Teenage Drivers

Okay, this thing with teenage drivers is crazy. I have known this for a few years. It's just that I haven't had a new driver for a while. The whole idea of teaching a kid to drive is scary enough. They stop too suddenly, follow too closely, ride the curb or the center line and you just wish you never had to even get in the car until they knew how to drive. If I had a lot of money, it would be worth it to just pay an instructor to do the whole thing. Drivers training classes already cost $275, and they just get 6 drives or so. They expect parents to actually teach the driving part. Ridiculous!

So then you consider the car situation. Accepting the fact that we have had one car catch fire, one car throw a rod, making a large gaping hole in the engine...car dead. One car rear end a truck, one car jump a really big curb, taking out most of the under carriage, one van take speed bumps with such excessive speed that it took out an oil pan, one car get vandalized with deep keying and profane language such that it required an entire new paint job, and one car get backed into in the Safeway parking lot and Walmart...same car. Now granted I did have one experience myself with a yellow deer! However, all the previously mentioned episodes were with our first 3 teenagers. We have 6 to go!

With that said, and 2 new drivers, we thought about the car situation. Now, we could let the new drivers just share one of our current vehicles, but considering the potential for a disabled car, we thought an additional car might be the best option. We could also finance a cheap car for the kid car, but we'd still be making a payment on something that past history says will be damaged. So, we decided that Larry and I would get another newer car for us to drive and be off limits for the kids.

The Suburban, 15 years old, remains the family vehicle and the towing truck. The 10 year old Honda is for the boys to drive and Larry and I got a nice, new, pretty, undamaged Acura. It is still a 5 year old vehicle, but it has no dents or dings. Since our recent purchase, the kid car has sustained bumper damage on one side from some unknown source, and just yesterday, the other bumper got hit. It left scratches, and the force pushed the bumper in a bit. It also broke out the tail light. Just found out tail lights are $65!!!!! The other teenage driver has not yet begun to drive, and he is the one I worry more about.

Now add the cost of insuring these new drivers. It's not pretty considering we have so many drivers on our policy already, and actually we have the discount for safe drivers even considering the car experiences. So with one driver, we jumped up about $30 a month. Not so horrible I guess. But we added the new, nice, more expensive car....oooooops, almost $100 a month more. Even being safe drivers, and telling them the kids would not drive this vehicle, it all gets rated for the fact that a kid may drive it and that increases the chances for a collision....no kidding! I can't wait to be able to add Jordan in September and Rashelle the following spring! I think I need to get another job.