There will be times when parents need to teach their children some ways to behave. It starts with very young kids when the parents can teach them about sharing and being polite to adults and other children with whom they play.

Parents can also teach their teens how to drive. When they do, they’re preparing the younger generations for responsible road behavior. That should pay off big in the decades to come, and it’s a way for parents and teens to bond as well.

Let’s talk about a few road behaviors parents can teach their teenage children.

Don’t Speed

Speeding causes a ton of accidents. In the state of Florida alone, 341,299 motor vehicle accidents happened in 2020. You can imagine how many of those speeding caused.

As a parent, you can teach your teens to stick to the speed limit. They can find it posted anywhere they drive, but they should get to know what it is on your street or in your neighborhood. In urban areas, you can usually expect a speed limit set at 35, but sometimes it’s more or less than that.

On the highways, parents can show their teens where to find the speed limit and stick to it. 55 is the speed limit on some state highways, or sometimes 65 or even 70 are possible.

Parents can also explain to their teens that they might go five miles over the speed limit, and a cop will usually not pull them over. Any more than that, and they’re inviting a speeding ticket as well as potentially endangering themselves and other drivers.

Don’t Tailgate

Tailgating the car in front of you means riding their bumper. Maybe you do that because you want the vehicle ahead of you to move out of the way or because you feel like they are going too slowly. Perhaps they cut you off in traffic, and you want to express your displeasure.

Parents should teach their teens to stay away from his behavior as well. There is no reason to ever tailgate the car in front of you. If you do that, they might brake check you, which can cause you to slam into their back bumper. That would be your fault since you drove so close behind them.

Parents should explain to the teen drivers in the family that they should go around a slow-moving car on the highway instead of tailgating them. That’s the mature and responsible thing to do.

Avoid Road Rage Incidents

Parents can talk to their kids about avoiding road rage. Road rage incidents can occur if a car cuts off your teen in traffic, if another driver fails to signal, or if another vehicle does anything remotely out of line.

If your teen has anger issues, they might want to yell at another driver if something like this happens. They might want to gesture at them. If they do that, though, that’s asking for trouble.

If you say something to another driver or gesture to them if they make you mad, you never know if they have a knife, a gun, or some other weapon in the car. Showing anger at that moment can trigger an incident where injury or death can occur. Nothing like that should ever happen because of a traffic incident, and parents can make that clear to their kids.

Don’t Drink or Do Drugs and Drive

Families should also talk about drinking and drug use. Parents can tell their kids what they expect from them. That probably includes staying away from drugs and abstaining from alcohol use until they reach the legal age of 21.

If a teen ever experiments, though, it’s far better if they do so and avoid driving. If a teen samples a couple of beers, they might throw up or experience a hangover. That might lead to a parent grounding them or taking some other appropriate action, but at least the teen didn’t get behind the wheel.

Parents need to make clear to their kids how dangerous drugs and alcohol are, not just in general, but in this particular context.