Found this great article in the Insurance Journal and wanted to pass it along……..please share it with the ones you love
The bottom line is Parents matter!
Driving safety can be added to the growing list of positive health behaviors associated with parental involvement.
Youths who perceived their parents as involved, including those with orientations involving rules and support (authoritative), rules only (authoritarian), or support only (permissive), generally had more-desirable attitudes and behaviors regarding driving safety than did those with uninvolved parents.
However, adolescents with supportive active parents (rules, monitoring, and support) were most protected.
These results have a clear, actionable message for parents.
To protect teens from crashes, parents should set rules and effectively monitor driving behaviors. On the basis of our results and other health behavior literature, effective monitoring typically is most effective when given in a supportive context. Clinicians and other trusted parenting sources should be conveying this message to parents.
Our findings call for further work to explore how parents can be most effective in fostering safe driving behaviors. Parental support remains a poorly defined concept, and optimal monitoring strategies need to be established as new technologies are created to support this important parental role. Moreover, evidence-based interventions need to continue to be developed to increase awareness and implementation of authoritative parenting behaviors, as well as to help teens become more receptive to parental involvement in their safety.
