Safety First for our Newest Drivers!

By Walter Ford

With kids now back in school, parents have good reason to be concerned with safety. Safety is especially important for our new drivers, so now is a good time to have an overall safety check of your vehicle before you hand over the keys. First of all, a teenage driver is a new driver, so they are inexperienced. They tend to be more inattentive when compared to more seasoned drivers. You want to make sure that your car is in good overall health. Kids have enough challenges operating a car on a public highway, so you don’t want to throw them any curve balls. A good place to start is to make sure that the brakes and tires are in really good condition.

When inspecting your brakes, be sure to have plenty of life on your brake pads and the rotors are in good shape. You really want to check the rotors to make sure they don’t have any ridges, even though the pad does not run across the whole face of the rotor. You want to look at the edge of the rotor, because that’s a clear indication of how much has been taken off. With most cars nowadays, the old rotors are tossed out and new ones are put on. They are relatively inexpensive now compared to what they used to be. As for the brake pad itself, you probably want 3/32 of an inch or more. The issue with the brake pads is the more material it has, the more heat can dissipate, so the less likely it will stay under pad in stopping conditions.

When you inspect your tires, make sure you have a decent amount of tread on them, especially now that the rainy season is here. In the old days, people used a penny as a guide and measure to the top of Lincoln’s head, which is 2/32 of an inch. In the state of California, you’re allowed to have a minimum of 2/32 of an inch on your front steer axle. The rear axle must be a minimum of 1/32 of an inch of tread. A word of caution is that these are minimums.

Most new cars now tend to be a little sportier, with tires that are more of a summer tire. So, I would take my car to someone who really knows what they’re doing and ask if the tires will be good for the winter time. If you are driving a vehicle with a sports package, you’ll likely have a tire that is a performance summer tire. If you only have 2/32 of an inch, it’s pretty useless in the rain. So, be sure to examine not only the trend depth but also the tread design.