CRASH-PROOF YOUR KIDS! A Survival Guide for Parents and Teen Drivers
By Timothy Charles Smith
Simon and Schuster (NYP)

One of the scariest things in the life of any parent is handing over the car keys to his or her teen-ager. Few topics generate more interest, angst and personal anecdotes among parents, than teen driving. In a recent national survey by Chrysler, parents identified driving safety as their top teen concern, well above drug and alcohol abuse. It’s no wonder: Motor vehicle crashes remain the nation’s leading cause of death for 15 to 20 year olds. CRASH-PROOF YOUR KIDS! targets the nearly 6 million parents with a son or daughter who will become a first-time driver in any given year. While nearly all these parents want their teenagers to become safe drivers with a minimal amount of confrontation and stress, there are only a handful of books to help them – and not a one from a major publishing house! Beyond trade book stores, there is unlimited potential for bulk sales to: insurance companies, automotive companies and dealers, organizations promoting safe driving, and driver’s education schools – public and private.

Most parents help to teach their kids to drive. Driver’s ed provides an average of 6 hours behind-the-wheel and is geared to the most basic aspects of driving and passing the state test. Professional driving instructors estimate that it takes 30 to 50 hours behind the wheel for the average beginning driver to function well in basic traffic situations. The primary responsibility lies with parents. CRASH-PROOF YOUR KIDS! delivers just the kind of help parents need, including the most difficult part of all: communicating in a way that is both understood and appreciated by their teens. The book will provide new insights, strategy and tactics on how to work with your child while avoiding screaming, eye-rolling and stony silences. In some 192 pages, it offers tips, information and strategies, focuses on defensive driving, and spells out progressive exercises parents and teens can do together. To insure readability, it is written in an informal, humorous style, sprinkled with graphics, sidebars, bullet points and scores of thoughtful, humorous and poignant anecdotes from celebrities and professional racers on their experiences as a teen driver and/or as the parent of a teen driver.

Timothy Smith retired early from a highly successful entrepreneurial career in 2002 to become a writer. He has written numerous essays, articles, short stories and screenplays and has been published the Chicago Tribune, Metro Parent, Bikini and elsewhere. Tim won the 2003 Westmoreland Award for Fiction and was a finalist in the 2002 Maui Writer's Conference contest for prose. Tim is a graduate of the Skip Barber School of Racing and the National Safety Council's Defensive Driving Course. As an entrepreneur, Tim turned a tiny medical television company into the nation's largest purveyor of televised medical news and programming and helped establish and run a company that built 51 new pharmacies in less than three years. In 1996, with proceeds from a company sale, he set up college education funds for 16 children. He has been married to the same woman for 19 years and has three children, including a teenager he is currently teaching to drive.