Expert Advice on How to Talk to Your Teen about Safer Driving Habits with Kate Carr, President and CEO, Safe Kids Worldwide and MaryAnn Beebe, Safety Engineer, Chevrolet
Car crashes are the leading cause of teen deaths. Each year motor vehicle crashes claim the lives of 8 out of every 100,000 teens, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The third week of October is National Teen Driver Safety Week. This week provides a great opportunity to highlight this national issue and educate parents and teens on teen driver safety so they learn better driving and passenger habits.
In interviews on October 16th, CEO of Safe Kids Worldwide, Kate Carr and Chevrolet Engineering Specialist, MaryAnn Beebe will be able to talk about the top distractions teens experience while driving and the importance of talking to your kids about being safe drivers and passengers. They will also discuss how parents can track their teen’s driving habits, even if they’re not in the car with them.
Kate and MaryAnn’s Take Away Tips:
- Make sure you and your teen are ALWAYS wearing a seatbelt – seatbelts reduce the risk of death for 45 percent of front seat passengers.
- Put the phone down and make it a family rule – no phones while driving for anyone – 39 percent of teens said they have ridden with a teen driver who was texting and 43 percent reported riding with a teen driver who was talking on the phone.
- Talk to teens about ways to speak up if a driver is not driving safely – 4 in 10 teens will not speak up if they feel unsafe with a driver of any age.
- Be a good role model in demonstrating your driving habits because teens model their behavior from their parents
Kate Carr – President and CEO of Safe Kids Worldwide: Kate Carr serves as the president and CEO of Safe Kids Worldwide, a global nonprofit dedicated to protecting children from preventable injuries, the number one killer of kids in the United States. Around the world, a million children die each year from preventable injuries. Millions more are injured in ways that can affect them for a lifetime. Safe Kids works with an extensive network of more than 500 coalitions in the United States and with partners in more than 25 countries around the world to prevent childhood deaths and injuries from car crashes, drownings, fires, poisoning, falls and more. Since 1988, Safe Kids has worked closely with partners to help reduce the U.S. childhood death rate from preventable injury by 60 percent.
Kate has dedicated her career to helping children and families. Prior to joining Safe Kids Worldwide in October 2011, she served as Managing Director of Malaria No More and played a lead role in resource mobilization and expansion of programmatic activities in Africa to give mothers, children and families the tools they need to protect themselves against Malaria.
MaryAnn Beebe – Engineering Specialist, Chevrolet: MaryAnn Beebe joined General Motors in 2003 and has worked in the Global Vehicle Safety organization in a wide variety of roles over the past 12 years. She was appointed to her current position as the lead Safety Engineer for the Teen Driver feature on January 1, 2014. She is responsible for leading GM’s Teen Driver safety strategy. Beebe earned a Bachelor’s of Science and a Master’s of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. She is a mother of two and enjoys doing Crossfit with her husband. Beebe is a native of Royal Oak, Michigan, a Detroit suburb.
This interview is sponsored by Chevrolet.
