with paying the highest of those rates.

Individual Policy Rates Versus Adding Your Teen to Your Policy

There are numerous ways to lower costs when insuring teen drivers. The first is to add him/her to your policy rather than having them take out an individual policy of their own. The cost difference between these two options is significant. Taking into account all teen drivers between the ages of 15 and 19, and factoring cost differences between a wide variety of different insurers, the average cost of an individual teen driver's insurance policy for a modestly priced vehicle is about $3,000 annually.

This rate includes liability protection of $100K per person per accident (bodily injury), $300K total bodily injury per accident and $100K property damage per accident. Comprehensive and collision protection aren't included in this estimate.

Compare that cost with an average increase of $620 when adding your teen to your auto insurance policy.

Other Ways to Save

Most auto insurers offer numerous discounts when taking out or adding your teen to a policy, however, be advised they aren't likely to be forthcoming with all the discounts they have available. In other words, you have to ask about each and every discount for which you may qualify. These can quickly add up to significant savings. Check out this blog post.

How Much Does Greensboro Car Insurance Cost for Teens?

Unfortunately, for those just starting out driving an automobile here in North Carolina, Greensboro car insurance can cost them more per year than any other risk group, including individuals with bad driving records, reckless driving histories and even a DWI conviction. This doesn't always have to be the case, however, as there are a number of ways that teens can lower their car insurance costs, which we'll discuss here. But first, let's talk about why teen drivers are charged so much by car insurance companies.

It's All About Risk Versus Reward

According to the U.S. CDC , car crashes are the number one cause of death among American teens aged 15-19. This is due primarily to the fact that these young drivers are inexperienced at handling everything that can happen while on the road and not always mature enough to make the split-second decisions sometimes required while controlling a large, cumbersome vehicle.

Insurers are in the business of balancing the risk of underwriting their assessment of the capability of young, inexperienced drivers to drive safely and sanely against the premium dollars they earn when everything goes according to their hopes, which is zero claims. The fact is, because the risk is higher with teens the premium charges must also be higher in order to make ends meet.

What Does it Cost to Insure a NC Teen?

Since teens pay more for car insurance than any other age group, it's especially important to take advantage of every possible discount insurers offer and even to give serious consideration to an insurance company that offers multiple discount options. Here are some typical discounts offered by insurers:

• Safe driver discount for having a clean driving record
• Good student discount for maintain good grades (for those still in school

The most expensive option for a teen driver to get a Greensboro car insurance policy is to have their own policy on a car where they're the principal driver. At age 16, this policy would likely cost more than $8000 per year, which few teens can afford.

Getting put on their parent's insurance plan as a secondary driver is much less expensive, as explained on this NCDOI website. At age 16, with no accidents, their car insurance cost would add less than $1500 per year to their parents’ policy. Consider this "piggyback method" of teen insurance.