My name is Dale Wisely and I am the author of this website. I am a clinical psychologist who practiced child and adolescent psychology for many years. I now head the Student Services department at Mountain Brook Schools in Alabama. I want to thank the Mountain Brook Board of Education for their support of this project.
The purpose of this website is to convince parents of the need to take teenage driving seriously, to take a firm position on it as a parent, and to develop a written driving agreement (driving contract) between parent and teen.
In addition, we have a model parent-teen contract covering RIDING with friends who are licensed. For more on this, see this page.
I think it is important to be sensible about this issue. I think that the issue can and should be handled in a way that respects the teenager. I do believe we often demonize teenagers and treat them unfairly. For a little more discussion about this, see this page.
More about this after we study the facts.
Note: I suggest that you go through the main content of this website in sequence. To the left you'll see some links to the main pages, "Getting Started"--the one you're on now--through "The Contract." Or just follow the "Next" links at the bottom of each page.