Before the Wheel

I know exactly how you feel. Back in 2008, I was in your position: a parent with a newly licensed teen driver, uncertain about how to guide them toward safe driving in those critical first years and help them build lifelong safe habits. Positive, proactive, merit-based tools for parents to coach their teens simply weren’t easy to find. So I reached out to the National Safety Council and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and threw myself into research—attending meetings, listening to presentations, and talking at length with parents, driving instructors, teens, police officers, and district attorneys. That work led to Before The Wheel™, a coaching program designed to put parents and teens on the same team. On April 1, 2009, it became the first positive-messaging program for teen driver safety, launched online and introduced at the Waukesha County Technical College Small Business Expo. I’d love to hear your thoughts on our newest resource, *Teen Driver: Newly Licensed First Year Program; Licensed To Drive at 65 Miles Per Hour: Now What?*, as well as all our materials created to help put your teen safely in the driver’s seat.