There are a lot of excellent free contracts out there. Ours just happens to be the best. Some guidelines for using the contract :
- Tell your teenager, that he or she will not be able to drive without a SIGNED, WRITTEN contract. Period.
- We recommend against adding a provision in the contract requiring a certain grade average, for example. Safety is too important. The contract should be about SAFETY and not trying to motivate a teenager to do chores or study harder.
- Make sure the contract is consistent with state laws. It can be more strict than state laws–and it should be–but obviously should not be more lenient than the law.
- The consequence of breaking a rule, according to our contract, is the withdrawal of INDEPENDENT driving privileges and NOT taking the teenager off the road. Why? First, there certainly could be things that could happen that would be so serious that a parent should take the teenager off the road. Driving while drunk would have moved me to suspend my teenager’s driving privileges. But, for most violations, it is better not to pull their privileges to drive but, instead, to REVERT BACK TO LEARNER’S PERMIT MODE for days, weeks, or even months following a violation of the contract. Why? People become better drivers by driving. Taking a teenager off the road for X amount of time takes away the valuable experience. Going back to learner’s permit mode gives you a chance to get back in the car and provide more instruction and supervision.
Here is the contract in different file formats and in a long form and a short form. Use both the long and short forms. Keep the short form handy…it’s easier to read and refer to.