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This is our last installment for now in honor of last week’s National Teen Driving Safety Week. Here are some final suggestions for helping your teen stay safe behind the wheel of your Nissan cars.

• Restrict anything that distracts them. This includes cell phones, earphones and MP3 players. All of these devices require the person to take their eyes off the road even if it is for a split second. If you find them breaking this rule, consider taking away driving privileges or confiscating their devices.
• Require them to wear their seat belt. This should be a habit they have already learned by watching you over the years. Unfortunately, teen drivers have the lowest rates of seat belt usage of any other driving group.
• Let others know about your rules. Talk to the parents of your teen’s friends so they know your rules, too. This way, they can keep an eye on your teen when they are around to make sure they are following your rules. They might even use some of your rules with their own teen!

Teen drivers have one of the highest rates of traffic accidents. Don’t let your teen be a statistic – do everything you can to keep them safe when they are behind the wheel and you are not around.

As we discussed on here last week, your teen is at just as much risk behind the wheel whether they are driving after school during the week or after midnight on the weekends. That’s why we would like to offer some suggestions to help them stay safe regardless of when they are behind the wheel.

• Set up some clear rules and write them down. This way, you and your teen know exactly what is expected of them and there is no misunderstanding because it is in writing. When your teen follows the rules, gradually increase the amount of driving you let them do. When they break the rules, take away a few liberties until they prove they can follow the rules that you set.
• Be a good example. Teen drivers learn most of their driving habits from watching their parents over the years. Be a responsible driver and your teen will be more likely to do the same thing.
• Don’t allow too many passengers. The risk of getting distracted and getting into an accident is increased when there are too many passengers in the car. During the first few months of driving, your teen should not have any passengers besides a parent. After that, allow them one passenger at a time for several months until they get more experience.

These are just a few suggestions offered by your Nissan dealers to help your teens stay safe behind the wheel. We’ll have just a few more suggestions next week. Don’t miss it!

Do you let your teen drive your Nissan cars to school every day? If so, they could be at a greater risk when they are driving home from school. A new study by AAA shows that there were as many young teen drivers involved in fatal accidents between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. during the week as there were between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Saturday nights. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) backed that up by reporting that about 50 percent of all fatal traffic accidents involving teens occurred between 3 p.m. and midnight.

“While it’s smart for parents to be concerned about their teen driving during [late night hours], they should also be engaged in their teen’s driving activities in the time period right after school,” said Michele Mount, the director of public affairs for AAA New Jersey.

One reason for these findings is because there is a lot more traffic on the roads during the afternoon hours. Commuters are in a hurry to get home during these hours and the increased traffic and hurriedness contributes to more accidents.

With National Teen Driving Safety Week coming up, Your Nissan dealers would like to offer some tips on how to help prepare the teen drivers in your household. Be sure to come back next week for those suggestions!

Do you remember when you were a kid and people talked about cars of the future that would be able to communicate with each other? At the time, it seemed like a futuristic fantasy. But many of those things that people just talked about are becoming a reality.

Nissan engineers have been working on a piece of technology that allows cars to “communicate” with each other to avoid collisions. Using the same idea that fish use when they are in a school, the new robotic cars remove the human equation from driving in order to make safer roads and highways.

EPORO, or Episode Zero Robot, is the name given to these robotic cars. The name refers to the ability to produce absolutely zero emissions while also avoiding accidents. While it’s just a concept right now, the technology to produce the actual collision-avoiding vehicles is right around the corner. And we have fish to thank for the idea.

“We, in a motorized world, have a lot to learn from the behavior of a school of fish in terms of each fish’s degree of freedom and safety within in a school and high migration efficiency of a school itself,” explained Toshiyuki Andou, Manager of Nissan’s Mobility Laboratory and the principal engineer of this project.

Until these robotic cars are available, visit a Nissan dealer near you for a car with the latest and most innovative safety features in the industry. You owe it to yourself and your family.