Nancy O’Dell making teen safety a personal crusade

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Nancy O'Dell is a well-known face on "Entertainment Tonight." Her job makes her a public figure and gives her a public stage on which to speak. Recently, she made it clear that she has taken up a new crusade. The issue: teen driver safety. The platform: her access to public resources. The reason: She is a mom. Despite her public status, O'Dell wants to remind people that she is a parent too. In fact, she has a brand new teen driver in her home too. Her 17-year-old son recently obtained his driver's license. "The first year [of driving] is the most deadly time in their lives," she said as she talked about the extra time that she tries to give her son behind the wheel. Many parents follow this philosophy that the more time they spend in the car with their kids, the greater the percentage of "supervised" learning time that they have. For this mom, she wants to give her oldest teen extensive learning time so that her younger kids will understand that safety is a priority. For those out of her home, O'Dell is promoting a nationwide safety campaign called DriveitHOME that encourages parents to get involved with their teen driver's safety. Children are inexperienced as drivers. There is no getting around that; they can only get their driver's licenses at a certain age. They are going to make mistakes, but there are certain behaviors that can clearly be prevented. Texting while driving is one of these negligent actions that has received a lot of attention. The truth is that there are some parents who work and some who might even put a lower value on behind the wheel with a parent experience. Beyond that, kids disobey their parents. Accidents will happen, but for those who are injured there are car accident attorneys in New Jersey who have their own experience with these cases. Source: USA Today, "TV host Nancy O'Dell urges teen driving safety," Chris Woodyard, June 2, 2013