Allstate Foundation Drive It Home Show

On Tuesday, we attended the Allstate Foundation Drive It Home event in East Islip, NY. This event is intended to help you keep your teen driver safe. Research from The Allstate Foundation shows nearly half of parents express regret about not monitoring their teen driver after they get a license, and more than two-thirds wish they spent more time practicing driving with their teen in high-risk situations. To educate parents on driving risks, the Allstate Foundation is helping NSC launch Drive It Home, a new program offering specially created resources to help parents keep their teens safer on the road, especially after a teen gets a driver’s license. Designed by parents for parents, the unique program includes an interactive website – driveithome.org – featuring engaging videos, practice tips and other valuable resources. It included a skit by the Second City Communications comedy troupe and speeches by local Allstate agents, John Ulczycki from the National Safety Council and a woman who lost her teenage daughter in a car accident.
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Allstate Drive It Home event

The evening started off on a fun note with a skit from Second City Communications. The skit included a mother and teenaged daughter on a talk show discussing the teeanger's driving. The funniest part of the skit was what the talk show host called the "Biscuit Show" where the mother and daughter were pretending to drive while the host made comments. The skit helped to illustrate that teenagers have been learning how to drive from their parents since they were very young - watching their parents on their cell phones, speeding, yelling at other drivers, etc.It was a good way to show parents that they need to communicate with their teens and give them some ground rules for driving. Research shows that inexperience is the No. 1 cause of teen crashes, but in New York, only 18 percent of parents say a teen's lack of driving experience is the top cause of crashes. Despite the fact that nine in 10 parents say it's very important for teens to learn to manage night driving and driving with passengers, nearly 31 percent of parents in New York are not setting rules around some of the most dangerous behaviors including nighttime driving and passengers in the car.

John Ulczycki spoke of the statistics about teem driving and gave parents ways to help their teenagers drive more safely. Just driving with a new licensed teen 30 minutes a week can be very helpful. Parents can also practice specific skills together and provide teens with feedback in the following critical areas: 

• Scanning the road ahead to recognize and respond to hazards. 
• Controlling speed, stopping, turning and following distance. 
• Judging the gap between vehicles in traffic – such as when exiting parking lots and making left-hand turns.
• Managing the highest driving risks, such as nighttime driving and with young passengers in the car.

The evening was fun and informative. Second City set the tone while John and the other speakers gave out valuable information.  There are 5 more dates, so please check it out if you have a teen driver. Also at driveithome.org, parents can sign up to receive weekly driving practice tips and suggestions via e-mail, and print, discuss and sign a Parent-Teen Driving Agreement.

While I did not take any pictures of the show itself, (since I would have had to use flash while the theater was dark) I did take this picture of my kiddo sitting the seat all by himself. This was before he fell down into the crack where the seat part folds out. Yup, that's my kid!!

He never sits still!!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.