Teen driver safety

PORTSMOUTH, Va - Soon Nick Hinton will leave the parking lot and head out on the open road. "Its pretty exciting, I've been waiting a long time," he said.

Chad Guilfoy waited a long time too, but never got a chance to get behind the wheel. He was in the passenger seat and the victim of a teen crash.

"It's not natural to be burying a child," his mother, Toni Cacace Brashears, told WAVY.com Brashears said it was a clear September morning in 1998, the first day of school.  A 16-year-old friend was driving the car.

"When they took the left turn there was a school bus in the cross road and they had a green light, not an arrow, and Billy pulled out and couldn't see a truck coming," Brashears said.

AAA Driving instructor Georjeane Blumling says most of the time "things that happen to [teens] don't have to do with alcohol. [They] have to due with speed and risk taking." 

Blumling says parents need to be proactive.

A GPS or Garmin can tell you where and how fast your teen is driving, but AAA prefers a Triple T approach: talking, trust and the truth.

You can go online and pull up a driving contract and then talk to your teen about the rules. Once it's signed, trust them. If they don't follow through, you stick to the truth and follow through with your punishment.

"We take their license away for whatever amount of time, which you have the right to do as a parent, then hopefully they won't end up in court in front of a judge, [who] will take it away permanently," said Blumling.

Nick will get his license soon. "Next Tuesday," he beamed. Chad's Mom hopes he's learned there's more to driving then just fundamentals.