The 120 hour Challenge
So, your son or daughter has just turned 16 and have gained their learners licence. Ahead of you is 120 hours of supervised driving.
100 hours in the day, and 20 hours at night. It’s quite a lot of work, just imagine if you had twins or triplets! Let's just leave that one alone as its too scary to even contemplate.
This can take a bit of planning. Initially your teenager might be really keen to drive, and probably nag you a lot to go driving. This in itself can be an issue as you may not be comfortable in taking them out. Maybe at this point hiring a reputable driving instructor could help.
In my experience a few hours of professional tuition can go a long way to get the kids started, especially in a manual car.
Then we often see the kids lose interest. They have school, work, sport and a social life and at 16 they love to sleep a lot!
Some tips to keep them motivated:
- Remind them if they don’t drive regularly, it will take a long time to get their hours up, and when they turn 17 won’t be able to go for their P’s. I see it all the time when they don’t commit to their own training and then regret it later.
- Establish a regular routine of driving
- Once they are competent and you are comfortable in the passenger seat, make sure whenever you are going places together, that they do the driving. Obviously, this has to be done with some flexibility, but the worst thing you can do as the parent is to say, “I’m driving because we are in a hurry”. This might be appropriate if you are going to Sydney on the freeway, but from home to school it makes no difference.
- The best advice I can give is to work out how many hours per week it would take to achieve the 120 hours and aim to do that as a minimum.
- 120 hours in 12 months equates to less than 2.5 hours per week, not a lot when you think about it.
- Don’t forget they you have to do 20 hours of night driving. Where possible get these hours done in the winter months outside of daylight savings. Trying to get 20-night hours done in the summer months is really hard.
Keep working towards that minimum of 2.5 hours per week, and avoid long breaks between drives. I see a big difference in kids who have driven consistently compared to the kids who stop and start all the time.
Remember our main aim here is to develop the safer drivers of the future.
Good luck and have fun
Jamie