So it’s time for your teen to hit the road? For many parents and teens, this can be a stressful, scary endeavor, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few quick tips to help make getting started a bit easier and highlight the best way to teach teens to drive.
Remember, You’ve Been Driving for 30 Years
As experienced drivers, we tend to take driving for granted and forget that it is a complex, multi-dimensional skill that our new drivers are trying to develop. Keeping that thought in mind as you work with your teen will help you both manage expectations and stay calm while practicing.
Form = Function
Most drivers don’t realize the importance of proper form and the impact that it can have on driving performance. Ensuring your teen is positioned properly makes the physical act of driving easier and reduces cognitive load on the driver, which is crucial for skill development and ultimately safety.
Seating Position
Most people sit too far back and end up having to “reach” for the steering wheel during larger turning movements. To check for proper position, have the driver hold the wheel (left hand at 9 o’clock and right hand at 3 o’clock) and turn it through 180 degrees of rotation in both directions. While moving through this range, the driver’s back and shoulders should stay flush against the seat. If their back or shoulders come off the seat at any point, they are too far from the wheel. Either move the seat forward, reduce the recline of the seat back, or both.
Hands
It’s 9 and 3, not 10 and 2! Despite what you might have been taught back in the day, 9 and 3 gives us more control over a greater range of motion before we need to go hand over hand. One of the biggest challenges for new drivers (and many experienced drivers too) is moving their hands around the wheel too much, which increases cognitive load (i.e., they have to think too much) that can lead to safety issues. With that in mind, try to focus on keeping the hands calm and at least one hand anchored at 9 or 3 throughout the range of steering while driving.
Feet and Legs
Make sure they only drive with one foot and pivot between the gas and brake. It’s important that they move between the gas and the brake without lifting their foot off the floor. When they lift the foot, it introduces the large muscles in the thigh, and big muscles = big movements, which is the opposite of the small, precise pedal action we’re looking for by utilizing the ankle and foot.
Eyes
If there is one thing to remember, it is this: because our hands and eyes work together, the car will go where the eyes go. There’s a huge difference between “looking where you are going” and “looking where you want to go”. Many accidents happen because we look at what we don’t want to hit, and the hands take us there. Drivers should be looking where they want to go and the hands will work to get them there.
Now that we’ve gotten our new driver into the right position, we’re ready to get started building the basic skills of driving.
Where Should I Start? The Basics.
As a first step, you’ll want to find a big, empty parking lot to run through the following drills. If you have some cones, or a plastic trash can, bring those along.
- Stationary Drills: With the car in Park and the engine running, work through the controls: pivoting between pedals and steering wheel range of motion (turning lock-to-lock – practice hand-over-hand).
- Low Speed Motion: Creeping (car in gear, foot off the brake but no added accelerator pedal), gentle acceleration and braking in a straight line, stopping on target, and turning around objects (use your cones or trash can to drive in circles and do U-turns around them). Be sure to maintain proper form and check for turning of the head to move the eyes as needed.
Given the complexities of driving, the key is to start small and work each new skill until it’s boring for both you and your driver. In this case, “boring” means that the skill is nearly automatic and can be executed without the driver having to think about it. Because this process is so learning-intensive, we recommend keeping your sessions to 1 hour or less to avoid fatigue and minimize the chances of a bad experience behind the wheel as a result. Note that it may take multiple hours of practice to finish these basics, so don’t rush. Make sure it’s really boring before moving on.
What’s Next?
Once your driver has proven their consistency in the above basic drills (aka it’s boring), we’re ready to move forward with some larger-scale activities. These will be low to moderate speed activities in the parking lot (10-30 mph max).
Create figure 8 and slalom (winding) routes and have them drive them in both directions on repeat. Be sure to use the Figure 8 to work on practicing speed adjustment into and out of corners. For the slalom, make sure to stagger the distance between the cones rather than using a consistent distance. The varied distance will force your driver to move their eyes and calculate the appropriate trajectory through the slalom.
Want a Head Start?
Greenlight Simulation will get your new driver started by teaching them these basics and more with their state-of-the-art simulator-based technology. Our training packages were designed by driving experts who have trained professional race car and special ops drivers around the world. The best way to teach teens to drive is to ensure they get the foundational skills in a safe, controlled environment. No matter what route you take, this is an exciting milestone that will give you both more freedom, and we wish you luck!
