A mother’s mission to help teen drivers

Mom in the back seat
Many parents across the country are finding new ways to monitor and keep track of their kids once they hand over the keys. In Florida, Dena Hurst gave her daughter a bumper sticker from ReportMyTeen.Com that posts a phone number to call when her daughter Stephanie drives badly.  After a few calls to her mom to report speeding to school, Stephanie admits she's a better driver because of the sticker. "It's like always having her mom in the back seat," Dena Hurst said.

Other companies offer high-tech solutions such as GPS tracking devices that fit in cell phones. They can send real-time information like speed and the location of a car back to a home computer.  Made by TeenArriveAlive.com, one such device can also store several days of travel information for parents to review.

Want to monitor your teens without their knowledge? Alltrack U.S.A. makes a black box recorder that slips under the dash. Like the GPS, it can send real-time information back to a home computer or store the data for later. 

"We find that half the parents tell their teens about it and half don't," said Mark Allbaugh, the company founder. The device also lets you wire into a light on the dash that, for example, comes on when the driver exceeds a certain speed.

Some of the teenagers we talked to hated the idea of their parents’ "spying" on them. But beyond that, a number of safety experts fear the bumper stickers and high-tech monitors can lull parents into a false sense of security, or worse. "If one believes that the technology is going to keep your teen safe, you may be over-reliant on the technology," says Darbelnet of AAA. "Parents,” he added, should be more "sufficiently focused on affecting the behavior of your teen when they're learning to drive.”

Best advice? More parental involvement
So what's the best way to keep kids safe behind the wheel? Driver safety experts say firm rules, like no cell phones, limited numbers of teen passengers, buckling up every time. Teenagers, we're told, use seat belts less than most drivers. 

"What I've found is that it truly is a skill issue, it’s an issue that they've just not had enough training,” added Thompson, Ashley’s mother.

So where do they get that training after driver's ed class is through? "I'd like to see mandatory parental involvement," suggested Thompson. "Where parents have to come to a class themselves to hear about this issue and how they can best help their children be safe drivers."

That’s from a mother trying to raise awareness and honor the memory of a lost child. A story she shares, hoping other parents out there with teenagers on the road won't have to endure the same ordeal.

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