Alaska Graduated Driver Licensing

Three Ways Parents Can Help Their Teens Be Safe on the Road:

Enforce graduated driver’s licensing: It’s the law for a reason. GDL laws are proven effective and work by giving young drivers
increasing privileges over time. This approach allows time for them to gain experience under safer conditions before they drive
under more risky conditions.

Practical tips:

Read your state’s law together and discuss why it needs to be enforced. Provide real penalties for not following GDL guidelines: take the keys. Be the scapegoat if your teen needs to save face. (“No way! My Dad would kill me if I did that.”) Work out a code word or phrase your teen can use if he is in an unsafe situation. If he calls and uses that word, you know he needs your help. (“Forgot to walk the dog? Oh, right. I’ll be right there.”)

Schedule lots of supervised practice driving. Teens need lots of supervised practice to become experienced and safe drivers.

Practical tips:

Schedule plenty of time. The required 50 hours is a minimum to learn a complicated skill like driving. Use everyday trips. Supervise driving to soccer practice and the grocery store to practice different skills. You’ll be surprised how quickly the hours add up if you always let your teen drive when you’re in the car together. Vary experiences. Teens need to learn skills on various road types under various weather conditions, as well as at nighttime. Keep a log. Record the number of hours you spend and the different skills you practiced.

Catch your teen doing it right. Teens are between being a dependent child and an independent adult. They need to hear positive reinforcement to help them become responsible adults.

Practical tips:

Praise them when they use good judgment and obey GDL. Be honest. Teens can tell when you are sincere. When needed, discipline and let them know the reasons why. (“You are late. You broke the law and put yourself at risk of being in a crash.”)

What is Alaska Graduated Driver Licensing?

What is Alaska GDL? Alaska Graduated Driver Licensing is a system for phasing in on-road driving, allowing beginners to get their initial experience under conditions that involve lower risk and introducing them in stages to more complex driving situations.

Take some time to watch the Young Drivers video here. See if your teen likes this video. If they do, they will love our Alaska graduated driver licensing program.

We begin with combining the in-class with the behind-the-wheel training process concurrent with one another. Then we add more hours behind-the-wheel to give the new drivers an opportunity to experience all four seasons and weather conditions under a controlled risk factor. We take away the 6 hour driver training clock and base achievement and graduation on performance, skill and experience.

Remember when we were trying to teach our new teenagers as if we were traveling on a two-lane dirt road at 35 MPH, when our average traveled speed in Alaska exceeds 55 MPH on a six-lane highway? Most families had a single vehicle in the fifties and sixties, and then to two vehicles in the seventies. The days of driving on weekends with mom and dad for the first year or two is over. In today’s hectic schedules, we are not allowing ourselves time to protect our Alaska teens and teach them to drive as we should be. Parents need to realize that as the times change we must keep pace with that change.

Our driving generation, 35 to 50 years old, will be remembered as the worse driving generation in the history of the vehicle. We average 40,000 fatalities per year. Our generation needs to change the way we think and teach Alaska graduated driver licensing.

If you look closely, you'll realize we spend about 12 years on basic education, reading writing, math, history and physical education…and only 6 hours behind the wheel training in a vehicle.

We need to be remembered as the generation that created the best Alaska drivers in history. The generation that did something about the way we think and teach driver training. We need help from every mom and dad to complete this goal. We need to invest our time in our teenagers and take the time needed to teach our children to drive better.

This could mean as much as 1 or two years of guidance. And to do this you will need the very best Alaska curriculum and training videos available. You will need to allow Alaska graduated driver licensing to become part of your families dinner conversation and sharing experiences on new intersections, changes on the interstate on ramps or maybe a lost of a fellow student friend.

Alaska Driver education and training is no longer a project to hire out to the local driving school. Parents need to get involved and stay involved for at least two or three years. Placing driving restrictions and hours on when a new driver is allowed to drive and with whom. This, in essence, is Alaska Graduated Driver Licensing.