Guides · Driving

Teen drivers: getting through the first year

About 5 minutes to read · Last reviewed 4 October 2026

The day a teenager gets their licence is the day the supervised hours stop. That first stretch of driving alone is, by a wide margin, the riskiest period of anyone's driving life — not because young drivers are reckless, but because they are inexperienced at the exact things a supervisor used to catch: judging gaps, reading other drivers, and noticing when they are too tired or too distracted to drive well.

The good news is that the risk falls steeply with experience, and parents can make a real difference during the first year. This guide is about how.

1. Know where the risk actually is

Crashes involving new drivers cluster around a handful of situations. Most licensing systems already restrict some of them for probationary drivers; it is worth knowing the rest.

• Night driving, especially late at night, when fatigue, poor visibility and other drivers' behaviour all get worse together.
• Passengers of the same age. Each extra young passenger raises the risk: more distraction, more pressure to show off or hurry.
• Phones. Not just calls and texts but glancing at a map, changing a song or reading a notification.
• Speed, including "only a bit over" on unfamiliar roads, wet roads and country roads.
• Fatigue, after a late shift, a long day or a party. Tired driving looks a lot like drink driving in its effects.
• Unfamiliar conditions: the first drive in heavy rain, on a freeway, on a country road at night, or in a different car.

2. Make a written agreement together

A short family driving agreement turns a series of arguments into one conversation. Write it together, so it is something they agreed to rather than a list of rules handed down. Cover:

• The legal conditions of their licence — passenger limits, hours, blood alcohol — written in plain words. Many new drivers are hazy about their own restrictions.
• The phone rule. For example: phone in the glovebox or on driving mode, navigation set before the car moves.
• Passengers beyond the legal limit — perhaps one friend at first, more after a few months without incident.
• Night driving — a later curfew earned over time.
• The "call me" rule. If they or the driver they're with has been drinking or is too tired, they call and you collect them, no lecture that night.
• What happens after a crash (see below), and that they will not be in trouble for calling.

Put a review date on it. Relaxing a rule after three good months is a powerful reward, and it keeps the agreement feeling fair.

3. Keep supervised driving going

Passing the test is not the end of learning. Keep doing some drives together in the first months, deliberately choosing the conditions they haven't met yet: heavy rain, night freeways, a long country drive, a busy city centre. Sitting in the passenger seat quietly, without commentary unless it matters, tells you more than any app.

4. Set the phone up for driving

Both iPhone and Android have a driving mode that silences notifications and can auto-reply to messages while the phone detects you are driving. Turn it on together and set it to activate automatically. Mount the phone if it is used for navigation, and set the destination before moving. Music playlists picked before the drive remove another reason to touch the screen.

5. Practise what happens after a crash

Most first crashes are minor — a car park scrape, a rear-ender at low speed. Talk through what to do before it happens, because a shaken seventeen-year-old will do what they rehearsed:

1. Stop, hazard lights on, and check everyone for injuries.
2. If anyone is hurt, the road is blocked or there is fuel, fire or a hazard, call emergency services.
3. Exchange names, addresses and registration details with the other driver, and take photos of the cars, plates and scene.
4. Don't argue about fault.
5. Call you.

Our guide to the first minutes after a car crash covers this in more detail; it is worth reading together.

6. Location sharing: agree it, don't impose it

Many families use location sharing for new drivers, and it can genuinely reassure everyone. It works best when it is part of the agreement rather than a secret, when it is used to answer "did they get there safely?" rather than to audit every stop, and when parents share their location too. Our guide to location sharing with teenagers goes into how to set that up without it becoming a source of fights.

How Zone Tick fits

Zone Tick is a supplementary safety tool, not an emergency service. For a new driver:

• Crash and fall checks use the phone's motion sensors to notice a hard impact and ask whether they're okay; if they don't answer, the family is alerted. It is threshold-based, not AI, and only works with the phone in the car. Sensitivity can be adjusted in Settings if bumpy roads cause false checks.
• Driving notices can tell the family "started driving", so you know a trip is under way without a message from behind the wheel.
• Live location shows they arrived, on every plan.
• One-tap SOS after a crash alerts the family with their location, alongside — never instead of — calling emergency services.

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This guide is general information. Zone Tick is a supplementary safety tool, not an emergency service: in an emergency, call your local emergency number.