Parents are being set up for failure by the DMV and they don’t even know it.  In California, a teenager under the age of 18 is required to take a driver’s ed & training course offered by a DMV licensed driving school in order to get their driver’s license.  Additionally, the new teen driver is required to complete a minimum of 50 hours of parent-supervised driving practice before taking the driving exam.

The problem is, parents are not trained or equipped to perform this task effectively and in fact, only 17% of parents actually complete the 50 hour requirement before the teen is licensed.  Driving instructors are required to be trained by completing an instructor training course (a farce in which I’ll debunk in a later post) and pass a written test in order to be licensed.  Additionally, licensed instructors are required to have:

1) An instructor’s rear-view mirror
(Parent Driving Instructor Mirror is shown and available at 5StarDriver.com)
         (click on image)

2)  A passenger-side brake

before they can teach new drivers the required 6-hours of behind-the-wheel training.

A driving instructor is “prohibited” from teaching without the training course, instructor’s exam, passenger-side brake, and the instructor’s rear-view mirror.  However, the DMV has no problem requiring the parent to spend 50 hours behind-the-wheel with their teen without any instructor training, instructor brake, or instructor rear-view mirror.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

The DMV has set up parents to fail.  I believe this is one of the major reasons as to why driving is the #1 killer of teenagers and has been for over 70 years.  Another reason is the absolute insanity of a driving exam that only lasts between 6 to 10 minutes.  The DMV seems to be more interested in cost cutting and retaining revenue than the lives of our new teenage drivers otherwise the licensing standards would be much greater.

This is exactly why I created the 5 Star Driver, Beyond Driver’s Ed Video Driver Training Program.  You’ve raised and protected your children from diapers to their teenage years, don’t be blinded by the “false sense of safety” that passing a 6 to 10 minute DMV driving exam is in any sense, an accomplishment that will protect your new teen driver from an accident.  Over eighty percent (80%) of new teen drivers are involved in a reportable accident within the first 3 years after licensing…..a whopping 20% success rate.

Passing a One-Star driving exam only means the driver has met the minimum requirements to be a One-Star driver and the California DMV driving exams are at best, a One-Star exam.  Make sure your new teen driver becomes a 5 Star Driver.

John Cullington