If you’re thinking about buying your teen their first car, or they’ve asked you for some suggestions on how to narrow down their selection, what is best to recommend?
In this article, we provide a few car features that we feel are useful and often very important for a teen driver with limited experience on the road.
Blind Spot Monitoring
All cars have blind spots unfortunately, and this is something young drivers will be very much aware of, having been constantly reminded about them in their Driver’s Ed class. However, when they finally pass their test and feel the freedom of getting out into the open road, it can be easy to forget to check. Thankfully, there are now cars that include blind spot monitoring as standard, which means a warning light will show on the wing mirror when you signal to change lanes and a car is about to pass you. Using this type of tool allows your teen to be less anxious when driving, which means they can focus properly.
Fuel Efficiency
The fuel efficiency of a vehicle affects how much it costs to drive around campus if they’re still in college or when getting to and from their job.
Many teens are environmentally conscious too, so if the vehicle isn’t a hybrid or an electric car, then at least prioritize better fuel efficiency to use less fossil fuels for the same mileage. That’s still better for the environment but it also is less expensive too.
Auto Loans and the Buying Decision
The cost of motoring gets far more expensive when starting out in new automobiles and believing that’s the only way. This gets exacerbated when taking out an auto loan that increases the cost of the vehicle purchase. It’s very easy to get trapped in a cycle of repeatedly using pricey auto loans to afford better cars or SUVs, instead of saving up for the replacement cost while owning the existing vehicle.
Discuss this with your teen. Help them to understand that buying a second-hand vehicle or saving up to buy a new car with cash is preferable over purchasing a more expensive vehicle on credit. This discussion then factors into what car they should get this time around, the features available, and those to accept won’t be included.
Interior Lights and Exterior Headlights
Older vehicles have headlamps that aren’t as modern as the latest vehicles with super bright LED headlights. It’s clear that for teen drivers who need to see everything on the road, great illumination at night is useful for their confidence. This avoids them subsequently deciding to avoid night driving which sadly can be the result.
On the interior, some teens tend to be messy and disorganized, especially inside their cars! So, it helps to have bright interior lighting, so they can turn it on to hunt around for what they’ve temporarily lost. It can be a real lifesaver.
Vehicle to Match Their Driving Experience
When your teen has only ever driven a smaller vehicle, advise them to purchase something that’s a similar size. This avoids being a fish out of water trying to handle a much larger automobile on the road.
It’s also useful with parking maneuvers too, because trying to get a bigger vehicle into a smaller parking spot is far more difficult. Make life easier; don’t get something oversized.
There are different things to consider when thinking about a teen and their car. They’re not always obvious because older, more experienced drivers have moved past these types of issues, but we’ve all got to start somewhere.
