Driving son
21My son is 16 and driving with his permit. Every time we get in the car it goes like this:
Him: “Seatbelts everybody!”
Me: “Please let this be a normal field trip”
Him: “With the Friz? No way!”
He has been driving this whole time I have been posting. It’s time for me to start paying attention to what he is doing. We already missed one turn.
- 10 comments, 51 replies
- Comment
Seatbelts is a great idea.
Also teach him to :
Change a tire/spare
Top off coolant
Check oil
Pump gas
Top of windshield wiper fluid
Wash the car
@CaptAmehrican if he needs practice with all that stuff he is welcome to practice on my car. lol
@CaptAmehrican
Great suggestions that I am definitely going to use. Except for washing the car. I don’t care about that. It’s my opinion that God waters my grass and washes my car for me.
@tinamarie1974
Do you live in the greater OKC area?
@jst1ofknd no, STL. Might be a bit of a drive to get here
@CaptAmehrican hell, i was pumping my mom’s gas at like 6… if you buy the kid a car, get a manual trans.
they’re basically theft proof, and generally, folks who drive stick are better drivers.(have to pay more attention)
@CaptAmehrican Coolant? Oil? Gas? How do you know he’s not a Tesla guy?
@CaptAmehrican @earlyre
He’ll be driving either my car or my truck. Not going to buy him a car. They’re both automatic.
@CaptAmehrican @Rakaim
I would love to have an all electric vehicle. I’m just to cheap to actually buy one.
@CaptAmehrican Definitely the spare tire. Here’s why. It’s apparently not taught in class anymore. When I took driving class 30ish years ago, it was part of the curriculum. It was for my parents too. Apparently not anymore.
The first flat one my kids got, I found out about a few hours later. They called a mechanic friend, who gave them some of the worst advice that I asked what shop he worked at so I could never go there. They also didn’t realize (my kid AND the friends they were with) that there was a tire and jack in the car. So they bought a new jack, lug wrench, and were trying to figure out where to get a tire, when I got the call.
I never imagined that this super-basic skill was no longer taught. I mean, it WILL happen. You will get a flat and need to change your tire. Anyone can do it. You’ll also need to jump your battery at some point. And youtube is not the teacher for this.
@CaptAmehrican @Ozzie2191 A lot of cars are starting to ditch spare tires to save weight
@Bretterson @CaptAmehrican @Ozzie2191 yep, and that can of sealant/inflatant is CRAP!
@Ozzie2191
Yes how to jump a car is a good skill. Oh and make sure they have jumper cables and a safety cone in the trunk.
My cousin had been lucky and made it to 21 no flats. We are both driving back from our grandmas birthday party and she gets a flat. Calls her dad who is 2 hours away he starts driving to get her. Thankfully i see her on the side of the road. I change the flat and teach her how to do so in the process. I was 19. As we finish up her dad calls back and says he is still and hour away she had not even called to tell him he didn’t need to come
@CaptAmehrican @Ozzie2191
I used to change my own flats. But now I often can’t loosen the nuts, as they are mostly tightened using power tools
If you have a kid driving, it might be worthwhile to add roadside service to your insurance policy. My insurance co now sends someone to change my flats.
@CaptAmehrican @f00l @Ozzie2191 if they are tightening out nuts with power tools you need to be taking your car somewhere else. That is completely wrong.
@CaptAmehrican @Ozzie2191 @unksol
Discount Tire. Whatever they do there. I usually don’t watch them.
@CaptAmehrican @f00l @Ozzie2191 @unksol Where do you go that doesn’t use an impact wrench to tighten lug nuts?
@f00l @Limewater @Ozzie2191 @unksol
I make them back off the pressure until it is something i can undo with a wrench
Don’t forget to teach him how to wash and fold laundry. Bonus points for putting it up correctly. Very important!
@therealjrn And how to clean other things around the house, mend small rips in clothing… basic life skills.
@Kidsandliz You say that like the kid is never going to get married.
@therealjrn
you say that like the kid should expect the wife to do all those things.
@Kidsandliz @therealjrn
… And divorced. If he’s not up to doing housework.
Once my son got his learner’s permit I basically quit driving. In AL at the time you could get it at 15 1/2 and could drive as long as there was a licensed driver in the car. Since my son was taking classes at the local (OK, not too local) community college about 35 miles away he drove himself to class and back each day with me in the car. We had a Geo Metro convertible at the time, and it was a fun car to drive. After the first dozen trips or so I would frequently sleep during the drive since he had early classes and I worked til about midnight. Hey, I had a license and I was in the car… what do you want from me?
By the time he got his ‘real’ license he had logged a few thousand miles and I was confident in his driving so never thought twice about letting him go places (like the time my wife and I let him drive his younger cousin 4 hours to the beach in Pensacola for a 3 day camping trip when he was not quite 17 and his cousin about 14…my sister never got over that one…).
He learned the basics of jump starts, tire changes, oil changes etc. doing those things with me before he even got his learner’s permit. He’s still a pretty good driver though now he is moving to Boston so is getting rid of his car. Figures he can use public transit for most things and rent a car for the few out of town trips he will make. Makes his life a lot more stress-free not worrying about parking spots, insurance etc. etc.
TL:DR Let the kid drive whenever you can…
@chienfou I miss my Geo metro convertible. That car had the first engine I helped rebuild.
@mikibell I remember when I first looked under the hood of mine… “Hey… WTF… there’s a spark plug wire missing!! Oh, wait… my bad… it’s a three cylinder !??!!”
@chienfou
Boston driving is from another world. The usual experience seems to be that “traffic controls and common civility are for losers”, there. Think “constant Jeopardy and total insanity”.
@chienfou @mikibell Hey, when all three cylinders kick in, this baby really moves.
@f00l I learned to drive in Boston… splains my husband’s gray hair!!
@chienfou @mike808 It was AMAZING when that third cylinder kicked it. The car ran on 2, but omg, on three… wow, could actually feel the wind in my hair
Had the hardest time closing the roof on that car… needed three hands to do it. Was glad I had a garage!
@f00l seriously!! I worked on a boat (‘tall ship’ schooner) near where the “old ironsides” is docked and had my car with me. It was easier to take the tender across the water (and faster) than it was to drive my car anywhere. I finally parked it elsewhere and didn’t use it for the summer. The highways and roads were also basically parking lots with no rules during rush hour.
@Kidsandliz
When I visited friends in Cambridge and Boston I did ok. But it was wild. Just “take any chance”. If you don’t, someone else will do it, and will cut you off or hit you during the process.
Otoh perhaps I did ok in Boston because my vehicles demanded RESPECT.
One was a Pinto ExplodeMobile. So maybe they were afraid to hit me.
The other was some kinda Datsun that all of us (siblings) had driven through HS and college. By the time I and Esteemed Younger Brother took this car to the NE states, every body panel was a diff color from all the other panels.
We got honked at, but not challenged.
/giphy crazy car
@f00l The “he who makes eye contact first has the right of way” unofficial rule was disconcerting at first too. Actually Cambodia operated that way too, including pedestrian vs car/moped, elephant, bike, rickshaw, etc. except there it was chaos in slow motion (a horn and not a seat belt was your best safety device) and Boston has a few more things going on that make it more dangerous in that respect.
@f00l @Kidsandliz He lives near the airport and next to a subway stop so it’s all good from there. If he needs a car, they are easy to get from the airport, a 4 minute Uber ride from his house.
Yesterday was the first day he drove my truck. We had to take it because we had a load for the city cardboard recycling.
Let’s just say that him driving the truck was a lot scarier than him driving my little car.
I’ve often told him if he was loosing meaningless points. Yesterday I’m sure that I lost HP during those drives and I’ll probably die sooner because of them. Not by much, maybe a few minutes…
Unfortunately, the way I see things, this means he needs to drive the truck more often instead of less often. Not looking forward to that. Also not looking forward to the highway…
Ugh.
@jst1ofknd
Time behind the wheel NOW (before he develops the bad habits you can nip in the bud) will pay off greatly in the future! As I mentioned above, from the time either of our kids had a permit we pretty much had them drive EVERY time we went anywhere. Vehicles included a 12 passenger van that we used for hauling t-shirts to conventions held in major cities across the US. They ‘graduated’ to that vehicle as they gained confidence with the Metro and the Datsun pickup we had (manual tranny). Thankfully both of them took the lessons to heart and are good drivers now.
Of course, cell phones were a “Jetson’s” kind of thing at that time, so we didn’t have that battle (but on the bright side they both are good with maps since they were the navigators long before they were the drivers).
@chienfou @jst1ofknd Mine learned on the ghetto van (ancient grand caravan, only vehicle we had). Fortunately for me she had a good sense of size (she was very good in sports which I think helped). We initially spent a fair bit of time in the shopping center parking lot prior to opening and on backwater side streets.
@jst1ofknd @Kidsandliz yeah, we did the same progression. Parking lot (church lot during the week, bigbox store on the weekend) , backstreets/rural roads/suburbs/highways/big cities. I took them to the local boat landing for the ‘final’ exam for their stick training since there was a slope there (besides the actual boat ramp… I didn’t want to fish the car out of the lake). Lots of start and stops on the hill without worrying about traffic.
@chienfou In an EMPTY parking lot mine managed to back into a light pole. Of course she was only going about 3 or 4 mph and the small dent in the fender was irrelevant as the thing had peeling paint on the roof, faded paint everywhere (the light blue of the van matched the gray rustolium metal primer that I’d put on the roof), a slash in the side (disgruntled student went down a row of faculty cars and slashed holes in them some some sharp object) that I filled with bathroom shower and tub silicone sealant (kept it from rusting quite nicely thank you) and assorted small dings from car doors, shopping carts, etc.
And yes a boat ramp has its own negative feed back for screwing up. It can land even experienced drivers in the water. I saw that several times a month where I used to sail my small sailboat on a small inlet near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
You are braver than I… I haven’t the courage to go out on the road with my 16 yo. Parking lot driving with her scares me. She got her permit, now she has no desire to take the lessons or actually get a license! (She must take lessons before she is allowed to drive my car for real!) Stupid of me to have the only automatic transmission vehicle in the family!!
If you have a Tire Rack Street Survival Course available near you, have your son take it when he gets his license. It is the best one day driving experience for teens (and you). I highly recommend it. www.streetsurvival.org
@readnj
Wow. Nothing near us, but I see there’s a link to request them to come. It really looks worth it just the few minutes I was on the page.
@jst1ofknd If you haven’t done so check or the video at the bottom of the site. It really gives you the flavor of the day. I can’t say enough good things about this and I’m not connected to then in any way other than as an attendee.
/youtube magic schoolbus vines
@medz I want to star this, I like the concept, but man-o-man is that video annoying.
@medz @jst1ofknd With all the talk about “seatbelts are a good idea” and “teach him how to change a flat and check the oil”, I was beginning to think that everyone was oblivious to the Magic School Bus reference.
If your kid has a tendency to argue make this rule: you will do what I tell you first and argue with me second if you want to keep driving today. My kid wouldn’t move over a lane (when I told her to) as we were passing an on ramp and ran an 18 wheeler onto the shoulder when it ran out of on ramp. I made that rule immediately there after. Wish I had thought to make it from the start.
Shoot… my granddaughter is driving now. That makes me more nervous than when mine learned to drive.
@lseeber It just never ends, does it.
@macromeh Nope. Just wait til they’re jumping into little hovercraft and into the wild blue yonder!
@lseeber @macromeh
/giphy incivil aviation
I am dreading the thought of this day even coming.
@mfladd yeah, my dad went grey when he tought my sisters. It was pretty traumatic lol
@mfladd *taught. It has been a long day lol
@mfladd @tinamarie1974 It really wasn’t as bad as all that. This is your chance to make at least ONE good driver to share the road with.
Driver’s ed, when I was in school, was pretty much a given. But I don’t see many cars out on the street locally (small town) with the ubiquitous “student driver” panels on them, so not even sure if they offer it locally any more…
@chienfou Actually living in a bigger town I haven’t seen those placards either. In years. At times those needed to read “Student Bumper Car Driver. Come closer than 500 feet at your own risk.” LOL. I needed one that said that when I was trying to teach a fellow grad student in her 30’s from Denmark how to drive. Apparently in Denmark it is really hard to get a driver’s license so many go abroad to get one and then transfer that back home. Not so sure she ever got a license as she had absolutely no sense of where she or the car was compared to anything around her. We never even left the empty mall parking lot to even get to trying to drive on streets she was that uncoordinated driving and that much of a menace.
@Kidsandliz Yeah, getting a license in Europe is much tougher. I had a cousin from France that came to visit when he was 15 1/2 so we got him an AL learner’s permit and taught him to drive. After doing some initial road training in our cars one of the next things he got to drive was a 24ft RV out in the middle of nowhere in TX on a road trip. He drove it about 5 miles, never saw another car, and then we swapped him back out from behind the wheel.
When he got back to France all the rest of his rugby team couldn’t believe he already had a license…
@chienfou @mfladd I think it depends on the kid though. My sister was terrified and didn’t want to listen, making it an extra painful process. Dad really did go from a full head of dark hair to VERY salt and pepper grey. In the end he paid a driving school to teach her…took about two years start to finish.
@mfladd @tinamarie1974 being terrified qualifies as a good reason to put off learning to drive. I have anephew that didn’t learn until after he was 18 due not feeling like he was ready/being scared…
@chienfou @mfladd @tinamarie1974
We used a driving school. We see them all the time driving in our neighborhood, so it was really a no-brainer on who to use.
Plus side 1) He didn’t have to take the written test because he passed the school
@jst1ofknd @mfladd @tinamarie1974 back in the day it was an elective in HS and we even had simulators (very early 70’s) that we got to use. I think there was a fee, but it was nowhere near what the local private driving schools charged, and there was an insurance discount if you could prove you took the course.
Getting to avoid a trip to the DMV is always a great bonus: