Tips for Teen Drivers to Park in Your Garage Safely

As a Visalia garage door repair business, we’ve seen our fair share of damages from teen drivers. Here are a few tips to help them park in your garage safely.

Ways to Help Teens Park in Your Garage

Although parking may come easily to you. it can cause your teen a fair amount of anxiety. Pulling your car into a tight space without hitting anything is not easy for a new driver. Here are a few tips.

• Start with an empty garage.
• Give the teen a landmark to aim for, like a tennis ball suspended from the ceiling.
• After each attempt, have your teen get out of the car to see how they did.
• If you have a two-car garage, only add the second car once your teen is adept at pulling into the proper space.
• Practice parking on each side of a two-car garage.

Backing Out of the Garage

Before you teach your teen how to back out of the garage, make sure you teach them how to drive in reverse. Here are a few tips.

• Teach them to back up using their left hand on the steering wheel while looking backward over their right shoulder with their right arm behind the headrest of the passenger seat.
• Make sure your teen knows to look both forward and reverse when driving in reverse so that they don’t inadvertently hit anything
• Have them drive in reverse in an empty parking lot so that they understand which way to turn the wheel.
• Have them turn the wheel to the right and to the left while backing up to learn how the vehicle moves.
• Have them control the speed of the car by tapping on the brakes as they move slowly in reverse
• Have them back into an empty parking spot
• After each attempt at backing into a spot, have them get out of the car to assess how they did.
• Once they are adept at pulling into an empty spot, you can have them attempt to back out of your garage.
• Tell them to always make sure that the garage door is open before starting the car when backing out of a garage.

With patience and practice, your teen will soon be able to park safely in your garage.