AAA: Teen drivers need more practice

Study shows that teens who may not react well to a difficult driving situation do better when a parent is in the car.

A recent AAA study found that teen drivers do not practice enough for driving in difficult situations. Using in-vehicle cameras, researchers recorded teens — and their parents — as the teens were learning how to drive.

Rick Remington, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said the videos show new drivers can react well to bad situations when they have a parent in the car.

“What these videos in this study have done is help give us insight into that whole interaction between parents and their teen drivers. Just how well they’re learning as they move towards getting their full license,” he said. “And what we learned is that nearly half of parents were concerned that their teen driver was not fully ready to drive by the time they got their license.”

Twenty percent of parents surveyed said they didn’t think their family’s newly minted driver was ready to drive in the rain alone.