Top Five Tips for Safe Driving: Handling Your Vehicle Responsibly

Gr 9 Up—This instructional piece opens with diverse teens driving different models of cars as the narrator discusses driving's contrasting characteristics of freedom and responsibility. Although this program is only 17 minutes long, it's loaded with information. The helpful tips include: avoiding distractions, advice for driving at night and during bad weather, defensive driving, knowing one's limits, and learning basic vehicle safety guidelines. Each can be accessed as separate chapters. Interviews, which feature a driving instructor and rehabilitation specialist, are informative and break up the narration. Teen traffic accidents from texting, cell phone, alcohol, and drug use are driven home in the interviews. Neurologist Carol Foster explains how the part of the brain we use when driving does not allow for multitasking. Statistics reveal that teens are eight times as likely to be in an accident when texting or talking on cell phones. Traffic officer Brian Jones advises teens to yield in road-rage situations, and to pull off the road to call 911 and remain in your car. Additionally, the Graduated Driving Licensing that many states have adopted is explained in the segment on knowing your limits.