15 Tips For Buying The Safest Car For Your Teenager

15 Tips For Buying The Safest Car For Your Teenager

1. Don’t buy any vehicle with an 8 cylinder engine. Most beginning driver’s have no business driving a vehicle that can accelerate quickly.

2. Don’t allow your child to ever allow anyone to sit in the rear seat. When you get more than two children under age 18 in a vehicle, you are asking for problems.

3. Stay away from any vehicle that has oversized tires, roll bars, lift kits and front grill guards. Also, stay away from 4-wheel drive vehicles or any vehicle where the doors can be removed.

4. Stay away from vehicles that have a lot of glass. Here is why. The more glass on a vehicle, the less metal. The less metal, the less structural integrity.

5. Stay away from sports utility vehicles. (note the Subaru Crosstrek and Volvo XC90 are exceptions both vehicles contain every safety feature known to mankind).

6. Make certain that the vehicle has not been involved in a previous accident. Don’t rely on Internet services such as CarFax. Take the vehicle to a body shop and have a qualified technician look for paint overspray and for mismatched paint coloring. Lift the vehicle up in the air and look at the rails to see if they have been straightened, welded  or reinforced. Take the carpet out in the trunk and look at the trunk structure for previous impact damage. If a vehicle has been involved in a previous accident, you have no way to know if the hidden safety features inside your vehicle have worked previously and can’t work again.

7. Buy a vehicle that has as many airbags as possible, but make certain that a qualified mechanic verifies that all the airbag components are working properly.

8. Don’t buy a vehicle that has jump seats that face sideways. These seats can’t protect anyone in the event of an accident.

9. Contact your local Medical Examiner and ask if they can show your child an autopsy of a young person who was drinking and driving and was involved in a motor vehicle accident. Seeing a peer laying on a slab for all the world to see is an awakening for all to see.

10. Enroll your child in a high performance driving course like Team Texas that is at the Texas Motor Speedway. Driving courses teach the basics. Beginning drivers need to know how to get themselves out of driving problems, not make bad situations even worse. My wife and I have taken this course.

11. Don’t allow your child to modify the vehicle in any way once it is purchased. No fancy wheels, no oversized tires, no lift kits, no lowering packages, no inlaid wood steering wheels. This can void the warranty. Also, it may prevent you or your child from pursuing an action against the vehicle manufacturer if any safety system ever fails.

12. Don’t allow oversized speakers or woofers to be placed inside the vehicle or the trunk. In an accident, a flying 15 pound object can become a 500 pound weapon. Also, a speaker or woofer can become a projectile that renders a safety system totally ineffective when it crashes into your head.

13. Make sure that the vehicle is equipped with Bluetooth technology so that a cell phone can be used only with hands-free capability. Most smartphones can be set to read text messages aloud. Texting and driving is deadly.  I have an SUV in my crash lab in which three teenage girls were killed by a driver that was texting.

14. Make your child pay for something on the vehicle such as gas, maintenance, insurance. This way they will learn to appreciate that a vehicle is a valuable possession.

15. Stress to your child that no matter what kind of vehicle they drive, a vehicle is a several thousand pound lethal weapon.

Want to learn more about the most affordable and safest car for teens on the market today? Watch this video.