It’s easy to brush off the idea of talking about winter driving with your teen. After all, it is a scary topic for a lot of parents. Most of us don’t want to think about our kids getting behind the wheel during a blizzard or dangerous weather. However, if your teen is going to drive during winter months, it’s important to teach them how to drive during winter weather. That means including it in the conversation even if they’re learning to drive during the spring or summer.
Your teen isn’t going to stay home forever
Whether you live in an area that gets a lot of snow, a little snow, or hardly ever falls below the freezing mark, you cannot guarantee that your teenager will not encounter unsafe conditions while driving, even if they do their very best to avoid it. The reality is, almost 30% of collisions happen during icy, snowy or wet road conditions and the crash risk is highest during the first year that a person has their drivers license. If you’re Canadian, you can count on between five and six months of winter each year. All this to say, preparing your teen for driving in winter conditions is of the utmost importance.
Vehicle maintenance is different for winter drivers
If you ask someone who lives in Arizona what they do to maintain their vehicle, you’ll hear quite a different story from someone who lives in the snowy regions of Canada. A thorough winter driving lesson should teach your teenager about winter tires, winter wipers and fluid, ice scrapers, winter emergency kits and timing your oil changes with the change of seasons. Help your family members protect their expensive vehicles and stay safer on the roads by giving them a winter driving lesson that covers each of these important topics.
Think ahead: Give yourself peace of mind that you’ve set them up for success.
Discussing the challenges of winter driving with your teenager while they’re learning to drive can set them up for safer driving in the future. Your teen has a lot of adventures ahead of them, you never know where they’ll end up. If they’re prepared to drive in winter, you’ll have better peace of mind when they must drive to visit you in the future.
How to Find a Lesson Plan with a Winter Driving Section
It may be surprising how few driving lesson plans have a winter driving module. The truth is that many new driver programs teach strategies for driving in mild weather conditions and do not dive into more specific topics like weather conditions. They are built to check boxes, not with practical driving situations in mind. Our team of Canadian driving experts recognizes the importance of teaching useful, practical driving skills that help people become safe drivers for life. That’s why we built the online Teach Your Teen to Drive course that includes a Winter Driving Module. To learn more and purchase the course, click here.
